>Thanks for the above Glen.
>To overcome the problem of the missing /h/ in Eridanus, I would see the
>name Eridanus as a direct borrowing into Greek from West Semitic, not
>inherited from IE via an earlier borrowing.
No, not IE. Alright, plausible.
>As for /da:nu/ (without the Eri-), yours seems a plausible scenario. >But I
>have two questions :
>1. why is the word only attested at the two geographical extremes of >IE (I
>exclude Greek, where I don't think it is inherited)?
That's like asking why the mediopassive in *-r isn't more widespread. Or the
past tense with *e-.
>2. would the Semitish people of 6000BCE have had such a sophisticated
>imagery?
Why not? The vital part of my Semitish idea is that these people were
farmers. They had to be in order to be where they were at that time to
influence IE speakers in the North Pontic. One would think that the Semitish
speakers needed some better understanding of the cosmos to predict when to
seed, when to harvest, etc, etc. They would at least need to divide the year
up into seasons. If Balkan weather is anything like Winnipeg weather, one
needs to know exactly when it generally rains, when it gets windy, and when
it gets really hot and dry. A couple of weeks off and you could be up the
*da:nu without a paddle.
This would be one reason I can think of for knowing moon phases. So they
know about the moon (and monthes), have seasons... Let's see, what else?
It's not impossible that the Semitish looked at the stars too. Afterall, we
have early connections being made in Akkadian myth between gods and stars
(Ishtar, for example), do we not? Again, this is also the case it would seem
when drudging up the IndoEuropean language. It's also just practical to know
where the stars are situated in the sky throughout the year in order to find
your way back to a village when lost. So they know the moon, seasons, stars.
What next?
In the end, the course of the sun and a surrounding great ocean seem like
natural extensions to their understanding of the cosmos. I mean, if I were a
farmer around 6000 BCE, I might start theorizing (as is my way) about why it
is that the sun does not burn the horizon when it sets. Maybe, I would
think, the sun sets in an ocean or river far, far away and thus, is quenched
by the sea until it rekindles in the morning. Makes sense. :) Thus is born
the myth of *Shwe:l's voyage into the *Da:nu.
It's a thought.
>I myself had rather imagined independent contacts with Semitic or
>Semitic-influenced people at much later dates.
Of course there were later contacts but then we always come back to
...*sweks and *septm. They clinch the fact that there were some kind of
Semitic contacts with IE before 3500 BCE. Some say indirect contacts but
then carelessly ignore the technicalities of explaining from which attested
language they would come from. A direct contact seems more economical to me.
- gLeN
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