Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global

One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story.

Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.

Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity’s past. All three of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient ancestor.

Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen?

In Proto, acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again.

Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

Review

'The fascinating story of the ancient words that survive in the mouths of billions of speakers today.'

Henry Oliver, The Guardian

'Proto will take the reader on an unlikely historical odyssey … most importantly, it shows that we are more connected than we might have been led to believe.'

New Statesman

'A magisterial feat … It is clever, careful, expansive, insightful and a host of other fine Indo-European adjectives.'

New Scientist

'Bringing together genetic, archaeological and linguistic research, Spinney tells the fascinating story of the common ancestor of many languages spoken around the world today.'

Financial Times

'An enormously refreshing and readable history of worlds that were physically far apart but, in a sense, spoke with a single voice.'

David Abulafia, Literary Review

'A compelling portrait of a people thought lost to time … a remarkable account of humanity’s quest to rediscover its ancient origins.'

Wall Street Journal

About the Author

Laura Spinney is a science journalist and writer. She is the author of the celebrated Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World. Her writing on science has appeared in National Geographic, Nature, The Guardian and The Atlantic, among others. Born in the UK, she lives in Paris.