Where I Still Have Questions

In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth by J.P. Mallory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very useful book, excellent for those with a particular interest in the topic and more than a little expertise.

It's a little less useful for people like me--a history enthusiast without specialized knowledge. That's why it took me many years to finish. I read about a third of it probably 20 years ago, then read the rest in bits over the last several months.

It's actually great, though--definitely a 5-star book for information. I expect it's assigned for use in college history or linguistics classes, or it should be, because it's dense with facts, theories, discussions of competing models and the like. The author has a perspective, and occasionally has sharp criticism for poorly supported theories, but I feel like he does a good job weighing and analyzing the ideas of other researchers, giving them their due even when not fully convinced.

The fact that Indo-Europeans, as they spread into settled agricultural areas, came in like an ox-drawn wagon in a china shop, was kind of a surprise to me. I always assumed many of those areas were sparsely settled at that distant time, though I guess I hadn't considered it too deeply. Finding out that these folks were so disruptive to regions that were more advanced in many ways, taking a lot of material culture backwards, is pretty disappointing. What civilizations might have sprouted if they had been left alone? What languages would be spoken? What literature might they have produced?

The final chapter tries to describe how the spreading Indo-Europeans might have pushed their language into so many parts of Europe and Asia without necessarily displacing the natives, maybe without even outnumbering them. (Kind of like the way Norman French was imposed on England, despite the native English speakers greatly outnumbering the invaders.) It's interesting that there are a couple vectors for that, including the idea that, in good years, herders can produce a great deal of wealth quickly. That made them rich neighbors on the one hand, giving them power in that area, and also made their lifestyle, being conducive to upward mobility, enticing to local agriculturalists, encouraging them to join up. Both of these things bolstered the intrusive Indo-European language at the expense of the more numerous native people and their original language.

Anyway, those are just a small part of the topics I found interesting here.

Most of the text is at a pretty high level, though, and seems to presuppose a pretty decent grounding in the basics of the subject. Or, if the author isn't presupposing that, he does a poor job of reaching the average reader. (Me. I'm the average reader.) In parts, I mean, not everywhere. There are some parts of chapters that are very clear, informative, and full of exciting information, and I enjoyed those a lot. The tougher parts took more time but still had nuggets worth digging out. What I wouldn't say, though, is that this book is a decent example of popularizing specialized information. It isn't really. (Experts who ARE good at that, IMO, are John McWhorter and Steven Pinker in linguistics, Richard Dawkins and Sean Carrol in genetics, and Reza Aslan in religious history. They make the content very accessible for a broad audience.) It takes a lot of energy to get through this, and I wish more of it had been organized for readers like me.

Still, there's a lot to like, even for readers without expertise, because I learned a whole bunch, and for better-informed readers there's even more to like. And if you want to read parts and skim others, you might like it even better than I did. But it's not really a book for the casual reader.

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