Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

Over the last few episodes, we've focused on the oldest known ancestor of English, the

ancient Indo-European language.

And in the last episode, I looked at the evidence to determine when and where these ancient

Indo-Europeans lived.

Now I want to try to put all the pieces together to explore the emergence of the ancient

Indo-Europeans and the spread of their language and culture throughout Europe and Central Asia.

In other words, how do we get from the Indo-European homeland in the Eurasian steps to the various

places where the Indo-European languages ended up?

So this is the story of the Indo-European migrations.

I'm going to begin by looking at the emergence of these people in the Eurasian steps, and

then I'm going to explore the advantages they had which allowed them to migrate over thousands

of miles carrying their language with them.

Then I'm going to begin to look at the actual migrations of the people from the Eurasian

steps to the places where the various Indo-European languages emerged.

So this episode will be heavy on history and light on language, but it's an extremely

important and interesting step in the overall story of English.

In the last episode I presented the evidence that has led most linguists and historians

to conclude that the ancient Indo-European speaking people lived in the region north

of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in Eastern Europe, in part of the region known as the

Eurasian steps.

The evidence also suggests that these people lived there between 4500 BC and 2500 BC.

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