John:
>Glen wrote concerning the Nostratic reconstruction of *ana as mother.
Actually about this Nostratic term, I personally have settled on a revised
Nostratic form *hana, which brings the IE word for the paternal grandmother
into the picture. I wouldn't say that the Nostratic term means "grandmother"
as in IE because I'm suspecting that the whole Omaha system of IE kinship
only goes back to 6000 BCE with the disruptive event of agriculture. The
original meaning would probably have been "woman" or "female elder". The
laryngeal would expectedly not survive in Uralic or Altaic, so everything is
kosher in terms of sound correspondance.
Now, this would almost seem to help John's idea but...
>This would tie in with the Khattic goddess Hannahanna as (Mother's
>mother). It has been suggested that this is the origin of
>Innana - Sumerian
>Ana-t - Syro-Cannanite
>Ath-ana - (Athene - Greek)
>Ana-hita (Persian)
>St Anne (Christian)
Erh... um... Hattic is not a Nostratic language. If we can agree that Hattic
is part of a Caucasic linguistic area that had brought agriculture from an
East Anatolian area early on, then we probably can also agree that the
Hattic had brought their native Goddess religion with them too as evidenced
later in Catal Hoyuk. So...
John, why would Hattic adopt a name for a native goddess from a foreign
Nostratic language? Which one??
- gLeN
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