Name: Proto
ISBN: 9781639732586

satvikpendemAug 2026

A good book on this is Proto by Laura Spinney, it covers all the branches of Proto-Indo-European and also postulates that the entire family may have started from as few as a hundred speakers who were steppe nomads, which is mindboggling if true.

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euroderfAug 2026

Anyone new to this stuff and fascinated by it could check out "Proto" by Laura Spinney. A new book about PIE and the Yamnaya and such and also incorporating tie-ins to DNA archeology.

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mac3nMay 2026

"Proto" - Laura Spinney. Proto-Indoeuropean. https://www.powells.com/book/proto-how-one-ancient-language-...

before that

"The Horse the Wheel & Language". David Anthony. Proto-Indoeuropeans. https://www.powells.com/book/horse-the-wheel-language-how-br...

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NelsonMinarAug 2025

I can recommend the new book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney. It's an overview of what we know about Proto Indo-European and its spread across the world. Much of the book is evidence from linguistics but it also regularly dips into Reich's ancient DNA work and other sources to cross-correlate with the linguistic evidence. It's very well written.

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GlenTheMachineAug 2026

Isn't this a testable hypothesis? If consciousness spread virally and isn't a natural outgrowth of the physical structure of the brain, then presumably isolated indigenous tribes would still have pre-consciousness mental processes, and that should be detectable somehow.

The being said, I'm reading "Proto" By Laura Spinney, and the thing that strikes me is how recently the world's major languages developed. Everyone assumes we had language fifty thousand years ago, but the actual language families we know about all seem to trace to no more than about 10,000 BCE, and maybe a lot younger than that. The odds of Proto-Indo-European being traceable to a single tribe in the Black Sea region circa 4500 BCE seem really low to me, but that's what seems to have happened.

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