ABSTRACT
Indo-European people and language is pure speculation, most historical linguists continue to find it fruitful to speculate on where these hypothetical people lived, what kind of econ omy they had, what gods they believed in, and so on. Etymologists still trace words back to hypothesized Indo-European roots. And, of course, in the 1930s the Nazis speculated that the Indo-Europeans or Aryans were blond Scandinavians, tall , fair, long-headed crea tures who were the pure and original race of Europe , later contaminated by dark blood from elsewhere. The problem is that the myth of a pure original Ursprache, whether set on the plains of Shinar or somewhere in Europe or the Indian subcontinent, is inherently nostalgic and eschatological - implicitly biased toward a conception of language as having degener ated from a primeval purity and thus in need of restoration to that purity. The parallels among the Indian and European languages are objec tive facts , which might be explained any number of ways; the hypothesis of an original Indo-European language that was scattered across two continents is an explanatory myth, and only one such myth, and one with disturb ing implications.
