\nby Laura Spinney
\nBloomsbury Publishing \u2013 May 2025
\n352 pages<\/p>\n
An old joke says that English is the product of Norman knights trying to pick up Saxon barmaids using church Latin.<\/p>\n
Another says that English beats up other languages in dark alleys, then rifles through their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary.<\/p>\n
These jokes are funny because we recognize the truth in them: languages are living things and they change over time. When I read Frankenstein<\/em><\/a> (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.<\/p>\n Language \u2013 any language \u2013 is a living thing. There\u2019s no such thing as \u201cproper\u201d English. There is only whether a speaker and a listener can understand each other or not.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t taught \u2013 or at least I wasn\u2019t \u2013 that virtually all modern languages went through the same process.<\/p>\n Since at least the 17th<\/sup> 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.<\/p>\n Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global<\/em> 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\u2019s now 15 years in the past. There\u2019s been a lot of research done since then.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t been heard in five millennia.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s the extent of the book review I intend to do here. If you find this topic fascinating, read the book \u2013 you won\u2019t regret it. If you don\u2019t, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll find something else to read.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n Humans aren\u2019t 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 \u2013 and people who moved because they angered someone who could do them harm \u2013 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.<\/p>\n When things turn bad, we go somewhere else.<\/p>\n And when people move, they take their genetics, their culture, and their language with them.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s an exchange: of DNA and of culture as well as of language.<\/p>\n Whatever your position on immigration and refugees, this is not a new thing. This is what humans do. When things get bad, we move.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n That said, the current administration\u2019s weaponized cruelty is far beyond the bounds of \u201cdiffering opinions.\u201d It should be ended immediately and those responsible for its excesses held accountable.<\/p>\n Ultimately, their cruelty will fail.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a long but very important quote from the conclusion of Proto<\/em>:<\/p>\n The new tools of archaeology and genetics have opened our eyes to our past. Migration has been a constant, \u2018indigenous\u2019 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 \u2018them\u2019 and \u2018us\u2019, linguistic and cultural boundaries are being guarded more jealously. Language is becoming a battleground in the identity wars, and preserving our linguistic \u2018purity\u2019 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.<\/p>\n The past is a lighthouse, not a port.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ve made five cross-country moves in my life and I\u2019m planning a sixth. I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n My first five moves were for work: I had to move to find a new job. This is what people have always done \u2013 this is what people do.<\/p>\n![\"photo](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/243\/2026\/02\/Proto-6x4-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Genetics, culture, and language move together\u2026 sometimes<\/h2>\n
People move \u2013 it\u2019s part of who and what we are<\/h2>\n
My own story of migration<\/h2>\n