Sometime between 3500 BC and 2500 BC, the Indo-Europeans began to fan out across Europe and Asia, in search of new pastures and hunting grounds, and their languages developed - and diverged - in isolation. By around 1000 BC, the original Indo-European language had split into a dozen or more major language groups or families, the main groups being:

• Hellenic
• Italic
• Indo-Iranian
• Celtic
• Germanic
• Armenian
• Balto-Slavic
• Albanian