The Indo-Europeans: Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West

The existence of an Indo-European linguistic family, allowing for the fact that several languages widely dispersed across Eurasia share numerous traits, has been demonstrated for several centuries now.But the underlying factors for this shared heritage have been fiercely debated by linguists, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists.The leading theory, of which countless variations exist, argues that this similarity is best explained by the existence, at one given point in time and space, of a common language and corresponding population.This ancient, prehistoric, population would then have diffused across Eurasia, eventually leading to the variation observed in historical and modern times.The Indo-Europeans: Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West argues that despite its acceptance and use by most researchers from different disciplines, such a model is inherently flawed.This book describes how, beginning in the late eighteenth century, Europeans