Proto
How One Ancient Language Went Global
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4.6 • 15 Ratings
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
"The story of how one language left the steppes of Ukraine and became the earth's dominant language family has become clearer and more exciting than ever before. Hooray for a book where the author's curiosity, diligence, and literary craft gets it all down in what will stand as the go-to source for a generation." - John McWhorter, author of The Language Hoax
Daughter. Duhitár-. Dustr. Dukte. Listen to these English, Sanskrit, Armenian and Lithuanian words, all meaning the same thing, and you hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely journeys. All four languages-along with hundreds of others, from French and Gaelic, to Persian and Polish-trace their origins to an ancient tongue spoken as the last ice age receded. This language, which we call Proto-Indo-European, was born between Europe and Asia and exploded out of its cradle, fragmenting as it spread east and west. Its last speaker died thousands of years ago, yet Proto-Indo-European lives on in its myriad linguistic offspring and in some of our best loved works of literature, including Dante's Inferno and the Rig Veda, The Lord of the Rings and the love poetry of Rumi. How did this happen?
Acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney set out to answer that question, retracing the Indo-European odyssey across continents and millennia. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the silk roads and the Hindu Kush. We retrace the epic journeys of nomads and monks, warriors and kings – the ancient peoples who carried these languages far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists on a thrilling mission to retrieve the lost languages and their speakers: the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists who have reconstructed that ancient diaspora. What they have learned has profound implications for our modern world, because people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist and novelist Spinney (Pale Rider) explains how a single language family spread across the world in this astute account. Combining the discoveries of linguists, archaeologists, and geneticists—"barbarians to each other" in their mutual unintelligibility—Spinney aims to take the most holistic approach yet to the topic. The Proto-Indo-European language emerged 6,000 years ago around the Black Sea when the Yamnaya, a group of nomadic herders, shifted into mining and farming—and interacted with others who pioneered those arts—before migrating outward. Spinney traces these early years before considering each major branch, including the extinct Tocharian line (which penetrated into China); the Western European mix of Latin, Celtic, and Germanic; and the Indo-Iranian offshoot (seeded by a return migration eastward during a climate crisis). Each academic specialty provides fascinating insights, among them a stunning genetic discovery from 2020 revealing remains of cousins buried 2,000 miles apart 5,000 years ago, proving migration could have been very rapid; deconstructions of vocabularies that reveal migratory patterns (for instance, since the first Proto-Indo-European speakers were herders, later coastal dwelling speakers had to borrow seafaring terms from other languages); and new interpretations of myths that question whether violent conquest was behind the spread as opposed to marrying outward or mass migration. Impressively weaving raw data and disparate academic conjectures into a sweeping saga, this rivets.
