Written in Stone, Christopher Stevens
Written in Stone, Christopher Stevens
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Written in Stone
A Journey Through the Stone Age and the Origins of Modern Language

Author: Christopher Stevens

Narrator: Michael Healy

Unabridged: 9 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/15/2015


Synopsis

Half the world's population speaks a language that has evolved from a single, prehistoric mother tongue. First spoken in Stone Age times, on the steppes of central Eurasia 6,500 years ago, this mother tongue spread from the shores of the Black Sea across almost all of Europe and much of Asia. It is the genetic basis of everything we speak and write today—the DNA of language.

Written in Stone combines detective work, mythology, ancient history, archaeology, the roots of society, technology and warfare, and the sheer fascination of words to explore that original mother tongue, sketching the connections woven throughout the immense vocabulary of English, with some surprising results.

In snappy, lively, and often very funny chapters, Written in Stone uncovers the most influential and important words used by our Neolithic ancestors and shows how they are still in constant use today—the building blocks of all our most common words and phrases.

About Christopher Stevens

Christopher Stevens is a writer and journalist. His runaway bestselling mnemonics book Thirty Days Has September hit the number one reference book spot on Amazon.com. Christopher currently writes for the Daily Mail. He lives in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Melinda on September 22, 2017

I think I was expecting something different from this book. There was probably less fact and research in these pages, and more opinion and conjecture. And while I enjoyed some of this book, and found parts quite interesting, overall, it just wasn't my favourite investigation into the origins on lang......more

Goodreads review by Deborah on May 27, 2016

I am always fascinated by the origins of language. This book examines the evolution of Indo-European, language that has underpinned many disparate languages throughout the world, identified by 'back-engineering' - taking a modern concept and tracing it's evolution in reverse to arrive at the origin.......more

Goodreads review by Scott on November 25, 2016

Interesting, without being particularly entertaining or enlightening. It is not looking at recent origins to words, but rather trying to source everything back to a VERY ancient proto-language. And I think it's pretty speculative. A lot of guessing going on. Pretty dry, and NOT something you can rea......more

Goodreads review by Socraticgadfly on February 28, 2016

Full of incorrect folk etymologies. I stopped reading when Stevens claimed "Ephesus" derived from the old IE word for "to suckle." Reality? It probably comes from the Greek "ephesos," or "overseer," though that may be folk etymology. In any case, it does NOT come from where Stevens claims.......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on June 06, 2019

At its heart, this book is a historical dictionary, but of an unusual and striking kind.  Rather than seeking to go from English words back to their roots, this particular book's approach is to begin from the words, most of them somewhat primitive, that exist in proto-Indo-European, and then to work......more