Diff for "Proto"

• http://wiki.keithl.com/Proto

Proto

How One Ancient Language Went Global

Laura Spinney . 2025 . Aloha Lib 417.7 SPINNEY Laura

• 282 pages text/illustration, 22 pages bibliography, 21 pages end notes, 16 pages index
  • the index is essential though incomplete; Spinney reintroduces nouns and placenames 200 pages after a first appearance
• This book is about the evolution of language and the migration of languages/cultures

Maps

• p4-5 The Peak of the Last Ice Age, 20 KY ago, Mercator 75W to "195E", 70S to 80N

  • ice sheets, lower sea level, land bridges Asia to North America, Europe to Britain/Island

• p33-34 Lingua Obscura, undated, 31E to 40E, 20N to 49N

• p60-61 Proto-Indo-European, undated, 9W to 88E, 8N to 64N, migration of Yamnaya to Britain, Spain, Denmark, India, Altai mountains though the Eurasian Steppe

• p90-91 Anatolian, undated, 4E to 41E, 32N to 42N

• p118-119 Tocharian, undated, 66E to 97E, ? ?

• p142-143 Celtic, Germanic, and Italic, 500BC

• p180-181 Indo-Iranian

• p210-211 Baltic and Slavic

• p234-235 Albanian, Armenian, Greek

• p256-257 The Indo-European Speaking-World Today almost everywhere besides Africa, Arabia, Mongolia, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia

• p07 5kya, Proto-Indo-European "exploded out of Black Sea cradle" eastward westward, Ireland to India
• p09 300kya, Homo sapiens arose in Africa, vocal tracts, cognition
• p09 60kya, Homo sapiens walked out of Africa with tools and speech
• p10 14kya, glaciers recede
• p10 human population 10M, 10k spoken languages, ~1k each

• p10 vertical bilingualism people higher up with their own language also learn the language lower down, perhaps for marketing (reason not mentioned by Spinney)

• p11 Official languages grew, 1M speakers 5kya
• p12 writing emerged 6000 YA, confusing 30 minutes to midnight clock analogy

• p13 Dante Divine Comedy Tuscan dialect became standard literary language of western Europe for 200 years

• p18 Enlightenment scholars searched for non-biblical birthplace of Indo-European

• p19 Max Weinrich 1894-1969 A language is a dialect with an army and a navy

• p20 dead languages studied with linguistics, archaeology and genetics

• p22 Jacob GrimmGrimm's Law word sound in one language predicably changes to a different sound in another language

• p28 cheap/fast DNA sequencing major expansion of unwritten history

• p29 anthropologist James C. Scott called infectious disease the 'loudest silence' in the archaeological record

• p29 Scythian is pronounced SI-thee-uhn

• p30 Woman wearing a niqab told to speak English in the UK ... they were in Wales, and she was speaking Welsh to her son

• p37 Wels catfish in the Dnieper up to 2.5 meters and 300 kg ... same German root (wal) as whale

• p39 4500 BCE, descendants of Anatolian farmers spread west to Ireland and east to Ukraine

• p40 Kuma-Manych Depression NW of Caspian

• p41 Varna Lake east of Blask Sea

• p42 Copper near Varna, the Chalcolithic Age or Copper Age following Neolithic and preceding bronze age

• p43 Hamangia

• p44 Thinker of Hamangia

• p45 4600 BC azurite and malachite kilned with charcoal to 800C, bled out copper beads

• p46 Varna copper in graves at Khvalynsk 2000 km to the northeast

• p47 Fisherfolk at Sinop say the Black Sea has only 3 safe harbors: July, August, and Sinop

• p48 steppe cemeteries shrank, dead buried singly, some under small Kurgan mounds

• p51 Pontic seaboard

• p52 Tell Karanovo grew 12 meters high, from 7th to 2nd millenia BC

• p59 Yamnaya herders

• p65 Early 1990s collapse of Russia Kalmyks revert from motorbikes to horseback

• p66 transhumance migration of livestock between winter and summer pastures

• p66 perekati-pole (tumbleweed) nomads
• p69 Yamnaya means pit grave in Russian
• p69 fewer than 100 people spoke the dialect that evolved into all extant Indo-European languages
• p71 lactose-intolerant Yamnaya consumed fermented milk

• p72 Janet Jones: horse and rider up to 70 km/hr

  • 2020 "Horse Brain, Human Brain" book

• p72 Equus caballus horse, originating west of the Urals

• p73 tebenevka: winter grazing by horses break up deeper snow so cows can graze

• p74 Yamnaya horses may have resembled Przewalski's wild horse - short legged and stocky

• p75 Greek and Latin areinflected languages, nouns modified to reflect role in sentence.

  • English is analytic language, role conveyed with word order and adjectives

• p81 Grimm's Law

• p81 *pek'u root of pecuniary, fee, and feudal

• p82 *ghostis guest friendship,

• p83 Indo-European lords and guests sipped mead or smoked cannabis

• p84 myth of Trito legitimized cattle raiding

  • steal cattle because "only we know how to sacrifice them properly"

• p85 age set teen age sons did most of the cattle raiding

• p100 Languages split and evolve in 500 to 1000 years

• p117 Hittite language replaced by Luwian language between 2000BC and 1000BC

• p125 Chinese banned export of silkworms and mulberry trees, king of Khotan married Chinese princess, who smuggled them out so she would be kept in silk

• p127 Centum and satem languages Latin uses centum for "hundred", Avestan uses satem

• p134 Afghans and Europeans shared ancestors, pre-Europeans moved west, contrary to century of stupid stereotyping

• p146 boustrophedon "ox turning" script written alternately from left to right or right to left. ( Reverse boustrophedon writes reverse line upside down ).

• p146 Irish 4th century alphabet Ogam matches letters to sounds exceptionally well.

• p147 Poetic Edda Norse mythology

• p149 Iron Gates gorge of the Danube

• p150 Corded Ware culture named after pottery "decorations", 3000 BC to 2350 BC, region approximately west of France, north to Norway, east to Russian Samara region

  • I'd bet those "decorations" kept pots from slipping out of wet hands

• p151 Bell Beaker Culture (from German Glockenbecher )

  • probably also kept pots from slipping, perhaps easier to clean and less likely to stress and fracture

• p153 overbite more common, helps make "f" and "v" sounds

• p154 some linguists say place and river names indicate where ancient languages were spoken

• p156 Vercingetorix Gallic king led failed revolt against Rome in 52 BC

• p156 loan words from neolithic natives: lark, blackbird(???), turnip
• p156 sylvestrian beekeeping in hollowed tree or log

• p157 Erzegebirge ore mountains where tin and copper occur together

• p158 Venetic language ~20,000 km2 region north of Adriatic

  • Italo-Celtic

• p161 Europe already densely populated when Indo-Europeans arrived, Spinney speculates they brought plague, but were more immune to it

  • mangled explanation; Philipp W. Stockhammer indexed for page 166 but isn't there

• p169 perhaps Indo-Europeans good at having children and keeping them alive
  • gradual genetic replacement by hardier Indo-Europeans ?
• p177 Old Norse and Old English close enough for basic communication

• p177 Vikings were "north men", Nor*menn corrupted to Norman

• p178 Irish slaver colonies on Scotland and Isle of Man -> Scots Gaelic and Manx

• p178 Cornish became Breton

• p179 English replaced Irish, now a minority language in Ireland

• p183 India ashvamedha horse sacrifice

• p184 archaeological origin in Russian steppe?
• p184 Indo-Iranian branch a billion people in south and southwest Asia

• p191 Ossetians modern descendants of Scythians

• p192 steppes overgrazing evidence evidenced by soil over burial mounds

• p192 longue duree pretentious wording

• p193 back-migrating herders (?) became metalworkers

• p193 Sinashta homes were workshps

• p194 domesticated Equus caballus horses from Central Asia

• p195 Proto-Indo-Iranian language of herders not cultivators

• p196 Sebastião Salgado "Once they have touched gold, nobody ever comes back"

• p196 Kargaly Mines ores made bronze, bronze roads dwarfed the later Silk Roads

• p197 Andronovo

• p200 haoma

• p201 Indo-European story beaten to fit a political mold: British colonialists, then Nazis, then Out of India

• p202 Indian scholars insist Vedas are collections of myths, not history

• p202 Harappan DNA poorly preserved, but not connected to the steppe

• p203 no bilingual Harappan equivalent to the Rosetta Stone, hence no decipering of Harappan script

• p205 retroflex consonant rolling tongue back in mouth

• p206 Gundestrup caldron

• p213 Baltic languages: Latvian and Lithuanian . Uralic languages: Estonian and Finnish

• p214 Anthony Jakob: Lithuanian modern but seems archaic because it ends nouns with s

• p217 ruki rule Proto-Indo-European "s" becomes "sh" after r, u, k, or i

• p221 Frankish king Kar(a)l corrupted to Charlemagne

• p221 open syllable ends with a vowel, closed syllable ends with a consonant
• p222 people don't even hear combinations that are forbidden in their native language, but the nearest pairing that's allowed

• p223 Thessaloniki

• p225 Old Prussian a Baltic language, not German dialect

• p227 ship-pound Baltic measure roughlt 300 to 400 pounds

• p227 East Slavic forerunner of modern Russian

• p228 Rus referred to Orthodox Eastern Slavs

• p228 ashvamedha horse sacrifice

• p239 Lithuania last pagan nation in Europe, joined Western Church (Vatican Catholic?) in 1387 (Martin Luther theses 1517)

• p230 Smok

• p230 Tolkien said Esperanto deader than ancient languages becuase there are no Esperanto legends

• p231 Hindi godhā (cow suckler)
• p237 Greece "same wave of calamity that claimed the Hittites" ... WHICH calamity?
• p238 "Greece borrowed an alphabet from the speakers of a Semitic language" ... WHICH language?

• p239 Linear BMichael Ventris

• p241 Albanian documented(?) in 1462

• p246 Herodotus father of history ... father of lies?

• p274 2008 French movie Welcome to the Sticks

• p275 Language is becoming a battleground in the identity wars, and preserving our linguistic 'purity' a justification used by those who want to raise walls. Unfortunately for them, the most successful language the world ever knew was a hybrid trafficked by migrants. It changed as it went, and when it stopped changing.

• The past is a lighthouse, not a port. (Russian proverb)

• p308 Chapter 1 note 9: Polari language offshoot of Lingua Franca secret language of gay community when homosexuality was illegal