Languages
Proto-Indo-European
Language
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Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family, the source from which languages such as Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic and the Germanic branch that produced English all descend. It has no direct written record; its sounds, grammar and vocabulary are inferred entirely by comparing its many attested daughter languages, a method whose reconstruction irregularities led to the laryngeal theory, explaining them as the trace of vanished sounds.
Facts
Attested From (Year) RegionPontic-Caspian steppe of eastern Europe and central Asia 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
In Family
Proto-Indo-European is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European family, not a coordinate daughter classified alongside its member languages; recorded as associated rather than holds because this atlas has no dedicated ancestor-of relation type yet.
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