How did the language you are reading come to exist? The Indo-European family of languages covers most of Europe, the Iranian plateau, northern India and parts of Asia. It is spoken by almost half of all living people, and they all stem from a common source. English, Hindustani, Spanish, Russian, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Norse and more than four hundred others can be traced to their origins. Laura Spinney’s new book tells the story of how Proto-Indo-European (PIE) may initially have been spoken as a kind of language of only a few dozen people evolved into the mother tongue of billions.

The words we use feel inevitable. We take them for granted. But they began to come alive some six thousand years ago, when copper was being smithed in the lands to the west of the Black Sea.

As the traders travelled, the words they shared went with them across the Black Sea and then around the world: from the forests of Romania to the steppe of Odessa, now with the development of larger and larger settlements, with steppe herders becoming global traders, now with roads, with the crossing of the Volga, sped up by the wheel, and on to the edge of China.

Laura Spinney draws on recent evidence to tell this story by putting together linguistics, archaeology and genetic research to trace the movement of people and their language. Making these links is not straightforward. PIE was not written down; it has been reconstructed by comparing the languages that evolved from it.

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