Career
One of his most well-known books is Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, a standard handbook on the Proto-Indo-European language that treats the area of linguistic reconstruction thoroughly but also features cultural reconstruction and comparative linguistic methods in general. Beekes is also a co-author, with L. Bouke van der Meer, of De Etrusken Spreken (Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1991). He advocates the Asia Minor theory to explain the Etruscans" origin.
Currently, Beekes is working on Pre-Greek, the (non-Indo-European) language that was spoken in Greece before Greek, possibly around 2000 British Columbia. Since this language was not written, Beekes gets his information from some words in Classical Greek that clearly show a non-Greek structure and development.
