Indo-European languages.

The Indo-European family of languages consists of about 445 related living languages and many extinct languages grouped into smaller families. They include the major languages of modern Europe as well as parts of Central, South, and Western Asia. Indo-European languages are notable not only for their sheer number and geographic distribution but also for having the second-longest recorded history attested in writing (after the Afroasiatic family). The now-extinct Anatolian languages, most notably Hittite, date to Bronze Age Asia Minor, and the most ancient written form of the Greek language (Mycenaean Greek) is attested in inscriptions in a script called Linear B, dated to the fourteenth century BCE. Deciphering Linear B in the 1950s was one of the great accomplishments of historical linguistics.