ABOUT 5,000 years ago, a group of herders living in the grasslands north of the Black Sea headed west, taking their animals with them. They got as far as the Carpathian Basin — the western extremity of the vast Eurasian steppe centered on modern Hungary — but their descendants pushed farther, and within 1,000 years languages related to those of the original migrants were spoken as far west as Ireland’s Atlantic coast…
This article first appeared as the Weekend Essay in Bloomberg Weekend on 31 May 2025. To continue reading, click here (paywall).