Lengua madre : Una raíz ancestral que dio forma a nuestro mundo

At the end of the last Ice Age, in the lands surrounding the Black Sea, a language destined to change the world was born. That ancestral language, which we know today as Proto-Indo-European, spread rapidly, fragmenting as its speakers migrated. From it descend the languages ​​spoken today in much of Europe and Asia, connecting cultural traditions as diverse as the Rig Veda and Dante's Divine Comedy, or the poetry of Rumi. Today, Indo-European languages ​​constitute the most widespread language family in the world. How did this extraordinary expansion occur? For centuries, the trace of that original language remained hidden, buried beneath burial mounds in the Eurasian steppes or dormant in the genes of our ancestors. Only in recent decades, thanks to advances in linguistics, archaeology, and genetics, has it been possible to reconstruct its history and that of the peoples who carried it with them. In Mother Tongue, Laura Spinney, author of the bestseller Pale Rider, travels across continents and millennia to trace the Indo-European odyssey. Through steppes, mountains, and ancient trade routes, she follows in the footsteps of those who spread these languages ​​and accompanies the scientists who are working today to recover these lost voices. The result is a history of humankind told through the invisible thread of language, illuminating our past and engaging with a present in which peoples and languages ​​are once again on the move.