Proto by Laura Spinney

In Proto, Laura Spinney offers a sweeping, multidisciplinary account of the origins and spread of the Indo-European language family - a linguistic whakapapa that now underpins the mother tongues of nearly half the world’s population. Combining insights from linguistics, archaeology, and genetics, Spinney delivers an engaging narrative that is as much a cultural history as it is a scientific detective story.

At the heart of Proto is the enigmatic Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, spoken around 6,000 years ago near the Black Sea. From this cradle, the language spread west to Ireland and east to India and even western China, fragmenting along the way into the many tongues we recognise today: English, Hindi, Spanish, Greek, Farsi, and hundreds more. Spinney’s mission is both ambitious and timely - to trace how a language once spoken by a small, possibly semi-nomadic population gave rise to the vast and diverse linguistic canopy we inhabit today.

What distinguishes Proto is Spinney’s deft handling of complexity. Though not a linguist herself, she consults a range of experts to elucidate the puzzle of PIE. The book is rich with fascinating reconstructions: how PIE words like dhugh2ter (daughter), kerd (heart), and ghostis (guest/host) echo through modern vocabularies. Spinney is particularly adept at making the abstract tangible - for instance, by imagining the awe surrounding ancient coppersmiths and the linguistic innovations required to name their tools and processes.

Equally compelling is her discussion of the Yamnaya, nomadic peoples whose migrations around 3000 BCE, as revealed through genetic and archaeological evidence, likely played a pivotal role in disseminating PIE. Spinney explores how this group, perhaps through a blend of conquest, trade, and cultural assimilation, spread language as they spread their DNA. Her discussion of recent findings, including those emerging from Mykhailivka in Ukraine, underscores the deep entanglement of movement, conflict, and linguistic change. Themes that are strikingly relevant to our own era of mass migration and shifting identities.

Nevertheless, Proto occasionally wavers in clarity. The nature of the evidence - ranging from reconstructed proto-words to debated genetic linkages - is inherently tentative, and Spinney occasionally blurs the lines between consensus and hypothesis. Yet, this is arguably a feature rather than a flaw in the creation of the overall journey: Spinney is transparent about the provisional nature of many conclusions, and the book is more about the process of discovery than the final word.

What elevates Proto beyond an academic synthesis is Spinney’s lyricism and humanity. She reminds us that languages are living things, shaped by war, climate, trade, and belief. Her final chapters, reflecting on the global dominance of English and the precarious future of smaller tongues, offer a poignant reminder that linguistic evolution is ongoing - and that history, like language, is never static.

Proto is a rare achievement: accessible yet rigorous, speculative yet grounded. In illuminating our shared linguistic past, Spinney also speaks to our shared human future.

Reviewer: Chris Reed

William Collins