The Nostratic Hypothesis is a theory coined by Dutch linguist Holden Pederson in 1903 connecting the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, and Afro-Asiatic language families, being open to the possibilities of more languages being connected to Proto-Nostratic. The idea of the Nostratic Hypothesis was initially controversial, but is now accepted in a conceptual form - meaning that the possibility of language families being connected on a mass level is accepted, but the specifics of the research are still being debated.

Modern day research of the Nostratic Hypothesis began with the work of Russian linguist Vladislav M. Illich-Svitych. In the 1960s, he made the first detailed case defending the Nostratic Hypothesis, adding Kartvelian and Dravidian languages into the fray. He also managed to offer a detailed - yet incomplete - reconstruction of Nostratic, the proposed mother tongue of all the languages.

Illich-Svitych premature death caused there to be a lot of a lot of unresolved problems, especially as his reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic was incredibly incomplete, leading to the continued controversy of the Nostratic Hypothesis. But in the 1990s, interest in connecting language families syrocketed, contributing to the reevaluation of the Nostratic Hypothesis, and the beginnings of a new stage of research.