A scholarly labour of many decades, Demoule's erudite but accessible treatment of the Indo-Europeans is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the relationship between language, archaeology, and biological anthropology. It is also a shrewd analysis of the slippage between science and mysticism that plagues its topic, from the seventeenth century down to the present day, exposing the roots of a tenacious, often dark undercurrent of thought about the origins and destiny of 'the West'.
Jean-Paul Demoule is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, an honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and a former president of the Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives (Inrap; National Institute for Preventive Archeological Research).
