Indo-European languages
Map of the spread of Indo-European languages
People seem to have been speaking an early version of the Indo-European language at least as early as 5000 BC in the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, in what is now Armenia and Georgia. By 4000 BC, most people in Central Asia, like the Scythians, spoke Indo-European languages. About 3000 BC, Indo-European language speakers spread east as far as western China and west as far as Ireland, with the Celts.
About 2000 BC, another group of Indo-European speakers left their home. Again, some went west and some went south-east. Those who went west became the Hittites, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans. Those who went south-east became the Persians, the Sogdians, and the Aryans who moved into northern India. By about 200 BC, the Roman Empire was spreading Indo-European languages to North Africa as well.
By about 1000 AD, although people continued to speak Indo-European languages all over Europe and in Iran and northern India, fewer people spoke Indo-European languages in North Africa and Central Asia, the original homeland. In North Africa, the spread of the Islamic Empire encouraged people to start speaking Arabic. In Central Asia, conquests by Turkic-speaking people like the Rouran and the Uighurs encouraged more and more people to start speaking Turkic. By the 1200s, Turkic-speaking people like the Seljuks, and then the Ottomans and the Mongols, ruled West Asia as well.
Soon after 1500 AD, however, many more people began to speak Indo-European languages as invading Europeans brought English, Spanish, and Portuguese to their colonies around the world. In South America and along the coast of California, people began to abandon Inca and Maya for Spanish and Portuguese. Thousands of English, Dutch, and German speakers settled in eastern North America, South Africa and Australia, as well. Just under half of the people in the world today speak an Indo-European language.
Why did people want to punch Socrates?
Where did Egyptians bury your liver?
How old are the Rocky Mountains?
What does a half-timbered house look like?
How do you spin wool?
(a project)
Go back where you were
