Indo-European: The Language Family That Went Global
transcript
show notes
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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Find Laura on X: https://x.com/lfspinney
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.
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