 Diakonoff proposed the name "Alarodian" for the union of Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian.Many scholars, however, doubt that the language families are related, or believe that, while a connection is possible, the evidence is far from conclusive.The Proto-Northeast Caucasian language had many terms for agriculture, and Johanna Nichols has suggested that its speakers may have been involved in the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, and only later moved north to the Caucasus.