The story of language
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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