[funnybusiness2]

Assuming PIE existed, you would be right. I am not saying it didn't.

While of course no PIE writings have been ever found, it's interesting that we have also not found references to PIE anywhere in writings in any other languages, from the times of the Sumerian Script all the way until William Jones showed up (or until slightly before his time). Please correct me if I am wrong.

William Jones was a sharp cookie to theorize PIE, no doubt. But for us to believe in the existence of PIE, we have to believe that there was no other cookie sharp enough elsewhere in the world, between 3400 BC (Sumerian Script) and 1786 AD (William Jones) who could have looked at Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Persian, like Jones did, and derived a theory similar to PIE, and written about it.

One possible explanation could be that people who came before us considered this idea, and discarded it due to lack of sufficient merit, and we are simply reinventing that wheel.

On another note, all the old assertions regarding the death and follow on artificial revival of Sanskrit have been invalidated. Sanskrit, as a language, has stayed very much alive since ancient times. References:

- Hatcher, Brian A. (2016). "Sanskrit and the morning after". The Indian Economic & Social History Review. 44 (3): 333–361. doi:10.1177/001946460704400303. ISSN 0019-4646. S2CID 144219653

- Hanneder, J. (2009), "Modernes Sanskrit: eine vergessene Literatur", in Straube, Martin; Steiner, Roland; Soni, Jayandra; Hahn, Michael; Demoto, Mitsuyo (eds.), Pāsādikadānaṃ: Festschrift für Bhikkhu Pāsādika, Indica et Tibetica Verlag, pp. 205–228

- Seth, Sanjay (2007). Subject Lessons: The Western education of colonial India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. pp. 172–176. ISBN 978-0-8223-4105-5.

Since I got downvoted and accused of "pointless contrarianism" elsewhere in this thread, I would like to say that I am not trying to offend anyone, nor waste anyone's time with my questions/thoughts/explanations. I am bringing up an issue that I think deserves discussion. I don't see what the problem is. If you don't like what I have to say, scroll past my comment. If you like what I have to say, I am happy to engage.

[angiosperm]

Maybe PIE speakers invented all of chemistry, general relativity, and quantum mechanics 8000 years ago, but owing to lack of any written language or higher-math educational institutions, their descendants have since forgotten it all. But it is not the way to bet.

You already admitted that an ancestor to the PIE-family languages existed. Are you objecting to linguists calling that ancestral language PIE? Maybe you have some other name to propose, and would like to persuade the entire population of modern linguists to switch to using your proposed name that you have not revealed to us yet?

You were downvoted for reasons you could learn from. Maybe read the posting guidelines?