Dr Saheb Sahu
The word “proto”comes from the Greek word protos, meaning “first” or “earliest”. In modern usage “proto” is prefix used to indicate something that is original, primitive, or an early form of something else.
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is hypothetical, reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European language family, which includes languages spoken by nearly half of the world’s population today. They include:
1- Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan):
. Ancient: Sanskrit and Prakrits
.Modern: Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Odia, Nepali, Sinhala, etc.
.Iranian
.Ancient: Avestan, Old Persian
.Modern: Persian (Farsi), Kurdish, Pasto, Balochi, Tajik
2- Hellenic
Greek
Ancient and Modern Greek
3- Italic
Latin- Modern descendants: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, etc.
4- Celtic
.Ancient: Gaulish, Old Irish
.Modern: Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Manx
5- Germanic
.Ancient: Gothic, Old Norse, Old English, Old High German
. Modern: English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese
6- Balto-Slavic
Baltic: Lithuanian, Latvian,
Slavic: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Macedonian
No written record of PIE exists. Scholars believe that PIE was likely spoken between 4500 BCE, and 2500 BCE on the Eurasian steppes, possibly near present-day Ukraine or Southern Russia.
While it is not clear precisely why PIE was able to establish such a wide domain, Ms.Spinney, the author of “Proto”suggests that commerce likely played a role. By 4500 BCE, commodities such as gold, copper and salt were moving among the vast track of network centered on the Black Sea. PIE may have spread thanks to its association with these valuable luxuries.
By 3500 BCE, however, cooler temperature, long periods of draughts and endemic warfare, led to large scale migration. PIE evolved and fragmented into 12 interrelated branches across Europe, Central Asia and India. The study of ancient DNA has confirmed this migration pattern.
Thinkers from Dante (1265-1321) to Leibniz (1646 -1716) had long noticed peculiar similarities among languages from far flung places. But it was not until 1786, when William Jones, a British judge stationed in India, proposed the link among Latin, Greek and Sanskrit that the idea of a common lingual ancestor was taken seriously. Since then, researchers have developed a hypothetical vocabulary for PIE that consists of 1,600 word stems, which form the basis of our most common words. For example, the English word “father”, the Latin “pater” and the Sanskrit “pitr”, all reflect a common PIE root “pater”.
Some other examples of PIE roots
.PIE- mehter (mother)
.English – mother
. Sanskrit-matr
. Greek – meter
PIE root: dekmt (ten)
.English: ten
. Latin: decem
.Greek: deka
. Sanskrit: dasa
. Russian: desya
PIE root: word (water)
.English; water
.German: wasser
. Russian: voda
In conclusion, Proto-Indo European is not just a language but a key to understanding a significant portion of the world’s linguistic and cultural heritage. Scholars continue to uncover the story of PIE and its enduring legacy in the modern world. We are all inter-connected.
Sources
1- Laura Spinney. Proto. Bloomsbury, New York; 2025
2- Chat GPT
