We do not know exactly what the original Indo-European language was like, as no writings exist from that time (the very earliest examples of writing can be traced to Sumeria in around 3000 BC), so our knowledge of it is necessarily based on conjecture, hypothesis and reconstruction. Using the “comparative method”, though, modern linguists have been able to partially reconstruct the original language from common elements in its daughter languages. It is thought by many scholars that modern Lithuanian may be the closest to (i.e. the least changed from) the ancient Indo-European language, and it is thought to retain many features of Proto-Indo-European now lost in other Indo-European languages.