Before Proto-Indo-European spread into Europe, was there a dominant language family throughout the region? Or was it made up of many different language families?

by lameskiana

I understand that this may be hard to know, but I can see some ways people could know. Perhaps some words that come from pre-IE languages in Europe could be found in different languages. Perhaps there are similar place names from Pre-IE, for example next to rivers or another feature which would give the names similar words.

Searocksandtrees

hi! There's lots of room for more information here, and I'm not sure that any of these will address your title questions directly, but you may be able to infer some information from these earlier threads on pre-PIE languages of so-called "Old Europe"