Re: House and City

--- In cybalist@..., longgren@... wrote:

> The Greek word polis has a modest history.
> You can go back to forts in Latvia, pils. You have temples in

India,

> palli. Why on Earth would you assume that Hurrian borrowed the word
> from Egyptian? There were houses in Europe and the Middle East

earlier

> than in Egypt. Your seafarer idea doesn't hold water. How do you

explain

> Mongolian balagun? Words for house go back very far. Every culture

has

> a word for house, or the equivalent. The Mongolian yurt is a cognate
> of yard and the -grad in Belgrade. The Sumerians had a cognate of

this

> word, as did Semites and Indians. (-garh) This root covers

everything

> from a barnyard to a megacity. There is Hebrew and Arabic qiryat
> (village). For the Sumerians it was a merchant area of a town.

Over and

> over we see a root that once meant a modest dwelling transformed

into a

> city. Why not *par?
>
> Mongolian hhot (city) is probably related to our words house and

hut.

> There are cognates with "hut" all over the place too. Some of them

mean

> "fort". People from Greece were boating to islands in 8,000 BC,

long

> before there were boats in Egypt.
> Does anyone know the origin of "palace"?
> Think of palli, palisade. Think of Greek and Etruscan "pyrgos" ,

tower.

> The names of towns in India end in -pur. In Germany they end in
> -berg. There is a natural progression from hut to house to fort to
> palace to town to city. Look at Swedish Göteborg. At one time a

borg

> was just a fort. Early forts were small wooden affairs. What do you
> suppose a Lithuanian pilis looked like in 500 AD? It probably

wasn't

> very impressive. What about the acropolis? Wasn't the first

acropolis

> a very modest wooden building? Basically about the same as a palace

or a

> house. Look at London, from Lundunum. A Celtic dun was just a

small

> wooden fort, wasn't it? Don't you think it might be related to to
> Indo-European "dom" for house or building? Look at Russian dom

(house).

> Then, you get domicile, dun, town and so on.
> Armenian tun means house.

This is the real ontogenetic (nice word, huh?) process of the
development of all this:

1. There is a road crossing.

2. People meet there to swap stuff.

3. People don't meet each other at the right time. So some must store
stuff.

4. Bad people take away the stored stuff by force.

5. Therefore good people build a wall around the road crossing (or
harbor, or island).

6. Some people find secondary or tertiary work work aroud the stores.
They live there all year.

7. Voilà! We have invented a walled city. And a fence. (And a court?)

And in no other way.

Torsten