Steppe by Steppe
Yamnaya petroglyphs near the Don River
Alamy/Yakov Oskanov
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global LAURA SPINNEY (WILLIAM COLLINS, 352 PP, £22)
In the lone and level sands around Tell Brak and Uruk, our ancestors once buried their elites in monumental kurgans. Buried, too, writes Laura Spinney in Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, were objects central to their lives and culture – “the gold straws through which they had sucked ceremonial beer”, say. Imagine what a modern kurgan might contain. The prospect – heaps of wires and melon-flavoured vapes – is farcical, but it says something about our world.
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