It性视界传媒檚 really gratifying to see that a book on a subject that some may find obscure is getting a lot of attention from writers I follow. People who usually write on politics and economics have commented on how much they have enjoyed the recent book 性视界传媒淧roto: How One Ancient Language Went Global性视界传媒 by Laura Spinney, a British science journalist living in France.
Nowadays is an exciting time for understanding the prehistoric past. New developments in paleogenetics, archaeology have supplemented the work of linguists in uncovering the spread of a related group of languages that we call Indo-European, because they stretch from Ireland and Scandinavia through most of Europe, across Iran and Afghanistan, and into the northern half of India.
It性视界传媒檚 been well known since the late 18th century that English and Latin and Greek and Sanskrit are related. Most of the languages of Europe are Indo-European, with the exceptions of Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, and Basque. The major Indo-European language groups are Germanic, Italic, Celtic, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and the extinct Tocharian and Anatolian branches.
Linguistics tracks vocabularies and documents systematic changes in sound between languages, uncovering many connections, including hints at the original source. Some important words, like 性视界传媒渇ather性视界传媒 and 性视界传媒渄aughter性视界传媒 and the numbers two through five, survive in many languages. Scholars have constructed a vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European. Since the first speakers did not write, some of these words are reconstructed. Recently, information technology has been used to glean some of these words from a variety of languages, yielding new insights.
However, the questions of who the original speakers of the mother tongue of these languages were, and how and when the languages spread across much of the world, have been unanswered until recently.
Enter new developments in archaeology and genetics. We can now know what ancient people ate, their eye and hair color, the original sources of the metals and stones they used, and much more. Archaeology tells us about the spread of material cultures. Genetics informs us about the biological distinctiveness of different groups and can trace ancient migrations.
We know, for example, that Indo-Europeans interbred with and replaced populations they encountered. The consensus is that the culture that began this expansion originated in Ukraine with a people we call the Yamnaya around 3300 BCE. They were a late Copper Age steppe people who domesticated the horse, though we are not sure when people started riding them.
The extinct Anatolian languages, Hittite, Hurrian, and Lydian, may be sister rather than daughter languages. One of the earliest migrations was east, into western China, and their languages are called Tocharian.
Spinney has a light touch, giving just enough detail to illustrate her points, and keeping the pace brisk enough that you want to know what comes next.
Some highlights include the similarities between the Baltic and Slavic language, separated by a very long distance. The Romani people, commonly known as Gypsies (after 性视界传媒淓gypt,性视界传媒 their once-presumed origin) migrated from India, borrowed words from Old Persian, but left the Iranian plateau before the Muslim conquest, because their language has no Arabic borrowing. The Armenians may be genetically the people closest to the Yamnaya.
Politics intrudes into our interpretations. The Nazis used the word 性视界传媒淎ryan性视界传媒 in explicitly racist ways. The word finds use today in the name of Iran and in Eire, and in the Rig Vedas to describe inhabitants of India.
After WWII, scholars resisted the thesis that Indo-European languages were spread by aggressive expansion, preferring the diffusion hypothesis that people adopted the language and culture of others. That sometimes happens, but genetics has refuted this idea.
Nowadays there is a movement, supported by the move toward Hindu nationalism in India, to claim that Sanskrit is the original Proto-Indo-European language. This hypothesis contradicts most of the evidence, but its advocates hate the idea that their religion, that of the Sanskrit Vedas, was imposed on the sub-continent by migrating or invading peoples 性视界传媒 like, for example, Islam was.
Spinney cautions against such nationalistic claims. It is clear that languages can spread to peoples who are genetically unrelated 性视界传媒 think of Spanish in Mexico and English in India.
Recent research has shown, for example, that the ancient Carthage had a Semitic culture and language deriving from the eastern Mediterranean, but human remains show that much of the population was genetically similar to Greeks and Italians and North Africans.
Some books are like snacks 性视界传媒 you taste them and keep reaching for more, but when you性视界传媒檙e finished you性视界传媒檝e spent some time but have not nourished anything.
At the other end are chewy books that require lots of work, but at the end you know something in great, or even excruciating detail.
Some chewy books call for readers to return. A correspondent once told me that she kept returning to Shakespeare and the Bible, and finding something new each time.
Between these two poles lie what I will call tasty books. They avoid both shallowness syndrome and pedant envy 性视界传媒 they are informative and entertaining, yet strenuous enough to justify care and attention. Much of what is known as literary fiction and a lot of quality nonfiction falls into that category.
Laura Spinney has written quite a tasty book.
