The Rise and Fall and Revival of the Ibero‑Caucasian Hypothesis

The hypothesis that the three indigenous Caucasian language stocks (Abkhaz-Adyghean, Nakh-Daghestanian, and Kartvelian) are genetically related has little support at the present day among linguists specializing in these languages. Nonetheless, the so-called ‘Ibero-Caucasian’ hypothesis had strong institutional backing in Soviet Caucasology, especially in Georgia, and continues to be invoked in certain contemporary discourses of a political and identitarian nature. In this paper the history of the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis will be presented against the background of research into the autochthonous languages of the North and South Caucasus, and also in connection with the historiographic debate over the relation of Abkhazia to Georgia.