Proto

'Lively and fascinating. I loved it' David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in your Ear?
'A truly extraordinary detective story'Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything

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

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

Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source.

In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, 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. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned 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.