I highly recommend this article to begin with: Who Were the Indo-Europeans and Why Does It Matter? by Daniel McCoy. This short article is a good introduction to understanding the Proto-Indo-Europeans from whom arose the various Indo-European peoples and why it matters to know this.
Those of us of Germanic and/or Scandinavian descent share a common ancestry with other peoples and their languages. According to Proto-Indo-European Language Tree: Origin, Map & Examples by study.com:
Proto-Indo-European language was a language likely spoken about 4,500 years ago (and before) in what is now Southern Russia and Ukraine. ... The existing Indo-European languages, such as English, Spanish, or Hindi, descend from this language. ... Most languages of the world can be combined into one of many language families. Language families are groups of languages that all descend from a common ancestor. Indo-European is the largest language family on Earth, encompassing languages spoken by about 3.2 billion people, or 42% of the world's population. ... the theory that the Proto-Indo-European language origin from a region directly north of the Black Sea, in what is now the Ukraine and Southern Russia, north of the Caucasus. The cultures associated with the language were Yamna and Kurgan, which existed until about 2500 BCE. This theory is widely accepted by a large majority of scholars. ... Evidence for the Indo-European language origin comes not only from linguistics but also from archeology and cultural anthropology. For instance, the same gods appear both in Lithuanian and ancient Hindu mythology (e.g., twin horsemen gods called Ashvieniai in Lithuanian and Ashvini in Sanskrit). Additionally, the worship of a sky god (Zeus, Jupiter, Odin) seems to be a common trait in many Indo-European cultures. Images of this sky god are known from the material remains of Greek and Roman civilization as well as various myths. ... Today, approximately 3 billion people around the world speak a variation of this Indo-European mother tongue. English is one of these, but they include diverse languages such as Russian, French, Greek, Hindi, and Persian. ...
... linguistic archaeologists, such as David Anthony, believe the first speakers of the Indo-European mother tongue were chariot-driving, warlike pastoralists who migrated out of their homeland on the Black Sea steppe (one of the vast treeless tracts in southeastern Europe or Asia) about 4,000 years ago, ultimately conquering Europe and Asia, and bringing their language with them.
A video on the site above goes on to explain that the Proto-Indo-European language would have been unrelated to other world languages such as Chinese, Polynesian and Hebrew. Thus one can see that the Indo-Europeans can be traced back through the study of languages to one common ancestry.
Here are images of the Indo-European language-families:
... Regarding the question of the origin of Indo-European languages, calculations based on the new data show that they were first spoken approximately 8,000 years ago.
The results of this research do not line up neatly with either the Anatolian or the Kurgan hypotheses. Instead they suggest that the birthplace of Indo-European languages is somewhere in the south of the Caucasus region. From there, they then expanded in various directions: westward towards Greece and Albania; eastward towards India, and northward towards the Pontic Steppe.
Around three millennia later there was then a second wave of expansion from the Pontic Steppe towards Europe, which gave rise to the majority of the languages that are spoken today in Europe. This hybrid hypothesis, which marries up the two previously established theories, also aligns with the results of the most recent studies in the field of genetic anthropology.
Again, I highly recommend this article Who Were the Indo-Europeans and Why Does It Matter? by Daniel McCoy. After giving a brief summary of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, McCoy goes on to write:
With regard to the second question – why is the study of the Indo-Europeans relevant to our lives today? – I would give two answers.
The first is that the world wouldn’t be what it is today had it not been for the Indo-Europeans. If you’re reading this article, chances are that your first language is an Indo-European language, and it’s also very likely that all of the languages you speak are Indo-European languages. Given how powerfully language shapes the range of thoughts available for us to think, this fact exerts no small influence on our outlook on life and therefore, by extension, on our actions. Vestiges of the tri-functional hierarchy are still present in our societies; at least in theory, governments have more power than the police and military, who in turn have more power than the rest of the “civilian” population.
More specific examples could also be readily furnished. For example, Christianity couldn’t have existed without the Persian prophet Zoroaster/Zarathustra first articulating the idea of a dualistic, moral good and evil, and even though Zoroaster’s philosophy and religion, Zoroastrianism, was in many respects a radical departure from earlier Indo-European thinking, he nevertheless used his Indo-European heritage as so many building blocks from which to craft his own vision.[7]
My second answer to the question of why Indo-European studies is relevant is that, as powerfully as it’s influenced our modern social structure and thought, there are also many ways in which the Indo-European worldview is strikingly different from our own. Studying it enables you to have that many more perspectives to draw from in creating your own worldview.
For further reading on the Proto-Indo-Europeans, see:
- The online book In Search of the Sublime, chapter 9 at worldhistorybook.com.
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