I've been reading a bunch of stuff on the old Proto-Indo-Europeans. Again. I read stuff about that a lot, actually, but I'm going through another phase of it. Why do I care? What is so compelling to me about a pre-historic people who lived in the Ukrainian steppes possibly as early as 6000-6,500 years ago?
I think the reason I find the Proto-Indo-Europeans so intriguing is that they are the earliest representation of my "ancestry" that we can identify with any confidence. True; I don't know how much the Proto-Indo-Europeans are my actual genetic ancestors (R1a1 haplotype is very rare in Westernmost Europe and the British Isles, where most of my more proximate ancestry comes from) but they are---at least---clearly my cultural ancestors.
Maybe it's true what they say about the Americans---we're always in search of some deep roots we can look back to. And if nothing else, the Proto-Indo-Europeans give us roots about as deep as you can go.
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