 What do the English, Sanskrit, Russian, Spanish, Persian and Irish languages have in common? Well, they are all Indo-European languages and they speak to the fascinating ancient ancestors many of us share. In fact, nearly half the world's population speaks in Indo-European language as their first language, by far the highest of any language family. This family of languages can be broken down into 10 main branches, which are Celtic, Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic, Germanic, Armenian, Tolcarian, Baltic, Slavic and Albanian. Similarities can be found amongst these languages in many places, with words for family members being particularly striking. In Proto-Indo-European, for instance, the word for mother was metar. We can see in Gothic languages is modar. In Latin it was matter. In Sanskrit it's matter or metar. Apologies for any pronunciations in this video. In Iranian languages, this is an older Iranian language. This is New Persian, I think, and this is Kurdish. It's metar, madar or mac, depending on the language. And even in ancient Celtic languages, in ancient Gaul, it was metar or matter. Now, we can also see the similarities when it comes to the word father. In Gothic, it's fader or fader, something of that ilk. In Latin, it's petar or patar. In Sanskrit, it's petar or something of that ilk. In Iranian languages, there are a few different versions. Peta is one, pedar is another one. As you can see, there are so many similarities in these languages. And in the European languages, languages you probably wouldn't think were connected in any great sense, given the geographical distances between the people that speak these languages. But it's pretty fascinating the connections that still exist in these languages. Now that we have seen some of the striking similarities between these languages that are separated by thousands of miles, the Gothic languages that are now extinct were part of ancient Germany, for instance, compared to the Sanskrit language of India. How did these languages spread across the whole of Eurasia? Well, there are two main theories. There is the step hypothesis, which proposes an origin in the Pontic Caspian step around 6000 years ago, and the Anatolian or farming hypothesis, suggesting an older origin tied to early agriculture around 9000 years ago. A new study last year from the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, looked at these theories and also tried to date the age of the Indo-European language family. The study estimated that the Indo-European language family was approximately 8100 years old, with five main branches already split off by around 7000 years ago. They found, however, that the results were not entirely consistent with either the step or the farming hypothesis. The authors of the study therefore proposed a new hybrid hypothesis for the origin of the Indo-European languages, with an ultimate homeland south of the Caucasus and a subsequent branch northwards onto the step, as a secondary homeland for some branches of the Indo-European language entering Europe, with the later Yamnaya and Corded Ware associated expansions. Ancient DNA and language phylogenetics thus combine to suggest that the resolution to the 200 year old Indo-European enigma lies in the hybrid of the farming and step hypotheses. Remarked one author. Various cultures are associated with the spread of Indo-European languages and other cultural traits as well as genetic information. Two of these cultures are mentioned earlier in the form of the Yamnaya and the Corded Ware cultures. This map shows a general overview of the spread of the Indo-European languages and the various cultures that helped to spread those languages. With the horse probably being a key vehicle for its spread in some instances at least. An increasing body of evidence suggests that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian steppe in approximately 3500 BC. I'm going to make follow-up videos on many of these cultures in more detail, but one culture I have previously covered is the Bell Beaker culture. Beginning around 2700 BC, bell beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe in the shape of inverted bell before it disappeared around 1800 BC. This culture appears to have introduced a large degree of new genetic information into Britain. As a study published in Nature Found, the spread of the bell beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain's gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east to west expansion that brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries. The spread of the Indo-Europeans is a massive subject and I'm going to delve into various different elements in future videos, but please let me know your thoughts in the comments below and what areas you find particular interest in this massive subject of the Indo-Europeans and the migration of the Indo-Europeans. Thanks for watching, please subscribe and hit the bell and I'll see you next time.