Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global
by Laura Spinney
Bloomsbury Publishing – May 2025
352 pages
An old joke says that English is the product of Norman knights trying to pick up Saxon barmaids using church Latin.
Another says that English beats up other languages in dark alleys, then rifles through their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary.
These jokes are funny because we recognize the truth in them: languages are living things and they change over time. When I read Frankenstein (first published in 1818) a couple years ago, I was struck by how unfamiliar it sounded. But I had no trouble following it. Read Shakespeare or the King James Bible and the challenge is greater. Try to read Chaucer in Middle English and the challenge is too great for many.
Language – any language – is a living thing. There’s no such thing as “proper” English. There is only whether a speaker and a listener can understand each other or not.
At what point does the common speech become a separate language? In school we learned that the Latin of the Roman Empire evolved into Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. But we weren’t taught – or at least I wasn’t – that virtually all modern languages went through the same process.
Since at least the 17th century, linguists have understood that the languages of India and Iran have many similarities with the languages of most of Europe. That led them to speculate that once there was a Proto-Indo-European language from which all these languages emerged. Further study has only strengthened that hypothesis.
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global is the story of that origin and development. Laura Spinney is a science writer, not a researcher. Her book covers the most recent discoveries and their implications. I read a fair amount in this field around 2010, but that’s now 15 years in the past. There’s been a lot of research done since then.
Where the findings are clear, Spinney makes them clear. Where experts still have significant disagreements, she describes their differences. The result is a very readable book that tells the origin stories of the Indo-European languages.
Current evidence strongly indicates that Proto-Indo-European developed about 3500 BCE in the area north of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus Mountains. It evolved into two main languages groups: the Indo-Iranian group in the East, and in the West, Germanic (which includes English), the Scandinavian languages, Latin and the Romance languages, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, and Greek.
The researchers who figured out all this stuff are working in three different disciplines: genetics, archaeology, and linguistics. DNA research has improved tremendously since I read what were then state of the art books. Now we can get reliable readings from bones that were far too old to accurately identify even 15 years ago. Archaeology analyzes what people left behind and draws conclusions about how people lived. And linguists have developed reliable models of how languages change over time, and from there have reconstructed around 2000 words from a language that was never written and that hasn’t been heard in five millennia.
And that’s the extent of the book review I intend to do here. If you find this topic fascinating, read the book – you won’t regret it. If you don’t, I’m sure you’ll find something else to read.
Rather than the details of the Proto-Indo-European language and its descendants, I want to focus on what the Indo-European story means to us here and now.
Genetics, culture, and language move together… sometimes
The three disciplines contributing to this work follow the three main ways language spreads: by blood (DNA and genetics), by culture (archaeology), and by speech and writing (linguistics).
Humans aren’t exactly a migratory species, but we are certainly a mobile species. When things are good, we tend to stay where we are. There have always been adventurers and explorers – and people who moved because they angered someone who could do them harm – but for the most part if the land is fertile, the climate is tolerable, and the water supply is adequate (keep that point in mind in the coming years, especially if you live in the American West), people stay where they are.
When things turn bad, we go somewhere else.
And when people move, they take their genetics, their culture, and their language with them.
What happens then? The story of Proto-Indo-European shows that many things can happen. Sometimes the newcomers are absorbed into the host culture. Sometimes the newcomers overwhelm the host culture. Most times there’s an exchange: of DNA and of culture as well as of language.
People move – it’s part of who and what we are
Whatever your position on immigration and refugees, this is not a new thing. This is what humans do. When things get bad, we move.
My position is that immigration is a complicated issue and people of good will can have differing opinions. We have an obligation to behave in a hospitable manner to everyone here, and we can also debate the limits of that hospitality.
That said, the current administration’s weaponized cruelty is far beyond the bounds of “differing opinions.” It should be ended immediately and those responsible for its excesses held accountable.
Ultimately, their cruelty will fail.
Here’s a long but very important quote from the conclusion of Proto:
The new tools of archaeology and genetics have opened our eyes to our past. Migration has been a constant, ‘indigenous’ is relative. Ten thousand years of human displacement have shrunk the genetic distance between populations to the point where ethnic divisions are losing meaning. The desire to belong is as strong as ever, and as it becomes harder to see the difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’, linguistic and cultural boundaries are being guarded more jealously. Language is becoming a battleground in the identity wars, and preserving our linguistic ‘purity’ a justification used by those who want to raise walls. Unfortunately for them, the most successful language the world ever knew was a hybrid trafficked by migrants. It changed as it went, and when it stopped changing, it died.
The past is a lighthouse, not a port.
My own story of migration
I’ve made five cross-country moves in my life and I’m planning a sixth. I’ve always stayed in the United States, but all but one of my moves have been over 600 miles. That would have carried me across multiple borders in much of the world.
My first five moves were for work: I had to move to find a new job. This is what people have always done – this is what people do.
My next move is for political reasons (and climate, but mainly politics). Texas is no longer welcoming, and while I’m probably safe, it’s stressful living in a place where the government is harassing my friends. In a short time I’ll be able to move on my terms, and so I will. This is what people have always done – this is what people do.
I’m under no illusions – I do not believe either my story or this book will change anyone’s mind and make them more compassionate towards desperate people doing desperate things.
But I hope it will open some people’s eyes to their own situation. You may have to move: to a place with more opportunity, to a place that will accept you for who and what you are, to a place where there’s enough water to support all the people who live there.
This is what people have always done – this is what people do.
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