Prior to the discovery of the Hittite language, linguists had compared the various Indo-European languages they knew of and did much of the work of reconstructi

Prior to the discovery of the Hittite language, linguists had compared the various Indo-European languages they knew of and did much of the work of reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European language based on comparative linguistics. This work was highly conjectural, but it provided something akin to a falsifiable theory that could be tested by the discovery of another written Indo-European language. Such a language was Hittite, and the Hittite language fits the model of Indo-European languages that had been constructed prior to its discovery.