The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.

Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. Linguistic reconstruction is fraught with significant uncertainties and room for speculation. According to some archaeologists, PIE speakers cannot be assumed to have been a single, identifiable people or tribe, but were a group of loosely related populations ancestral to the later, still partially prehistoric, Bronze Age Indo-Europeans. This view is held especially by archaeologists who posit an original homeland of vast extent and immense time depth. However, this view is not shared by linguists, as proto-languages generally occupy small geographical areas over a very limited time span, and are generally spoken by close-knit communities such as a single small tribe.

The Proto-Indo-Europeans in this sense likely lived during the late Neolithic, or roughly the 4th millennium BC. Mainstream scholarship places them in the forest-steppe zone immediately to the north of the western end of the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe. Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the middle Neolithic (5500 to 4500 BC) or even the early Neolithic (7500 to 5500 BC), and suggest alternative location hypotheses.

Jean Haudry (born 1934) is a linguist, and a founder of the Institut d'études indo-européennes at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 (France) with Jean-Paul Allard and Jean Varenne. Under his leadership the Institut published, between 1982 and 1998, the Études indo-européennes. He was a professor of Sanskrit and dean of the faculty of letters at the University Lyon 3 and a directeur d'études at the 4th section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He became professor emeritus in 2002. Jean Haudry was a member of the Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne, and acted as chairman of its 13th symposium in 1978. He contributed to the creation of the peridodical Nouvelle École. He was also a member of the "Scientific Council" of the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen, till the split of the Front National, after which he followed Bruno Mégret in the new Mouvement National Républicain. Jean Haudry also participates in the activities of the group Terre et Peuple founded by Pierre Vial, another professor of the University Lyon 3.

Kristian Kristiansen (16 November 1909 – 14 July 1980) was a Norwegian novelist, playwright, writer of short stories, and children's writer.

He was born in Tromsø as the son of carpenter Ingbert Kristiansen (1881–1968) and Ingeborg Haugen (1886–1976). The family moved to Trøndelag when Kristian was nine years old. After middle school he held several different jobs. Starting in 1936, he published a large number of short stories in the magazine Arbeidermagasinet. In the late 1930s he published two short plays, Det dages (1937) and Medaljen (1938), and the children's book Eggtjuver i fugleberget (Egg thieves at the nesting cliff, 1938). His first novel, Vi bærer et bilde, came in 1939. His youth's book Jeg er ingen spion! (I am no spy!) from 1940 is one of the very few books published in Norway throughout the Second World War where it is told from the unoccupied parts of the country during the battles in 1940.

During the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany, which started in 1940, Kristian became involved in resistance work. In 1942 he had to flee to Sweden. There he met the physician Ellen Hedlund; their subsequent marriage lasted from 1943 until 1955. In 1959 he married architect Turid Ellefsen.