Proto-Indo-European (PIE) Assignment
Humanities
have to watch the first 2 videos
European people, languages, and migrations.
As you all know by now, historians study written documents and use them to understand the societies that produced them. Archaeologists also study the human past but focus on material culture—the remains left by human habitations like pottery and tombs. This is why archaeologist tend to study older and pre-civilized cultures whereas historians focus on civilizations that have left written records. Linguists, however, are the academics that brought us the most knowledge of the earliest ancestors of most Europeans as WELL as many peoples from the Middle East and Asia as far as the Indian subcontinent. In order to earn up to 5 points of extra credit please watch the following two videos (the third is just a map of the spread of Indo-European languages and is optional but very cool). Then answer the three questions in a ROBUST paragraph.
The Indo-European Connection (Links to an external site.)
(about 10 minutes)
Proto-Indo-European Culture (Links to an external site.)(about 8 minutes)
The Spread of the Indo-Europeans (Links to an external site.)(optional, about 5 minutes, you can speed this one up)
Questions
- What is Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and why do you think it is important to this class?
- Why did Proto-Indo-European split in so many different branches and then eventually so many different languages? (46% of all people speak an Indo-European language today as their mother tongue).
- What are some of the things we can deduce about Indo-European culture and why do you think that’s important?
