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“Well we didn’t even know about the PIE until 1870 when a British judge naned to India Jones was a brilliant scholar and linguist He knew Greek and Latin and began studying Sanskrit—mostly to familiarize himself with native Indian laws, many of which ritten in Sanskrit Jones made a remarkable discovery: Sanskrit and the ancient classical Western languages were eerily similar This was completely unexpected As he further compared Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, he realized that they all had a coes, separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years of develope:call the Proto-Indo-European language Jones was a true scholar, and he dug deeper into the es were also Proto-Indo-European, and not just obscure ones: every e from India to Great Britain Latin, ancient Greek, Norse, Runic, Gothic—they’re all derived froe The list of es, including Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Gerlish—”

“Wait, English is a Gere?” Kate asked

“Yes, of course The English are descended froles and Saxons were Germanic tribes that settled the west coast of Britain in the fifth century You’ve got the Norman invasion in the eleventh century, but the Normans were also a Germanic tribe—Norman literally means “north men”—who invaded and settled the north of France, now Normandy France is really a mix of Franks—another Germanic tribe—and some Celtic and Latin peoples When the Normans invaded Britain, it was actually the descendants of one Ger another But back to Great Britain You’ve got soles and Saxons gradually displaced theue of Justinian, which I believe is the third part of the code—”

Janus held his hand up and spoke softly “If you would indulge us a moment, I would like to hear uages?”

“Oh yeah, tons of theuese, Spanish… let’s see… all the Slavic languages: Russian, Serbian, Polish What else, Balkan languages Of course Greek; the Greeks were PIE descendants Sanskrit, as I mentioned; Hindi, Farsi, Pashto There are also tons of extinct PIE languages Hitite, Tocharian, Gothic In fact, scholars have been able to work backwards to actually reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language And that’s actually the basis of about everything we know about the, snow-capped od”

David paused, not sure what to add next “In general we know the PIE were extremely advanced for their tiriculture ion, and their descendants went on to dohly half the world speaks a Proto-European language In many ways, they are the ultilanced at Janus “You said you had two questions?”

Janus was deep in thought After a second, he realized the roo for him “Oh yes I… would like to knohere they are now”

“That’s the real mystery We’re not even sure where to look for thee reconstruction and y they passed down to their descendant groups along with their language Those are the tools of history: language, stories, and artifacts In this case we don’t have e and myths”

“Myths?” Janus said

“Here again, we’re reconstructing the past based on shared myths across cultures—these are instances where the saes Obviously the naed, but the shape of the narrative is the saenitors of mankind: brothers, sometimes twins For the Indic, it was Manu and Yeies were eventually incorporated into histories For the Romans, Remus and Romulus; the Hebrews, Cain and Abel Another common myth is that of the Great Flood—it appears in soly, thewith the slaying of a serpent, usually a dragon of some sort”

Chang picked up the page “It see of who the PIE were What does it mean: PIE = Immaru? I am not familiar with Immaru”

David looked at Kate Do we tell them?

Kate didn’t hesitate “The Iroup of monks in the mountains of Tibet After the incident in China, where David was almost killed, they rescued us”