Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Laura Spinney is a science journalist and writer. She is the author of the celebrated Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World. Her writing on science has appeared in National Geographic, Nature, The Guardian and The Atlantic, among others. Born in the UK, she lives in Paris.
<p>'The fascinating story of the ancient words that survive in the mouths of billions of speakers today.'</p>
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<strong>Henry Oliver, <em>The Guardian</em></strong>
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<p>'<em>Proto</em> will take the reader on an unlikely historical odyssey … most importantly, it shows that we are more connected than we might have been led to believe.'</p>
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<em>New Statesman</em>
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<p><strong>'</strong>A magisterial feat … It is clever, careful, expansive, insightful and a host of other fine Indo-European adjectives.'</p>
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<em>New Scientist</em>
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<p>'Bringing together genetic, archaeological and linguistic research, Spinney tells the fascinating story of the common ancestor of many languages spoken around the world today.'</p>
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<em>Financial Times</em>
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<p>'An enormously refreshing and readable history of worlds that were physically far apart but, in a sense, spoke with a single voice.'</p>
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<strong>David Abulafia, <em>Literary Review</em></strong>
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<p>'A compelling portrait of a people thought lost to time … a remarkable account of humanity’s quest to rediscover its ancient origins.'</p>
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<em>Wall Street Journal</em>
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<p>'Beguiling and revelatory… Spinney is a stylish and erudite writer.'</p>
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<strong>Laura Miller, <em>Slate</em></strong>
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<p>'Intriguing, lively … something for everyone.'</p>
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<em>Nature</em>
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<p><strong><em>'</em></strong>Reading [<em>Proto</em>] whetted my appetite for travel and adventure'</p>
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<em>Prospect</em>
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<p>'The fascinating tale of how a tiny, long-lost ancestral language, Proto-Indo-European, gave birth to a great family of languages … death and life are in the power of the tongue'</p>
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<strong>Michael Hurley, BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day</strong>
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<p>'A lively and fascinating account. I loved it!'</p>
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<strong>David Bellos, author of <em>Is That a Fish in your Ear?</em></strong>
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<p><em>'</em>Formidably researched but lightly written, I put down this book with the pleasurable sense that the world around me had become a little stranger and richer.'</p>
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<strong>Helen Gordon, author of <em>Notes from Deep Time</em></strong>
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<p>‘Superb. With style and panache, Laura Spinney tells a truly extraordinary detective story.’</p>
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<strong>Matt Ridley, author of <em>The Evolution of Everything</em></strong>
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<p>‘An extraordinary journey through human history with words as a compass. It is a sweeping story beautifully told. Profound and illuminating.’</p>
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<strong>Moudhy Al-Rashid, author of <em>Between Two Rivers</em></strong>
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*A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2025*
'The fascinating story of ancient words … new revelations await' The Guardian
'A magisterial feat' New Scientist
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One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story.
Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.
Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity’s past. All three of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient ancestor.
Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, 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. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered 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.
A New History of Our Ancient Past, From the Author of the International Bestseller Pale Rider
A New History of Our Ancient Past, From the Author of the International Bestseller Pale Rider
A HIT IN HARDBACK: Proto was glowingly reviewed across the board, and we’ve shipped 25k copies across formats, performing especially well in Audio.
INCREDIBLE STORYTELLING: Brings complex science to life in vivid detail, from Victorian scholars discovering ancient mummies in the desert basins of China to archaeologists excavating in Stalinist Russia in the 1930s
INTERNATIONAL APPEAL: Indo-European languages are spoken across Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, South America and the Indian subcontinent, and each branch of the language family is covered, as Laura travelled around the world meeting scientists
RIGHTS have sold in Russia, Poland, Spain, Germany, China, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and Korea
PERFECT FOR READERS OF The Dawn of Everything, The Silk Roads and Prisoners of Geography
Competition: pale rider; sapiens; the dawn of everything; dawn of language; ancestors; who we are and how we got here; the silk roads; prisoners of geography; etymologicon; eve. david wengrow; alice roberts; david reich; peter frankopan; tim marshall; helen gordon; guy deutscher; yuval noah harari; lewis dartnell
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Laura Spinney is a science journalist and writer. She is the author of the celebrated Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World. Her writing on science has appeared in National Geographic, Nature, The Guardian and The Atlantic, among others. Born in the UK, she lives in Paris.