[tied] Re: obscure languages - Kaskian, Hattic,

From: tgpedersen
Message: 14176
Date: 2002-07-31

--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
>
> John:
> >Ineresting. Glen, does this mean that you don't subscribe to a
Proto-
> >Hurrian origin for the word for Bull.
>
> That's correct. I don't recall Proto-HU or Proto-NEC having a word
for
> "bull" that could explain the Semitic form in a satisfactory way
(which
> is not to say that the NEC forms aren't related to *Tawru-).
>
> Again, I think the Kartvelian form is borrowed. Agriculture may have
> been pioneered by Caucasic speaking people but does this mean that
> they necessarily invented wine? I had the impression that wine (or
at
> least the wine word) came from the Balkans. Thoughts?
>
> - gLeN


It still puzzles me that IE and Semitic should share the words
for "bull" and "horn", but not for "cow". I still think the word was
borrowed primarily in the astonomical/astrological sense.
Around 4000 BCE, for a short time (due to precession), the sun was
placed at spring equinox between the horns of Taurus, two stars of
equal magnitude (and at autumn equinox at the point of the arrow of
the opposing constellation Sagittarius, the archer). The Apis bull,
if I remember right, has the sun disk between its horns. The
sacrificial bull on the central plate of the Gundestrup cauldron has
a sun emblem on its forehead.
A Kartvelian connection: in yesterday's (July 30rd) Guardian in an
article on blood feud in Svanetia I read a description of a wedding
custom there: two candles (stars?) are stuck to the horn of a bull,
which is forced to face the sun and then slaughtered.
What happened at 4000 BCE to make all these peoples so paranoically
obsessed with the sky (such as the Celts fearing only that the sky
would collapse on them)? Meteorite? BTW, a grazing meteorite, if fast
and small enough not to be deflected by earth's gravity would appear
as a fiery shot out of one constellation, most likely a zodiacal one
(eg the archer? meteorites, being mostly of the same origin as the
rest of the solar system, "live" in the zodiacal plane) and disappear
into the opposing one (Taurus?). And if it was, it might have
disappeared at the heel of Orion? Getting close to earth, it might
have caused one heck of a storm.

Torsten

BTW, other than "wine" and "bull", what are those other agricultural
Semitic loanwords in IE?