0:02

Nordstrom brings you the season's

0:04

most wanted brands, Skims, Mango,

0:06

Free People, and Princess Polly,

0:08

all under $100. From

0:10

trending sneakers to beauty must -haves,

0:12

we've curated the styles you'll wear

0:14

on repeat this spring. Free shipping,

0:17

free returns, and in -store pickup make

0:19

it easier than ever. Shop now

0:21

in stores and at Nordstrom .com. This

0:27

episode is brought to you by

0:29

Peloton. Everyone has a reason

0:31

to change. Growing old, heartbreak, a

0:33

fresh start. Whatever it

0:35

may be, Peloton is here to get

0:37

you through life's biggest moments, with

0:39

workouts the challenge and motivation that keeps

0:41

you coming back. Peloton's tread and

0:43

all -access membership helps you set your

0:45

targets, track your progress, and get stronger,

0:47

making your fitness goals a reality. Find

0:50

your push. Find your

0:52

power. Peloton. Visit OnePeloton

0:54

.com Spring

0:57

into deals with fresh savings at Lowe's.

1:00

Right now, get four stay green

1:02

or premium two cubic foot mulch bags

1:04

for just $10. Plus, get

1:06

up to 35 % off select

1:08

major appliances and save $50

1:10

on every $500 you spend on

1:12

select LG appliances. Shop in -store

1:14

or online today. Lowe's,

1:17

we help, you save. Valid through 4

1:19

.30, selection varies by location. While supplies

1:21

last, see AssociatedLowe's .com for more details

1:23

or qualifying items. Excludes Alaska and

1:25

Hawaii. Welcome to

1:27

the new Books Network. Hello

1:31

and welcome to another episode on the

1:33

new Books Network. I'm one of

1:35

your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm

1:37

very pleased today to be speaking

1:39

with Laura Spinney about her book titled

1:41

Proto, How One Ancient Language Went

1:44

Global, published by HarperCollins in 2025. This

1:47

book takes us on, well,

1:49

not even just one journey, loads

1:51

of different journeys that all

1:53

go back through different places, different

1:55

times, different languages to a

1:57

single. ancient source

1:59

that we know some really interesting

2:02

things about and we don't know some

2:04

interesting things about. And the state

2:06

of those investigations across a number of

2:08

different disciplines is evolving in really,

2:10

really interesting ways. So I'm absolutely thrilled,

2:12

Laura, to welcome you onto the

2:14

podcast to tell us about this fascinating

2:16

evolution of languages and the history

2:18

that you've uncovered by bringing all of

2:21

the sorts of cool information together

2:23

in this book. Thank you so much

2:25

for being here. Thank you very much

2:27

for inviting me. I'm delighted to be here.

2:29

Could you please start us off by introducing

2:31

yourself a little bit and tell us why

2:33

you decided to write this book? Of

2:36

course. So I'm a science

2:38

journalist and a writer. I

2:40

am of British origin as you can hear,

2:42

but I live in France and I have both

2:44

nationalities. And I

2:46

have written novels. I've written

2:49

non -fiction books. I wrote a

2:51

book that came out in 2017

2:53

about the 1918 so -called Spanish

2:55

flu. So just before COVID

2:57

that came out. And then

2:59

I've written this book. And as my

3:01

cousin likes to say, this is Laura,

3:03

she writes about things that spread around

3:05

the world. I've

3:08

always been interested in

3:10

language from a scientific

3:12

journalistic. point of view,

3:14

but I suppose more

3:16

from the kind of

3:18

psychological, neuroscientific angle. And

3:21

I got interested in this history

3:23

of language, I suppose for the

3:25

same reason that millions of others

3:27

have been interested in in these

3:30

particular languages for hundreds of years,

3:32

which is these curious similarities across

3:34

languages spoken so far apart, which

3:39

cannot be coincidental. I

3:41

mean the fact that the word

3:43

for daughter in ancient greek is too

3:45

good that in our meaning it's

3:47

duster, in persian it's dochter and in

3:49

old english it's dochter. The

3:51

fact that they are so similar

3:53

and those languages are so distant

3:55

in terms of geography and in

3:57

terms of history in fact is

4:00

puzzling. It can't be a coincidence.

4:02

And so that's what people set out

4:04

several hundred years ago to explain.

4:07

And now they have many more tools

4:09

to do that. In fact, in

4:11

the last 10 years, that story has

4:13

been, I would say, revolutionized by

4:15

the arrival on the scene of a

4:17

new science. And that's paleogenetics, the

4:19

ability to study ancient DNA and so

4:21

to trace ancient people through space

4:23

and time. And

4:25

so it seemed to me that

4:27

it was a good time to retell

4:30

that story, because there have been

4:32

many retellings in the past, in light

4:34

of these new tools. And

4:36

I suppose the immediate impetus was

4:38

the fact that people in the

4:41

field, people interested in studying Indo

4:43

-European languages said to me on

4:45

more than one occasion that there

4:47

was no one at the moment

4:49

who had an overview of the

4:51

field, just because the science in

4:53

the various areas that contribute to

4:55

the story was moving so fast.

4:58

And so I thought, well, I

5:00

am not an expert. I'm not

5:02

a specialist. I don't study these

5:04

languages as an academic. But perhaps

5:06

I can lend my journalistic skills

5:08

in terms of speaking to the

5:10

people in the three main sciences

5:12

that are contributing. That's archaeology, linguistics,

5:14

and genetics, and give

5:17

that overview, even if

5:19

it's very, you know, one

5:21

off, even if the story continues to

5:23

evolve and will be different in another

5:25

10 or 20 years' time. I thought

5:28

that that would be a fascinating and

5:30

useful exercise. Definitely

5:32

very cool to put all these different things

5:34

together. But as you've already mentioned in

5:36

terms of disciplines that are part of this

5:38

conversation, there are some really

5:40

big methodological challenges and trying to

5:42

figure out why, as you said,

5:44

these languages today still have so

5:46

many things in common as it

5:48

cannot be a coincidence. But

5:50

how? Does that work? How does studying

5:52

a language from so long ago,

5:54

way before we've got written records, how

5:56

does that work? Yes,

5:59

so you're absolutely right. It's

6:01

a real brain scratcher, head scratcher.

6:03

She says scratching her head. So

6:07

the common ancestor of the

6:09

Indo -European languages was spoken,

6:11

most people would agree, somewhere

6:14

between 5 ,000 and 10. 5

6:16

,000 years ago. And the

6:18

reason I mentioned that is

6:20

because writing was only invented

6:22

5 ,000 years ago in what

6:24

is now Iraq, Mesopotamia. So

6:27

yes, that ancestor was spoken

6:29

long before history began, the

6:31

beginning of the Persian records,

6:33

and it was spoken by

6:36

pre -literate people. So how

6:38

on earth do we study

6:40

it? Well, the first thing

6:42

to say is that the

6:44

living Indo -European languages are a

6:47

treasure trove of information because

6:49

languages never stand still, they're

6:51

always evolving. They're living

6:53

in the European languages, which by

6:55

the way are spoken by nearly half

6:57

of humanity as a first language

6:59

and which count somewhere between 400 and

7:02

500 including dialects today. They

7:05

have evolved from that common

7:07

ancestor and there are continuous

7:09

threads which link them to

7:11

that ancestor. They are in

7:13

a way a sort

7:15

of living archive of the

7:18

way that ancient ancestors traveled,

7:20

evolved, fragmented and split over

7:22

time into its daughters and

7:24

then granddaughters and so on

7:26

to give the pattern of

7:29

Indo -European languages that we

7:31

see today. So that means

7:33

that historical linguists can study

7:35

the living languages and also

7:37

the historical ones, Indo -European languages

7:40

like ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit,

7:43

Hittite, which are no longer spoken,

7:45

but were spoken and were

7:47

spoken after the invention of

7:50

writing, so we have historical records

7:52

for them. So you can

7:54

essentially compare the living Indian

7:56

European languages, the historical ones, and

7:58

you can see what they

8:00

have in common, what makes

8:02

them different, and you

8:04

can begin to tease out what

8:06

their ancient ancestor sounded like,

8:09

what its vocabulary consisted of, and

8:11

what its grammar looked like.

8:13

And when you have that as

8:15

skedetal as it is, because, for

8:17

example, the reconstructed lexicon

8:19

or vocabulary of Proto -Indo -European, which is

8:22

the name we give the common

8:24

ancestor, consists of roughly

8:26

1600 words or stems of words.

8:28

So that's a tiny fragment

8:30

of what the speakers of that

8:32

language would actually have used.

8:34

But we can then look at

8:36

that lexicon, the core

8:38

vocabulary of the language, if you

8:40

like, that was inherited by its descendants.

8:42

And we can begin to get an

8:45

idea of what mattered to those people.

8:47

What were the things they talked about

8:49

most? What were the words that

8:51

most reliably came down to their

8:53

descendants because they were so important to

8:55

them, or rather the concepts that they

8:57

encoded were so important to them? And

9:00

from that, you can start to tease

9:02

out what kind of people they were,

9:04

what kind of environment they lived in,

9:06

what was their mode of life, what

9:08

was their... way of producing food, for

9:10

example. How mobile were they? And

9:12

then you can collaborate with archaeologists to

9:14

say, well, in the sort

9:16

of time frame that we think this

9:18

language was spoken in order to give

9:21

rise to these later languages, who

9:23

was alive then? Who was living

9:25

this way? Where were they? And

9:27

where were they moving to? That's

9:29

where the genetics comes in. So

9:32

the basic idea is

9:34

that triangulating between these

9:36

three sciences, linguistics, archaeology

9:38

and genetics, with the

9:40

contribution of other sciences

9:42

in smaller ways, you

9:45

can begin to build a

9:47

admittedly sketchy picture of who

9:49

the speakers were of Proto

9:51

-Indo -European, what happened

9:53

to those people over time

9:55

or to their descendants

9:57

and what happened to their

9:59

languages as they moved

10:01

and changed and evolved. Very

10:04

interesting detective work, really, it

10:06

sounds like. This is totally a

10:08

detective story. And yet,

10:10

despite the trickiness of putting all these

10:12

pieces together, we can actually figure

10:14

some things out, which I mean, to

10:17

me is kind of the most

10:19

miraculous aspect of this. So can you

10:21

take us to the kind of

10:23

social context in which Proto was born?

10:25

When are we talking? Where are

10:27

we talking? What's going on? I

10:30

mean, you frame that question really

10:32

well because what I try to convey

10:34

in my book is that of course

10:36

there's enormous amounts of uncertainty in this

10:38

story and in parts of it more

10:40

than others. But if you

10:42

were to compare the state

10:45

of our understanding now to

10:47

say 30 years ago, it's

10:49

moved on immeasurably. There's a

10:51

lot more certainty. So

10:54

for example, 30 years

10:56

ago, the two leading theories

10:58

of where the proto -Indo

11:00

-European languages were spoken and

11:02

by whom were still

11:04

very much on the table

11:06

and had each had

11:08

their kind of camps, their

11:10

supporters. One was

11:12

that the languages came out of

11:14

the steppe north of the

11:16

Black and Caspian seas, the Eurasian

11:19

steppe now, an area

11:21

shared between modern Ukraine and

11:23

Russia about 5 ,000 years ago

11:25

and they were spread by

11:27

nomadic herders who moved with

11:29

their animals over surprisingly large

11:31

distances and took their languages

11:33

with them. The other theory

11:35

was that the original Indo

11:37

-European language, the common ancestor,

11:40

was several thousand years older

11:42

and that it came out

11:44

of Anatolia out of the

11:46

peninsula that we call Turkey

11:48

today and moved east and

11:50

west with the very first

11:52

farmers after the so -called Neolithic

11:54

Revolution. And

11:56

today, that second

11:58

theory, the Anatolian hypothesis,

12:01

has essentially fallen by the

12:03

wayside. The consensus is

12:05

that at least the ancestor

12:07

of all modern Indo -European languages

12:09

came out of the steppe 5

12:11

,000 years ago with those Bronze

12:13

Age herders. Now, there is

12:15

an earlier stage, which we can

12:17

discuss later if you're interested,

12:20

what gave rise to that language.

12:22

And that's more complicated and much

12:24

more controversial. But the mother of

12:27

all living in the European languages,

12:29

most people would now agree, came

12:31

out of the step 5 ,000 years

12:33

ago and moved Eastern to Asia,

12:35

Western to Europe, and gave rise

12:37

to the Indo -European languages, which

12:39

are now spoken there today, and

12:41

also much further afield today. And

12:44

one of the

12:47

reasons that that

12:49

debate was so

12:52

significantly swung in the direction of

12:54

the steppe hypothesis was ancient

12:56

DNA. The fact that about 10

12:58

years ago geneticists were able

13:00

to detect a massive turnover in

13:02

the European gene pool and

13:05

in gene pools in parts of

13:07

Asia, which in a way

13:09

confirmed that there was a massive

13:11

migration around that time, giving

13:13

credence to the idea that the

13:15

languages might also have arrived

13:17

with those people. Very

13:20

interesting to see how these different types

13:22

of information are being combined to help

13:24

us come up with some of these

13:26

answers. But of course,

13:28

that also involves detective work on your

13:30

part to put all of these pieces

13:32

together from the different areas of specialisms. So

13:35

I wonder if you can tell us a bit

13:37

about how you conducted this research, like where did

13:39

you go? Who did you talk to? How did

13:41

you put these pieces together? Yeah,

13:43

and just to preface my answer, it's

13:45

not easy. I'm not blowing my own

13:47

trumpet, but it's not easy for a

13:49

very simple reason, which is that archaeologists,

13:52

geneticists, and languages, ironically, don't

13:55

speak the same language. And to

13:57

give an example of what I

13:59

mean by that, let's take the central

14:01

to this story concept of identity,

14:03

because language is such an important part

14:05

of who we understand ourselves to

14:07

be. If you ask...

14:11

a geneticist about identity. They'll

14:13

talk to you about, you

14:15

know, genetic turnovers. I

14:18

just mentioned that, the example of

14:20

5 ,000 years ago in Europe.

14:22

They'll talk about, you know, dilutions

14:24

and concentrations of the gene pool.

14:26

But genes sort of flow on, and

14:29

so they see a much

14:31

greater continuity in terms of

14:33

ethnic or genetic identity across

14:35

time. Whereas archaeologists think in

14:38

terms of cultures. I

14:41

suppose a simple definition would

14:43

be a kind of assemblage of

14:45

physical objects that they pull

14:47

out of the ground and which

14:49

tend to recur across, across

14:51

space and across time until suddenly

14:53

they don't anymore. And so

14:55

the archaeologist would say that that

14:57

culture vanishes from the archaeological

14:59

record. So if culture, if the

15:01

way that we make food,

15:03

bury our dead, the tools we

15:05

use and the art we

15:08

make, If all of those things,

15:10

that package is another way

15:12

of defining our identity, then

15:14

cultures and identity sort of

15:16

flip in and out of the

15:18

archaeological record. They vanish and

15:20

new ones come along to replace

15:22

them. So that's a

15:24

different way of thinking about identity. And

15:26

languages, as I said

15:28

right at the beginning, they

15:31

have this sort of

15:33

familial aspect to them. They

15:35

do change by descent.

15:37

from common ancestors, but

15:39

they also borrowed from each other all the time. So,

15:43

you know, sugar, zero and artichoke are

15:45

three examples I give in the book

15:47

of... Arabic words that came into English

15:49

via the lingua franca, the language of

15:51

commerce that was once spoken around the

15:53

Mediterranean Sea. And languages are

15:55

constantly doing this, boring from each other, not

15:57

just words, but also sounds and grammatical

15:59

structures. So, you know, your

16:01

linguistic identity is also, it's not quite

16:03

like, it doesn't work like your genetic

16:05

one, you don't. just get your languages

16:08

from your family, from your parents. You

16:10

can get them from your milieu as well. And obviously

16:12

in the modern age, you can also get them from books

16:14

and apps. And by the way, you can also lose

16:16

languages. So though

16:18

culture, genetics, and language

16:20

all contribute to

16:23

what we consider our

16:25

identity, they do

16:27

so in very different ways. And so

16:29

it's a matter of weaving those

16:31

things together to tell a story about

16:33

who people were, and

16:35

the languages they spoke over time,

16:37

especially in the period before writing in

16:39

prehistory. So obviously my research

16:42

involves speaking to people from these

16:44

three fields. I went to many

16:46

conferences, many conferences of historical linguists.

16:49

I interviewed people working on

16:51

the Indo -European languages from the

16:53

three different points of view.

16:55

I read voraciously in journals,

16:58

sometimes wondering how the concepts

17:00

mapped onto each other from

17:02

linguists' archaeology genetics. teasing

17:04

that out with the academics who

17:06

themselves are sometimes struggling with these

17:08

correspondences or lack of them. And

17:11

I also travelled a great deal.

17:13

I went to pretty much all

17:15

the countries around the Black Sea,

17:18

in fact all of them, every

17:20

single one with the exception of

17:22

Ukraine, for obvious reasons, and

17:24

I travelled much further afield as well. I

17:27

went to see the archaeological

17:29

sites which play such a big...

17:31

part in this story. I

17:33

talked to linguists in those places.

17:36

I tried to understand the different

17:38

ways of studying the story in

17:40

different cultures, because the other thing

17:42

that complicates this story is that

17:44

language is so very political. The

17:48

witticism that's usually credited to

17:50

linguist Max Beinreith, that language is

17:52

a dialect with an army

17:54

and a navy, has a enormous

17:56

grain of truth in it

17:58

so you have to understand that

18:00

languages are inextricably entwined with

18:02

with politics because of that identity

18:05

aspect to them and that

18:07

even our definition of a language

18:09

is a little hazy where

18:11

we distinguish a dialect or a

18:13

variant from a from a

18:15

language and so that again complicates

18:17

the story but. all of

18:19

this to say that despite all

18:21

the grey areas, despite all

18:23

the uncertainty, you can pull out

18:25

some main threads of this

18:27

story which all would agree on

18:29

and which already I would

18:31

say give you more than enough

18:33

material to tell a very

18:35

fascinating story and I would say

18:37

a very important story because

18:40

it's one about migration and about

18:42

adaptation and about change and

18:44

about how languages never stand still

18:46

and it's incredibly pertinent to

18:48

our modern world where we are

18:50

as we always have been

18:52

on the move where our languages

18:54

are as they always have

18:56

been changing all the time. Dear

18:58

Old Work Platform, it's not

19:00

you. It's us. Actually, it is

19:02

you. Endless onboarding? Constant IT

19:04

bottlenecks? We've had enough. We need

19:06

a platform that just gets

19:08

us. And to be honest, we've

19:10

met someone new. They're

19:12

called Monday .com. and it was

19:15

love at first onboarding. They're beautiful

19:17

dashboards. They're customizable workflows that

19:19

is floating on a digital cloud

19:21

nine. So no hard feelings, but

19:23

we're moving on. Monday .com,

19:25

the first work platform you'll love to

19:27

use. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint

19:29

Mobile, the message for everyone paying big

19:31

wireless way too much. Please for

19:34

the love of everything good in this

19:36

world, stop. With Mint, you can

19:38

get premium wireless for just $15 a month.

19:40

Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments,

19:42

but that's weird. Okay, one

19:44

judgment. Anyway,

19:46

give it a try at mintmobile

19:49

.com slash switch. Yeah,

19:59

definitely very familiar that part of

20:01

how all this comes together. But

20:04

the trickiness of kind of the

20:06

different ways different disciplines think about

20:08

these things is really interesting. And

20:10

as you've highlighted, quite important to

20:12

kind of untangle and make sense

20:14

of. So I wonder if we

20:16

can talk about how all of

20:18

those different ideas kind of overlap

20:20

sometimes, helpfully, sometimes confusingly with a

20:22

particular example from the book, the

20:24

Yamnaya culture, for example. We

20:26

know a decent amount about them kind

20:28

of as a culture. How

20:30

certain can we be that they spoke a

20:32

particular language? I mean, did they speak Proto?

20:34

Is that even a question we can answer

20:36

in a yes -no fashion? So

20:39

we can't know with any certainty

20:41

because they were pre -literate. They

20:43

didn't write their language down. We

20:45

know they spoke because so many

20:47

sapiens has probably been speaking for

20:49

tens if not hundreds of thousands

20:51

of years. And

20:54

we know quite a

20:56

lot about how the

20:58

Yamnaya lived. For example,

21:00

we know that they

21:03

were mobile herders. They

21:05

were nomadic. They

21:07

lived on the steppe. They

21:09

were skilled metalworkers. They

21:11

were probably patchy local, or

21:14

some prefer the word patchy

21:16

focal, meaning that the men

21:18

stayed still basically and the women

21:20

moved into their households upon marriage.

21:23

uh wealth also passed down

21:25

the male line and uh

21:27

what else can i say

21:29

about them they specialized in

21:31

dairy they kept cows sheep

21:33

and goats um and from

21:35

reconstructing the proton to european

21:37

language from its living and

21:39

historical descendants we can say

21:42

that the speakers of that

21:44

language also knew dairy probably

21:46

knew wheel to transport the

21:48

wagon which was invented around

21:50

uh 3 ,500 BCE, so

21:52

just about the time

21:54

that the Yamnaya were emerging

21:56

on the steppe just

21:58

over 5 ,000 years ago. And

22:02

they had words for,

22:04

many words for a woman's

22:06

in -laws, that is the

22:08

relations of our husband, but

22:10

none for a man's, which

22:12

also points to a patriarchal

22:15

society. So you can

22:17

sort of, by mapping

22:19

the emphases, if

22:21

you like, in that lexicon,

22:23

in that vocabulary, the kind of

22:25

clues that it gives us

22:27

to who spoke it, who spoke

22:29

the language, onto the archaeology

22:32

that fits from about the right

22:34

time, about the right time,

22:36

part of the world. You can

22:38

start to say, well, for

22:40

example, at the time

22:42

that the wagon was first

22:44

being used, we have

22:46

the first evidence for wheel transport, that is, The

22:50

only people who were

22:52

moving with their herds

22:54

of cows, sheep and

22:56

horses lived on the

22:58

steppe west of the

23:00

Ural Mountains and they

23:02

buried their dead in

23:04

a certain way which

23:06

fits, if you like,

23:08

the archaeological profile of

23:10

the Yamnaya. that

23:13

is such to me an example of

23:15

the detective nature of putting all these pieces

23:18

together and kind of layering the bits

23:20

of evidence on top of each other to

23:22

figure out what kind of we can

23:24

find would determine from it. But this idea

23:26

of migration kind of keeps coming up

23:28

in that example, but also in a number

23:30

of the other kind of concepts we've

23:32

discussed so far. And I wonder if we

23:34

should maybe examine that a bit more

23:36

closely because of course we all know what

23:38

migration is, but often we have sort

23:40

of built in assumptions about like, oh, well,

23:43

migration, that means that it's a family

23:45

group all traveling across the step together and

23:47

they go from one place to somewhere

23:49

very, very far, you know, in the course

23:51

of a few years. We can also

23:53

talk about migrations as happening over centuries and

23:55

generations. Same word,

23:57

very different meanings. How

24:00

can we figure out what some of

24:02

these migrations look like in terms of

24:04

timelines for linguistic changes? Do we have

24:06

a way of assessing

24:08

what sorts of ranges we should

24:10

be understanding? I

24:13

think that you raise a hugely important

24:15

point, and that it's become really clear over

24:17

the recent decades. Starting

24:20

with archaeology, but genetics

24:22

has contributed to this

24:24

enormously more recently, that

24:27

there are many different kinds of

24:29

migrations, the migration that it can take

24:31

many different forms. So for example,

24:33

when the farmers first moved out of

24:35

Anatolia, in

24:37

search of new land after

24:39

about 8 ,000 years ago. That

24:43

was an expansion

24:45

driven by simply the

24:47

need for more

24:49

food to feed the

24:51

growing populations that

24:53

farming supported. So people

24:56

needed more lads to grow more

24:58

crops on. And there was a

25:00

kind of leapfrog expansion where a

25:02

kind of set of pioneers would

25:04

move a few hundred kilometers ahead.

25:07

settle there and then those who came

25:09

behind was sort of fill in the

25:11

gaps. And that's how the

25:13

farmers moved it. It was slow and

25:15

it was a kind of heavy, a very

25:17

dense migration. But with no

25:19

kind of real directionality to it, people

25:21

were just moving outwards as they needed

25:24

more land. Then coming back

25:26

to the young Naya who are at

25:28

the center of my story, they

25:30

seem to have at

25:32

least one subset of them

25:35

seem to have undertaken

25:37

quite near the beginning of

25:39

their existence a quite

25:41

different migration. So just a

25:43

few years ago geneticists

25:45

identified two relatives who could

25:47

have been as close

25:49

as first cousins, although they

25:51

could also have been

25:53

relatives who were separated by

25:55

a couple of generations

25:57

vertically, so grandparents

25:59

and grandchildren so to

26:01

speak. One buried

26:03

in near Rostov -on -Don,

26:05

the Don Valley, just

26:08

there where Ukraine and Russia are

26:10

fighting a war at the moment,

26:12

and another several thousand kilometers

26:14

to the east in

26:16

the Altai mountains of Central

26:18

Asia. And

26:20

that speaks to a breathtakingly

26:23

fast migration for the

26:25

period of prehistory that we're

26:27

talking about. when

26:30

the only transport available to

26:32

people were their feet, possibly

26:35

horses, and the

26:37

wagon drawn by oxen. So

26:39

that seems like one

26:41

set of people might

26:43

have made the whole

26:46

journey, or one

26:48

set of people, a

26:50

couple of generations of people might

26:52

have made the whole journey,

26:54

which speaks to something far more

26:56

conscious, far more deliberate. something

26:59

like a split in the

27:01

original population, perhaps an ideological split,

27:03

or perhaps going in search

27:05

of new resources that they had

27:07

heard about from people they

27:10

were related to. We know that

27:12

the Altai Mountains, for example,

27:14

are incredibly rich in various metals

27:16

and that the Amniya were

27:18

skilled metalworkers. So there are all

27:21

sorts of theories that have

27:23

been put forward, but it seems

27:25

very clear now that the

27:27

migration that the Yamnaya, the early

27:29

Yamnaya made to the east

27:31

towards China was of a very

27:34

different nature from the first

27:36

farmers moving out of Anatolia. And

27:38

that the migration of the

27:40

Yamnaya westwards into Europe was different

27:42

again. Neither

27:45

one or the other, perhaps

27:47

spearheaded by roving male

27:50

warbands, but families come in

27:52

close behind. Again, looking

27:54

for new resources, looking

27:56

for new land. perhaps looking

27:58

for women and perhaps

28:00

just in a kind of

28:02

raiding mindset wanting to

28:05

add to their wealth in

28:07

a more expansionist way.

28:09

So there's many different reasons

28:11

that people move as

28:13

there are today and archaeologists

28:15

and genesis are beginning

28:17

to tease these out in

28:20

their different records. Yeah

28:22

and of course with all those different

28:24

reasons kind of any of them, or at

28:26

least most of them, end up with

28:28

encountering people who maybe speak a different language

28:30

or people who have different cultures, right?

28:32

They're not just kind of moving off into

28:34

the wilderness and there's no other humans. So

28:37

what do those encounters kind of

28:39

look like? I mean, obviously there has

28:41

to be encounters for these Indo -European

28:43

languages to expand. You

28:45

talk in the book about the role of alcohol

28:47

in some of these exchanges. I mean, what is,

28:50

can you tell us more about this side of

28:52

things? Absolutely. So as I said

28:54

earlier, languages can change

28:56

by descent, but also by borrowing,

28:58

by horizontal transfer. And that

29:00

happens really when populations speaking

29:02

different languages encounter each other. I

29:04

mean, if you think about

29:07

a modern example of migration, somebody

29:09

comes from, say, the Horn

29:11

of Africa or from Afghanistan,

29:13

they come to Western Europe. they

29:16

don't necessarily give up their

29:18

mother tongue but they will assimilate

29:20

with the new one and

29:22

becoming bilingual in the new place

29:24

they will act themselves as

29:26

conduits for words from between the

29:28

two languages and that's very

29:30

often how it happens how language

29:32

shift happens how loan words

29:34

travel from one language into another

29:36

and that's always happened that

29:38

way. But you can imagine I

29:40

think quite easily that the

29:42

conditions under which two groups of

29:44

people encounter each other shapes

29:46

the language that will eventually emerge

29:48

and that the language that

29:50

their grandchildren will be speaking assuming

29:52

that they stay in the

29:54

same place and perhaps eventually intermarry,

29:56

start trading with each other

29:58

and so on. I mean if

30:00

those people are coming in

30:02

are far more numerous than the

30:04

hosts, then their language might

30:06

impose itself more easily. If they

30:08

come in violence, that will

30:10

have a different effect than if

30:12

they come in peace. If

30:15

a pandemic clears out the

30:17

lands they're heading for of the

30:19

original population, the original inhabitants

30:21

before they arrive, or even with

30:23

them because they're the ones

30:26

bringing in the germs, you'll

30:28

get a different pattern again. These

30:31

factors and many others can

30:33

shape what language emerges in

30:35

the new place and how

30:37

the two languages coming into

30:39

contact with each other will

30:41

influence each other in their

30:43

different compartments, in the registers

30:46

that are spoken, whether

30:48

it's the common people who

30:50

are absorbing the loan words

30:52

or the elite. So

30:54

languages are spoken by many different people

30:56

within a population from many different... in many

30:58

different ways and different compartments of that

31:00

language could be influenced by the encounter in

31:02

different ways. But in prehistory,

31:05

I guess the underlying rule

31:07

is that in prehistory at

31:09

least, before writing,

31:11

before standards, linguistic standards,

31:13

before nation states which

31:15

insisted on national languages. languages

31:18

changed much faster and one

31:20

much more fluid and migration was

31:22

very much the main driving

31:24

force of that change and there

31:26

was less holding back that

31:28

change. Today we're living in a

31:30

very strange period in history

31:32

really because writing, schooling, widespread

31:34

literacy impose standards on languages and

31:37

so slow down their change in

31:39

many ways but so you can

31:41

think of prehistory as a time

31:43

when when languages changed faster, when

31:45

speak of what relations were smaller

31:47

in general, and

31:49

when migration had a

31:51

disproportionately large impact

31:54

in linguistic change. Okay,

31:56

that's a very useful comparison to make sure

31:58

we don't just assume that the way things are

32:00

now has kind of always been the case. What

32:03

about then the ways in which these

32:05

different migrations can, I mean, you've mentioned

32:07

different reasons for them, but also different

32:09

kind of ways in which they're

32:12

happening. I mean, earlier with the Yam Naya,

32:14

you mentioned, okay, maybe it's resource expansion, maybe

32:16

it's more raiding, maybe it's more, you know,

32:18

there's a lot of different reasons. Some

32:20

of which are more peaceful or

32:22

more violent than others. Does

32:25

that impact the way in which

32:27

languages change? You know, thinking, obviously,

32:29

not as far back as the

32:31

Yam Naya, like the Vikings invading

32:33

England. don't necessarily make as big

32:35

a linguistic change as the Normans

32:38

invading England, even though it's like

32:40

roughly the same time and there's

32:42

violence in both cases. Like how

32:44

do we understand the interactions between

32:46

things like violence, migration and linguistic

32:48

change? Yeah, so like just to

32:50

give a simple example that might apply in

32:52

all those cases from the Yandaya forward. Imagine

32:56

that you came and you massacred

32:58

everybody who was there. Then

33:02

your language imposes itself fairly

33:04

easily. But if you come

33:06

in a sort of slower

33:08

flux, and if you

33:10

insinuate yourself within the host

33:12

population, and

33:14

you're more or less accepted,

33:16

if you are overwhelmingly male and

33:18

you take Indigenous women for

33:20

wives, by force

33:23

or willingly, you're

33:25

already setting up a situation where there's

33:27

going to be more crosstalk between the

33:30

languages, the ones that were there before

33:32

and your own. And in fact,

33:34

when the Yamnaya came to Europe, they

33:37

actually didn't penetrate too far into

33:39

Europe. It looks more like their

33:41

descendants did the penetrating. And

33:43

some of those were very violent, others

33:45

of them less so. But it looks

33:47

like they hooked up with local women

33:50

and that this was in a way

33:52

essential to their survival. It was essential

33:54

to their learning through production methods that

33:56

were adapted to that environment and much

33:58

more. forested environment than the treatise step

34:00

where they came from. They learnt new

34:02

flora and fauna, they learnt the words

34:04

for these things from their wives, and

34:07

they basically adopted a whole

34:09

new vocabulary and probably sounds and

34:12

grammatical constructions with it, and

34:14

those have passed on to their

34:16

children. So you can see

34:18

how these dynamics shift depending on

34:20

the conditions in which people

34:22

meet. Vikings

34:25

came to Britain in

34:28

the 8th century. They

34:30

spoke Old Norse, which

34:32

is another Germanic language,

34:35

like Anglo -Saxon, like Old English,

34:37

which came to Britain a few

34:39

centuries earlier with the invasion

34:41

of the Anglo -Saxons. And

34:44

probably one idea is that

34:46

those languages were not so

34:48

far apart that they couldn't

34:50

be the two

34:52

groups couldn't understand each other. So

34:55

the Vikings look to have

34:57

taken up the language in the

34:59

new place. They left

35:01

some sort of light traces in

35:03

it. They tweaked its grammar a

35:05

bit. They gave us some unforgettable

35:07

place names like Grimsby and Whitby

35:09

and Skegnes. But

35:12

in other ways, they changed

35:14

it hardly at all. And

35:16

Old Norse had gone from Britain within a

35:18

few centuries. You can think of... encountered

35:20

perhaps a bit like what happens

35:22

when Italian speakers go to Spain

35:24

or vice versa. They can quite

35:26

often get by just by speaking

35:28

slowly in their native tongue. They

35:30

don't have to take up the

35:33

new language to be understood because

35:35

Italian and Spanish are sufficiently similar

35:37

for most purposes, for some purposes

35:39

anyway. But you

35:41

mentioned earlier alcohol and that's

35:43

an interesting as well as a

35:45

fun point because Only

35:47

10 years ago, when the genesis

35:50

detected a massive turnover in the European

35:52

gene pool that indicated an immigration,

35:54

a vast immigration from the step, the

35:56

initial thinking was that that must

35:58

have been violent, that to get up

36:00

to 90 % replacement of the genes

36:02

in parts of Europe, which is

36:05

what they see, and a wholesale replacement

36:07

of the Y chromosome, the

36:09

male sex chromosome, that

36:11

there must have been violence, there must have been massacres, there must

36:13

have been rape. But

36:15

now the thinking has moved on quite

36:17

a lot in just 10 years. And

36:20

it's now looking far more

36:22

complex and nuanced. And although there

36:24

might have been violence in

36:26

places, although pandemics, epidemics might have

36:28

contributed to the imposition of

36:30

the new language, I think

36:32

it's fair to say that

36:34

the consensus is that it's the

36:37

social conventions of the... people

36:39

that helped them to impose their

36:41

language. They were numerically far

36:43

fewer than the Indigenous people at

36:45

the beginning, but they

36:47

were nomads from this step and

36:49

they had a whole suite of

36:51

institutions and social conventions which enabled

36:53

them, which they developed to enable

36:55

them to maintain links over time

36:57

and space. And

37:00

one of those, one very

37:02

important one of those, was

37:04

hospitality. Hospitality was incredibly important

37:06

to them. And you can

37:08

see that in their language

37:10

too, the reconstructed Portuguese -European

37:13

lexicon has a word hostis,

37:15

which is essentially the ancestor

37:17

of both ghost in English

37:19

and host in English. And

37:22

it reflects the fact that for

37:24

those people hospitality was not only very

37:26

important, but it was reciprocal. So

37:28

that when you received, when you

37:30

were taken in and fed and watered

37:32

and looked after by someone whose

37:35

land you were crossing with your herds,

37:37

you were expected to do the

37:39

same when the tables were turned. And

37:41

that's the way that those people

37:43

kept peace when they were so extremely

37:45

mobile when they had to move

37:47

with their herds to find grass through

37:50

the seasons. And so they avoided

37:52

conflict by these by

37:54

these means. And at

37:56

the heart of their hospitality

37:58

were storytelling. Storytelling was critically important.

38:00

Bards, the whole role of

38:02

bards in the Indo -European traditions

38:04

is central. And

38:07

alcohol. Now the Yan Naya,

38:09

it's not clear that they

38:11

drank, they probably preferred cannabis,

38:13

smoking cannabis. But beginning

38:15

with their descendants, the

38:18

Corded Ware people who

38:20

brought the Indo -European languages

38:22

to northern Europe, and

38:24

the Belbica people who

38:26

eventually emerged from the

38:28

meeting of the Cordidwa

38:31

and the more indigenous

38:33

European farmers, alcohol

38:35

became a tradition, one that was

38:37

handed down to the Celts, the

38:39

Germani, the Italic speakers, the

38:41

Bolts, the Slas and all those others

38:43

in Europe who still stay speaking

38:45

the European languages. And funny

38:47

enough, it came probably with The

38:50

two -handled tanker that is you

38:52

know, that is still the

38:54

loving cup as it's sometimes called

38:56

that's still handed around today

38:58

at After dinner at Ducksbridge colleges.

39:00

So there was this idea

39:02

that alcohol It was central to

39:04

feasting where stories were told

39:06

and it was through these mechanisms

39:09

that That the Indo -Europeans managed

39:11

to sort of mark themselves

39:13

out as prestigious as people you

39:15

wanted to be with as

39:17

people who had a tradition

39:19

that you found interesting and alluring and

39:21

wanted to be a part of. And

39:24

so you took up their languages and you

39:26

began to tell their stories at the same time

39:28

too. So yeah, alcohol is

39:30

central to it. And I think if

39:32

you speak to linguists today who are, for

39:34

example, trying to document undocumented languages, I

39:36

suspect that many of them would tell you

39:38

that language, that alcohol is a very

39:40

good sort of oiler of the wheels when

39:43

it comes to learning language. It kind

39:45

of removes your inhibitions a little bit. and

39:47

makes you free to make the

39:49

mistakes that you must do in order

39:52

to learn a new language. And

39:54

it just makes that

39:57

whole encounter with your language

39:59

teacher, with the native

40:01

speaker, much easier, flow much

40:03

more easily, and be much more

40:05

agreeable until, of course, you overdo

40:07

it. The missing

40:09

child is Lucia Blix, nine

40:11

years old. Please let her

40:13

come back home safely. Thursdays.

40:17

The kidnappers fund it. The take -killers pay.

40:19

If money is what it takes to get

40:21

her back, we're gonna pay it. The

40:24

secrets they hide. You can't talk about

40:26

this. You can't write about it. Are the

40:28

clues. The mother's hiding something. I know

40:30

it. To find her. Tell me where she

40:32

is. The Stolen

40:34

Girl. New episodes Thursdays. Stream

40:36

on Hulu. The

40:38

NBA 82 game grind is done.

40:40

And now the real fun

40:43

begins. The NBA playoffs are here.

40:45

And DraftKings Sportsbook has you

40:47

covered as an official sports betting

40:49

partner of the NBA. Make

40:51

it a playoff run to remember

40:53

with DraftKings. Download the DraftKings

40:55

Sportsbook app and use code field

40:57

goal. That's code field goal.

40:59

For new customers to get $200

41:01

in bonus bets when you

41:03

bet just five bucks. Only on

41:05

DraftKings. The crown is yours.

41:07

Gambling prize. problem call 1 -800 -GAMBLER.

41:10

In New York, call 877 -8

41:12

-HOPEN -Y or text HOPEN -Y 467

41:14

-369. In Connecticut, help is available

41:16

for problem gambling. Call 888 -789

41:18

-7777 or visit ccpg .org. Please

41:20

play responsibly. On behalf of Boothill

41:22

Casino and Resorting, Kansas, 21

41:24

and over. Age and eligibility varies

41:26

by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario.

41:28

New customers only. Bonus bets expire

41:30

168 hours after issuance. Four

41:32

additional terms and responsible gaming resources.

41:38

That's a very interesting link to see

41:40

more practice that still could be

41:42

applicable today. I wonder if we

41:44

can talk about something else you talk about

41:46

in the book that we haven't really mentioned

41:48

yet, which is, of course, the idea that

41:50

as much as this was all prompted by

41:52

your interest, as you said, other people's interests

41:54

as well, in the links we can still

41:56

see between languages that are still around today,

41:58

that kind of prompts the hang on a

42:00

second, how did that happen? Not

42:02

all of the languages that come

42:04

down from Proto still

42:07

exist, you discuss them in the book

42:09

kind of as ghosts. Can

42:11

we see the ghost? I mean, that

42:13

sounds almost like a silly question, but

42:15

can we even see the ones that

42:17

didn't survive, if that makes sense? Yeah,

42:20

so, I mean, there are two

42:22

kinds of ghosts, I suppose. There are

42:24

the dead Indo -European languages that we

42:26

know once existed because they were

42:28

written down. So that would be languages

42:30

like ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Hittite, so

42:32

on. But then there

42:34

are the ghosts which were never written

42:36

down but which we can detect sort

42:38

of indirectly and I suppose because of

42:40

that they're more deserving of the word

42:42

ghost where they've left a trace in

42:45

the living Indian languages probably because their

42:47

speakers encountered the speakers of the ones

42:49

that survived at some point and you

42:51

know made a legacy of their words

42:53

and sounds. And so we can detect

42:55

those words that come down to us

42:57

whose origins can't be explained any other

42:59

way. So I'll give you an example. There's

43:02

a clutch of words, and this is the

43:04

work, by the way, of the Dutch linguist,

43:06

Peter Schreiber, which I cite in the book.

43:09

There's a clutch of words that

43:11

we still use today in

43:13

Indo -European for hilariously animals with

43:15

big feet. So the

43:18

Dutch word pad, which means

43:20

toad, Irish pata, hare,

43:22

Welsh pathu. and I have

43:24

to apologise by pronunciation

43:26

to native speakers, but all

43:28

of those three of

43:31

those words, they are derived

43:33

from a Proto -Indo -European

43:35

pet, which meant foot, but

43:37

in the known Indo -European languages, for example,

43:39

in Greek, pet became podi,

43:42

in Latin it became pez, and

43:44

in English it became foot. None

43:47

of the known, none of

43:49

the living Indo -European languages

43:51

preserved that a of pad,

43:53

pata, pathu. So the Shriver's

43:55

thinking is that those words must

43:57

have come down from one of the

44:00

lost Indo -European languages, which took the

44:02

e of Proto -Indo -European ped and

44:04

transformed it to an a and then

44:06

died before they could be written

44:08

down. But their legacy is those three

44:10

words that we borrowed into the

44:12

living Indo -European languages. So that's an

44:14

example of how we detect tangentially,

44:17

indirectly, the

44:19

long -lost Indo -European languages, which

44:22

we have no other way of

44:24

detecting, but which have nevertheless shaped

44:26

the way we speak today. Very

44:28

cool to see ghosts in the record

44:30

and be able to kind of make sense

44:33

of those puzzles. And you

44:35

discuss in the book that there's

44:37

actually many puzzles that have been solved

44:39

or progressed around all of these

44:41

kind of ancient linguistic questions. Actually, really

44:43

recently, there's samples, there's studies

44:45

you talk about in the book from

44:47

like within the last year that have

44:49

made huge strides and some questions that

44:52

have been open for decades, if not

44:54

longer than that. Could you tell us

44:56

a little bit about some of these

44:58

recent puzzles that have been either solved

45:00

or at least significantly steps forward taken?

45:03

Yeah, so I think you gave

45:06

the example of Baltic and

45:08

Slavic, so... Baltic

45:10

and Slavic, the living Baltic language

45:12

is being Lithuanian and Latvian,

45:14

the Slavic being today a much

45:16

larger group stretching from Russian

45:18

in the east to Czech in

45:20

the west, there are actually

45:22

three subgroups recognised within Slavic. But

45:25

they've always been recognised

45:27

as being closely related.

45:29

I would say that

45:31

up until a few

45:33

decades ago, the thinking

45:35

was that though they were closely related, linguistically

45:38

as well as in space

45:40

they had always been distinct

45:42

that they'd moved out separately

45:44

if you like from that

45:46

proto -European homeland or cradle

45:48

as it's sometimes called and

45:50

sort of gone their own

45:52

way from there. The thinking

45:54

now is that they were

45:56

actually fused, they were one

45:58

language for quite a long

46:00

time until about 4 ,000 years

46:02

ago at least and The

46:06

reason for thinking that there

46:08

was once a Baltic -Slavic

46:10

language is, first of all,

46:13

place names. So

46:15

around the many of

46:17

the rivers of Eastern

46:19

Europe, the tributaries of

46:21

the Dnieper River, for example, which

46:24

flows across Ukraine, many of

46:26

those names are now

46:28

considered Baltic -Slavic in

46:30

origin. But also Baltic

46:32

languages and Slavic languages they

46:35

share a whole vocabulary

46:37

to do with rivers,

46:40

fascinatingly. So, for

46:42

example, an now

46:44

extinct Baltic language had

46:46

a word, esketres, which

46:48

meant sturgeon. It was the name

46:50

of the fish that in English

46:52

were called sturgeon. And

46:54

the Slavic word for the

46:57

same fish is osetr. So

46:59

those two words are related

47:01

to each other. One is

47:03

Baltic, one is Slavic, and

47:06

the thinking, therefore, is that

47:08

they are descended from a

47:10

Baltic -Slavic ancestor, which was

47:12

spoken by people who once

47:14

lived on the middle of

47:16

the Dnieper River and who,

47:18

though might originally have started

47:20

out as herders, very much

47:22

exploited that freshwater environment, fished,

47:24

used rafts. caught the kind

47:26

of catfish, sturgeon, all the

47:28

other fish native to those

47:30

rivers and lived off them,

47:32

supplemented their herders' diets with

47:34

them. And so that, you

47:36

know, original population of speakers left

47:38

their trace, if you like, in that

47:41

riverine vocabulary to be found in

47:43

the Baltic and Slavic languages of today.

47:45

That is a very cool example. Thank you

47:47

for telling us a bit about it.

47:49

But of course, there are still open questions

47:52

as well that have not yet been

47:54

figured out. What are one or two that

47:56

you find the most exciting that listeners

47:58

might want to kind of keep an eye

48:00

out for to see what comes next? I

48:02

mean, there are, as you have

48:05

pointed out, many, many unusual questions

48:07

in this story, which, you know,

48:09

is not surprising given that we're

48:11

talking about 10 ,000 years of

48:13

human history and a vast... of

48:15

the globe. I

48:17

suppose one of the most active

48:19

areas of research at the

48:21

moment, and perhaps also the most

48:23

controversial, is what happened before

48:25

the emergence of that proto -Indo -European

48:27

language, as I have been calling it.

48:30

In some sense, no language

48:32

comes out of nowhere. When

48:35

we talk about a common ancestor, it

48:37

also came from somewhere. And there's now

48:39

a great deal of discussion and research

48:41

going into the question of what was

48:43

the earlier phase? Was there an earlier

48:45

ancestor? And it

48:47

all rests around thinking about

48:49

the relationship between the Anatolian

48:51

languages, which have including Hittite,

48:54

spoken on the modern Turkish

48:56

peninsula, which were often thought

48:58

to be the eldest daughter

49:00

of Proto -Indo -European. And now

49:02

the consensus is shifting to

49:04

thinking of them. that branch,

49:06

that Anatolian branch, as a

49:08

sister of Proto -Indo -European, where

49:10

those two sisters sprung from

49:12

an earlier common ancestor, opinion

49:15

is moving that way based

49:17

on the latest research. So then

49:19

the question becomes, where was

49:21

that earlier ancestor spoken? And

49:23

I think it is highly

49:25

controversial, but I think the

49:27

research, the findings, and the

49:29

views amongst the archaeologist's genesis

49:32

linguists are homing in on

49:34

an earlier homeland for that

49:36

older ancestor somewhere to the

49:38

east of the Black Sea

49:40

in the sort of Caucasus

49:43

region, either the

49:45

southern steppe or the Armenian

49:47

highlands or somewhere in

49:49

between. But that is

49:51

very much an open question. The

49:53

other really interesting question to me

49:55

is that these people, the Yamnaya

49:57

who we now think with

50:00

no certainty, but with a high degree

50:02

of confidence, let's say, spoke Proto and

50:04

European. They were

50:06

revolutionaries in their way. They

50:08

invented a whole new way

50:10

of life. They appear

50:12

to have moved out of a

50:14

river valley initially, somewhere

50:17

around the lower Don, somewhere

50:19

with terrible irony in the

50:21

place that's being contested now

50:23

in the Ukraine -Russia war, and

50:26

to expand it from

50:28

there. made them

50:30

do that. What was the reason

50:32

that those few initial clams, speaking

50:34

a dialect to Proto and European,

50:36

moved out from their ancestral river

50:38

valley and invented this new very

50:40

nomadic lifestyle which enabled them to

50:42

unlock the energy resources of the

50:44

steppe and so spread, taking their

50:46

language with them? What was the

50:48

impetus for that move? Now

50:50

we may never know, but there

50:53

are archaeological sites that

50:55

could answer that question. The

50:57

trouble is that many

50:59

of them find themselves in

51:01

that war zone which

51:03

has now been mined and

51:05

so they're off limits. Whether

51:08

they'll ever be able to get back

51:10

to them is anybody's guess but the

51:12

information might be out there which I

51:14

find absolutely tantalising. Yeah,

51:16

no, who knows what we'll be able to

51:18

find out in future. But thank you for

51:20

helping us know what to pay attention to.

51:23

What might you be working on then now that this

51:25

book is obviously out in the world? Do you have

51:27

any next projects, whether or not they're books, whether or

51:29

not they're all this topic that you want to give

51:31

us a brief sneak preview of? I

51:33

mean, I'm still very much absorbed

51:36

in language questions. I find them

51:38

fascinating. I find

51:40

this cross talk between

51:42

you know, the paleogenetics

51:44

and the linguistics and

51:46

archaeology just so exciting

51:48

and fruitful and puzzling

51:50

in many ways. And

51:53

of course, Indo -European is

51:55

the language family that

51:57

has been the best studied

51:59

in recent times. So,

52:01

you know, there are many

52:03

equally fascinating, complex language

52:05

stories, you know, waiting to

52:07

be discovered. And the

52:09

one that really interests me

52:11

at the moment is

52:13

the languages of Papua New

52:15

Guinea of Melanesia because

52:17

those languages are barely documented

52:19

in that island of

52:21

New Guinea which is divided

52:23

between two nations Papua

52:25

New Guinea and Indonesia but

52:27

that island has I

52:29

think 850 languages and counting

52:31

the number keeps going

52:33

up because new languages keep

52:35

being discovered but that's it's

52:38

a sective because in fact those

52:40

languages many of them are also dying

52:42

so it's a race against time at

52:44

the moment to document them but just

52:46

to give you an idea of why

52:49

I find them so fascinating as one

52:51

linguist who's studying them Nick Evans

52:53

Australian told me you've got the diversity

52:55

of the languages spoken the length of

52:57

breadth of the Eurasian landmass in 1

52:59

% of that landmass and in 0 .1

53:01

% of the population. So it's just

53:03

extraordinary the evolutionary story of the languages

53:05

on that one island. And I think

53:08

it will give us insights into

53:10

the nature of language and the history

53:12

of language per se. And even

53:14

who knows into whether, you know,

53:16

Chomsky ultimately was right about there

53:18

being a universal pattern to human

53:20

language. Very

53:23

intriguing indeed. I'm

53:25

very curious to see how that

53:27

interest potentially develops. But of course,

53:29

in the meantime, listeners can read the

53:31

book we've been discussing titled Proto,

53:34

How One Ancient Language Went Global,

53:36

published by HarperCollins in 2025. Laura,

53:38

thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

53:40

It's been a great pleasure. Thank you, Miranda. Six

53:54

months from now, you could be running

53:56

a 5K, booking that dream trip, or

53:59

seeing thicker, fuller hair every time you

54:01

look in the mirror. Through you

54:03

can get dermatologists trusted, clinically

54:05

proven prescriptions with ingredients that

54:07

go beyond what over -the -counter

54:09

products offer. Whether you

54:11

prefer oral or topical treatments, HERS

54:13

has you covered. Getting started

54:15

is simple, just fill out an

54:17

intake form online and a licensed provider

54:19

will recommend a customized plan just

54:22

for you. The best part? Everything

54:24

is 100 % online. If prescribed,

54:26

your treatment ships right to

54:28

your door. No pharmacy trips, no

54:30

waiting rooms, and no insurance

54:32

headaches. Plus, treatments start at just

54:34

$35 a month. Start your

54:36

initial free online visit today at

54:38

forhers .com slash talk. That's F

54:40

-O -R -H -E -R -S dot com

54:42

slash talk. Tontunda products are not

54:45

FDA approved or for safety,

54:47

effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price

54:49

Mary's, based on product and

54:51

subscription plan. See website for full

54:53

details, restrictions, and important safety information.