Indo-European Studies is the study of Proto-Indo-European, the ancient ancestor of most of the languages now spoken from India and Iran to western Europe, dating back to almost 5,000 B.C. Proto-Indo-European is known only through the method of "comparative reconstruction" from the common features of its descendent languages, which include the families of Germanic (including English), Baltic and Slavic, Celtic, Italic (including Latin and the Romance languages), Albanian, Greek, Armenian, ancient Anatolian, and Indo-Iranian (including Persian and Sanskrit and the modern languages of India).
Besides reconstructing the ancient proto-language, the field of Indo-European studies also explores the prehistoric culture and mythology reflected in texts from Vedic India to the Icelandic sagas, as well as the archeology of Bronze- and Iron-Age artifacts and population movements.