Few subjects have progressed as rapidly in recent years as the study of prehistory and ancient history. The ability to decode the human genome has upended everything. In retrospect, archaeologists and linguists got an amazing amount right; the advent of DNA analysis (backed up by huge amounts of computing power) provided a layer of scientific confidence, allowing the other disciplines to progress faster and more accurately.

The “Proto” in the title Laura Spinney’s new book is a reference to “Proto-Indo-European” (PIE), the language from which modern tongues as diverse as Hindi, Greek, English, Russian and Armenian derive; this was perhaps deemed not quite fascinating enough, so the book was given a subtitle presumably more in tune with the contemporary  

The story of how linguistics, archaeology and genetics combined to demonstrate the origins of PIE among herders of the steppe was first told for general readers in David W Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, an account which—while rather dense in places—hasn’t yet either been bettered or superceded. Spinney picks up that story, adds some recent results (notably some reasonably convincing evidence that there may have been a precursor to Proto-Indo-European in the Near East, from which Hittite and PIE emerged as siblings rather than, as previously been postulated, the former emerging from the latter), and tells the story of the later emergence of Indo-European’s major language families, from Celtic which reached the far West of Europe to Tocharian in what is now China.

Spinney’s account is a breezy, well-written overview of (Indo-European) historical linguistics, both its history and current state, as well as the way it is now practiced and, in particular, its now deep integration with archaeology and genetics. There are discussions of mythology, metallurgy, trade and animal husbandry. On any given period or language, there are more definite treatments, but for those new to the subject, or who feel that they might be a bit out of date, Proto is a good place to start.

The book is replete with details and anecdotes that even the best-read may have missed: a Tocharian version of the Pygmalion story, the remarkable “The Thinker” statuette from Varna, or, as evidenced by the DNA on two different Bronze Age burials of the speed of ancient migration:

the two individuals were related. They could have been second cousins, he calculated, or first cousins once removed… One of the cousins had been buried in the Don Valley, north-east of Rostov in Russia, the other more than three thousand kilometres (two thousand miles) to the east, in the Altai.

And in an almost throw-away line that may distress language activists, Spinney notes that “From its Neolithic peak human linguistic diversity entered a long, slow decline.” Language loss, it seems, is not a modern phenomenon.

Perhaps not surprising given the span of the book and the complexity of the narrative, experts might quibble over some of the details. Pace the remarkable results there, the archaeological concept of a “Copper Age” predates the excavations at Varna by quite some margin. Spinney says that the Rig Veda was “written” in the mid-second-millennium BCE; “composed” might be a better word. And while Near Eastern Mitanni contains clear connections to Vedic Sanskrit, it seems a bit of a stretch to say that “by 1500 BCE, Sanskrit had been carved into stone in Mitanni lands.”

But this is a fast-changing field—almost every detail is subject to revision—readers would be well-advised, and no book can expect to remain entirely correct for long. The story of Indo-European is fascinating not least because it has been studied longer and in far greater depth than other language families: but these have their stories as well.

Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books.