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While provocative, Vennemann's theories are highly debated and generally rejected by the mainstream linguistic community. Critics often argue that:
This "substrate" influenced the vocabulary and structure of the languages that eventually replaced them. Europa Vasconica-Europa Semitica
Vennemann argues that after the last Ice Age, much of Western and Central Europe was inhabited by speakers of Vasconic languages , of which Basque is the only surviving member. Europa Vasconica-Europa Semitica
The comparative method , the gold standard for determining language relationships, does not strongly support these deep-time connections. Europa Vasconica-Europa Semitica
Vennemann posits that starting in the fifth millennium BCE, Atlantic/Semitidic seafaring colonizers (related to Semitic speakers) settled the coastal regions of Western and Northern Europe.
The toponymic (place-name) links are tenuous and can be explained by other linguistic families.