Borean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea, Australia, and the Andaman Islands. Its supporters propose that the various languages of Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name "Borean", based on Greek , means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families native to the northern hemisphere. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin.