>Here's a nice repository for *man- words:
>
>http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/man.html
>
>Feel free to use it.
Hmm, a list of *man- words is nice but if they're just lumped together
without understanding their connections (or lack thereof), it doesn't get us
very far. I never heard of Manup before but there it is. Now it's crazy to
assume that Austronesian has any direct relevance to IndoEtruscan studies.
Rather, it appears to me that the legends that we like to attribute to
IndoEuropeans themselves (which possibly originated from the Balkan area
c.6000 BCE, says me) spread out very far out into Asia and beyond, just as
these myths spread easily into the MiddleEast and Africa. Even the themes
present in the Mayan myths are terribly uncanny. They too not only have
"Divine Twins", called Hunahpu and Xbalanque, but they are also heroes who
undergo tough trials, even ending up in the underworld in Heracles-like
manner, born to a self-impregnated goddess a la Virgin Mary, yadayadayada.
Obviously, the IEs didn't spread all the way across the world to dominate
the mythological scene. Rather, I get a very strong impression that these
myths had been adopted with the rapid spread of agriculture, IE being the
"victim", as it were, of native myth displacement. Perhaps this phenom would
include Manup too.
Now onto the ultimate meaning of IE *manus. I notice that you've discovered
unconsciously the connection between IE *men- and Semitic "to count". This
is one of those words I suspect to be loaned from Semitish into MidIE. It
has nothing to do with *manus though. Further, when you look at nearby
Etruscan, the root /man-/ appears to mean "to die" since it is found always
with death (Mania, Mantus, mani, etc). I think that this Etruscan "to die"
word is significant to understand where *manus comes from. In other words,
*manus literally means "mortal" or "one who dies". That's my theory,
anyways.
- gLeN
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