Proto, it has to be said, is a dense read. Spinney’s approach is a thorough one, so that the chapters tack back and forth in time as we follow each of these branches in turn. It is easy to lose sight of the timeline while concentrating on the differences between Hittites, Hattians and Hurrians, between Lydians and Luwians. Spinney’s background is as a science journalist, and it shows in the way she has assimilated a vast amount of up-to-date scholarly information and presented it concisely and accurately. Nevertheless, this is still a knotty story ... Spinney leavens the history lesson with sections dealing with the present ... Proto is an impressive piece of work—hard but ultimately rewarding.
Beguiling and revelatory .... Spinney is a stylish and erudite writer; it’s the rare science book that quotes Keats, Seamus Heaney, and Ismail Kadare. She also has a keen sense of the romance of her subject ... Vivid.
There are between 1,000 and 2,000 PIE words, and Spinney’s book is at its most interesting when dealing with them ... In Spinney’s account, the Yamnaya nomads take PIE from the steppe to the edge of China, back into Europe, down through India and Iran. The combination of evidence from different disciplines makes this a compelling case.
Spinney’s account is a breezy, well-written overview of (Indo-European) historical linguistics ... For those new to the subject, or who feel that they might be a bit out of date, Proto is a good place to start ... Perhaps not surprising given the span of the book and the complexity of the narrative, experts might quibble over some of the details ... This is a fast-changing field—almost every detail is subject to revision—readers would be well-advised, and no book can expect to remain entirely correct for long .
A smart, dense, detailed account ... While Spinney includes and attempts to translate these processes, they often seem merely a side story to the vivid theoretical detail with which she shades the movements, relationships, and mythologies of Indo-European ancestors ... The text is organized around the evolutions of individual branches of Indo-European, which can be confusing as time weaves in and out of prehistory with different migrations and intertwinements. But this back-and-forth underscores the stakes involved in how we understand such massive dissemination and transformation and the tensions they fuel.
