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I can recommend the new book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney. It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its s
by NelsonMinar 1y ago
I can recommend the new book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney. It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its spread across the world. Much of the book is evidence from linguistics but it also regularly dips into Reich's ancient DNA work and other sources to cross-correlate with the linguistic evidence. It's very well written.
- hearsathought 1y ago> It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its spread across the world. That's a bit misleading isn't it? PIE died out a long time ago. And it certainly didn't spread all over the world. It's descendent languages moved into india, middle east and europe. And it's european languages ( primarily spanish, french and english ) that went global. Nobody would say Latin went global just because spanish is spoken around the world. Or old english went global because much of the world speaks english. But thanks for the recommendation.
- NelsonMinar 1y agoI'm sorry you didn't understand my perfectly clear colloquial description of the spread of a language family.
- senderista 1y agoAlso David Anthony's book _The Horse, the Wheel, and Language_ (2007), which just missed the ancient DNA revolution but essentially anticipated its findings on Yamnaya migration from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into Europe.