Indo-European: The Language Family That Went Global

In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas meets Laura Spinney, author of Proto: How One Language Went Global, the story of the Proto-Indo-European language and its descendants, which are spoken today by half of humanity.

Laura explains:

How, where, and among whom Proto-Indo-European emerged

How Indo-European split into English, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Greek, Latin-derived Romance languages, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic tongues

How linguists reconstruct an unwritten prehistoric language through sound laws, comparative vocabulary and ancient texts

Why ancient DNA has transformed the debate over Indo-European origins by restoring migration to the centre of the story

Who the Yamnaya were, and how mobile pastoralists north of the Black Sea spread language through cattle, wagons, dairy and steppe mobility

How a small number of steppe migrants may have transformed Europe’s languages through disease, prestige, violence, intermarriage and social networks

Why Tocharian, Sanskrit and Persian reveal extraordinary Indo-European journeys from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to China, India and Iran

How ‘Aryan’ began as a real Indo-Iranian self-description before being distorted by racial nationalism and Nazi pseudoscience

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And on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/laurainparis.bsky.social

And on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laura.spinney

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices