Noteworthy History Book Club: Proto: How Once Ancient Language Went Global

About The Book

The epic tale of how one ancient language went global, and the scientific quest to trace it back to its roots, from the celebrated author of Pale Rider

As the planet emerged from the last ice age, a language was born between Europe and Asia, by the Black Sea. This ancient tongue, which we call Proto-Indo-European, soon exploded out of its cradle, changing and fragmenting as it went, until its offspring were spoken from Scotland to China. Today those descendants constitute the world’s largest language family, the thread that connects disparate Dante’s Inferno to the Rig Veda, The Lord of the Rings to the love poetry of Rumi. Indo-European languages are spoken by nearly half of humanity. How did this happen?

Laura Spinney set out to answer that question, retracing the Indo-European odyssey across continents and millennia. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the silk roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread these languages far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists on a thrilling mission to retrieve those lost the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists who have reconstructed this ancient diaspora. What they have learned has vital implications for our modern world, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

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The Noteworthy History Book Club will focus on new and notable historical non-fiction and autobiographies that give insights into events, people and cultures from around the world and across millennia. From the rise of ancient civilizations to the tumultuous twentieth century, we'll read it all. Don't fret if you can't finish that huge historical door-stopper, you can't spoil history and all are welcome who have an interest in the month's topic.

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