Proto

Description

How did one ancient language give rise to more than four hundred tongues spoken across much of the modern world? This engaging investigation traces the Indo-European family from its elusive Proto-Indo-European roots across steppe, mountain, desert, and trade route, following the migrations of the peoples who carried these languages across continents and millennia. Drawing on linguistics, archaeology, genetics, history, mythology, and anthropology, it explores both the evidence and the lively debates surrounding the family’s origins and dispersal. Vividly written and rigorously researched, the book is part intellectual detective story and part travelogue—an illuminating portrait of how language preserves the movements, encounters, and cultures of the human past.

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