Kaskian (Kaskean) was the language of the Kaskians (Kaska) of northeastern Bronze Age Anatolia in the mountains along the Black Sea coast. The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture lists the Kaskians as non–Indo-European.Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture p.29 (1997) https://archive.org/details/EncyclopediaOfIndoEuropeanCulture/page/n63/mode/2up?q=Kaskians There are a number of theories regarding the language family to which it belonged.
It is sometimes suspected that Kaskian was related to the pre-Hittite Hattic language, based on toponyms and personal names; the Hattic moon god was named Kasku. Conversely, the Kaskian language may have been an Indo-European language, perhaps related to Thraco-Phrygian.Fred Woudhuizen. The Saga of the Argonauts: A Reflex of Thraco-Phrygian Maritime Encroachment on the Southern Pontic Littoral Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society. 2012. https://www.academia.edu/7174237/The_Saga_of_the_Argonauts_A_Reflex_of_Thraco_Phrygian_Maritime_Encroachment_on_the_Southern_Pontic_Littoral There may also be connections to the Northwest Caucasian languages; the name KaskianHittite Kaškaš, Assyrian Kaška, Egyptian Kškš may be cognate with an old name for Circassia,Arabic kašak, Old Georgian kaški, Old Armenian gašk, Old Russian kasogi, Ossetic kæsæg, Byzantine Greek Κασαχία Kasakhía and the name of one of the tribes in the Kaskian confederation, the Abešla, may be cognate with the endonym of the Abkhaz people and some Circassian people,Abkhaz Аҧсуа Apswa, Old Georgian apsil-, apšil-, Old Armenian apšeł-k, Greek Αψίλαι apsílai, Latin Absilae suggesting the Kaskians proper and Abešla might have been the ancestors of the Circassians and other Northwest Caucasian-speaking peoples.George Hewitt, 1998. The Abkhazians, p 49 It has been conjectured that Kaskian might belong to the Zan family of languages, and have affinities to Megrelian or Laz.
In 2023, D. Sasseville presented an unknown language preserved on several tablet fragments from the archives of Hattusa and argued on methodological grounds that it was agglutinative and could be the Kaskian language.
The Kaskian language continued to be spoken around the Black Sea until approximately the 10th century BC, where it was absorbed by neighbouring Anatolian, Phrygian and Karto-Zan languages.
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