The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

(Princeton University Press). The author argues that Proto-Indo-European, an ancient mother tongue from which are derived the languages that about half the world’s population speak today, originated in southern Ukraine and Russia. He attributes the spread of the language to the domestication of horses and the invention of the wheel. Anthony is a professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y.