Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global

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. (May)