Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> - I have been thinking lately about how 'historical
> conlangers' go about their work, and am thinking of
> eventually turning the thoughts into some kind of essay. I
> would appreciate what others who are into that line of
> conlanging think of what I've come up with so far
>
> - It is notably often *not* the protolanguage (the highest
> node in the linguistic family tree) which was there
> first in real time, but some later form which gets
> labeled "classical" or some variety thereof.
>
Not all diachronic conlangers do it this way. I for one always start
with the ancestral language and work forwards.