The eNotes Blog If These Cave Walls CouldTalk

If These Cave Walls CouldTalk Linguists have unlocked the key to what our ancient ancestors may have sounded like, and it sounds pretty amazing.   Did you know that 6,500 years ago English and Farsi were the same language? Hows that for world unity. From there, the language morphed into the single descendant of all modern Indo-European languages: PIE (which stands for Proto-Indo-European). Since recording equipment was sparse 4,500 years ago and PIE left no written texts, nobody has ever known what the language might have sounded like. Until now, that is. Below is a recording of a fable, The Sheep and Horses, read in what linguists believe to be an accurate reconstruction of PIE. The journey to this recording began with German linguist August Schleicher in 1868. Schleicher used reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary to create a fable in order to hear some approximation of PIE. Called â€Å"The Sheep and the Horses,† and also known today as Schleicher’s Fable, the short parable tells the story of a shorn sheep who encounters a group of unpleasant horses (Archaeology magazine). The above recording is the most recently updated version of this fable, which has been slightly altered over the years to reflect linguists most informed ideas of how humans might have sounded more than six milennia before our time. The reading comes courtesy of Andrew Byrd, a linguist at the University of Kentucky. For your amusement, here are the English and PIE transcriptions of the now infamous Schleichers Fable: The Sheep and the Horses A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses. The horses said: Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool. Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain. H2à ³uÃŒ ¯is h1à ©Ã¡ ¸ ±uÃŒ ¯Ã… s-kwe h2uÃŒ ¯eiÃŒ ¯ h1iÃŒ ¯osmà ©iÃŒ ¯ h2uÃŒ ¯lÃŒ ¥h1nh2  nà © h1à ©st, sà ³ h1à ©Ã¡ ¸ ±uÃŒ ¯oms derá ¸ ±t. sà ³ gwrÃŒ ¥hxà ºm uÃŒ ¯Ãƒ ³Ã‡ µhom uÃŒ ¯eÇ µhed; sà ³ mà ©Ã‡ µh2mÃŒ ¥ bhà ³rom; sà ³ dhÇ µhà ©monmÃŒ ¥ h2á ¹â€œÃ¡ ¸ ±u bhered. h2à ³uÃŒ ¯is h1à ©kwoiÃŒ ¯bhiÃŒ ¯os uÃŒ ¯euÃŒ ¯ked: â€Å"dhÇ µhà ©monmÃŒ ¥ spà ©Ã¡ ¸ ±iÃŒ ¯oh2  h1à ©Ã¡ ¸ ±uÃŒ ¯oms-kwe h2Ç µeti, á ¸ ±Ã¡ ¸â€"r moiÃŒ ¯ aghnutor†. h1à ©Ã¡ ¸ ±uÃŒ ¯Ã… s tu uÃŒ ¯euÃŒ ¯kond: â€Å"á ¸ ±ludhà ­, h2ouÃŒ ¯eiÃŒ ¯! tà ³d spà ©Ã¡ ¸ ±iÃŒ ¯omes, nÃŒ ¥smà ©iÃŒ ¯ aghnutà ³r á ¸ ±Ã¡ ¸â€"r: dhÇ µhà ©mÃ… , pà ³tis, sÄ“ h2uÃŒ ¯iÃŒ ¯es h2uÃŒ ¯lÃŒ ¥h1nh2  gwhà ©rmom uÃŒ ¯Ãƒ ©strom uÃŒ ¯ept, h2uÃŒ ¯ibhiÃŒ ¯os tu h2uÃŒ ¯lÃŒ ¥h1nh2  nà © h1esti. tà ³d á ¸ ±eá ¸ ±luuÃŒ ¯Ã¡ ¹â€œs h2à ³uÃŒ ¯is h2aÇ µrà ³m bhuged. And you thought Spanish was hard For another cool recording of PIE check out this article from Archaeology magazine.