Ancient Languages and Literature
Two major language groups were spoken in the Mediterranean and Western Asian areas in the ancient and medieval periods. These are Indo-European and Semitic. In southern Africa, most people spoke either a Bantu language or a Khoisan language. Indo-European languages came to be spoken in India as well, but other languages also were spoken. In Central Asia, most people spoke variations of Turkic languages. And in China, people spoke different variants of Chinese.
The Indo-European language group seems to have originated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, in modern Georgia (see map). Around 3000 BC some of the people who spoke this language began to travel away from here. Some of them went west toward the Atlantic ocean and these are now known as the Celts, and they speak the Celtic languages: Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Another group went east toward China, and these are now known as the Tocharians, though they speak Chinese now. A little later, others travelled over the Black Sea toward the Mediterranean or south to Western Asia. Some of them settled in Italy, where Indo-European became Latin. Others settled in Greece, where Indo-European became Greek. Some went to Western Asia, where they spoke Hittite and Persian, and some went all the way south to India, where they spoke Sanskrit. Some went north, where Indo-European turned into German, Danish, Swedish, and English. The people who stayed more or less where they were in the Balkans and Russia began to speak the Slavic and Baltic languages: Russian, Polish, Lithuanian.
For more on ancient languages, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth by J. P. Mallory.
Empires of the Word : A Language History of the World, by Nicholas Ostler (2005).
