Re: Bear, a Magdalenian test case

Etymology of bear as the furry one, provider of the best fur,
thick, longhaired, soft and warm

English bear German Bär Dutch beer is explained
via two alternative PIE etymologies, namely as the
brown one, from *bher- 'brown', and as the wild one,
from *ghwer. Neither etymology convinces me.
How many brown and wild animals are there?
Relying on my Magdalenian dictionary I propose
BIR meaning fur (ancient Greek byrsa), especially
the fur wherupon a newborn was laid, as origin of
a plethora of words. When a fur keeps a newborn
warm, a bag made of a hide can also be used
to carry a baby around: bear a child. Via analogy
this verb is also used for a pregnant woman
bearing a child in her womb. Between the two ways
of bearing a child, inside and outside of the body,
occurs the event called birth, giving birth, and the
child is born, a newborn. Most furs are brown,
hence BIR is also the origin of PIE *bher- 'brown'.
The bear provides the best fur, longhaired, soft
and warm, hence bear Bär beer (while the actual
name of the cave bear was ARC, referring to the
animal's extraordinary strength, surviving in Greek
arktos and Latin ursus). Judging by its name also
the boar, Latin aper German Eber, provided a
fairly good fur. Also the hare, whose name might
be a further derivative of BIR, as hair German Haar.

Let us have a look at a bunch of PIE homonyms
(after Mallory and Adams 2006, page 467):
*bher- 'brown' -- explained above // *bher- 'weave,
twine' -- the wool of a sheep that has a longhaired
fur like a bear // *bher- 'seethe, bubble; roast' --
the meat of the skinned animal // *bher- 'strike
(through), split, cut' -- one has to kill the animal
in order to get its precious fur and its meat;
the bear must die so the Ice Age people can
live; a drawing in the cave Trois Frères shows
a bear with dotted fur and blood spurting out
of its mouth, the dots are wounds caused by
spears, but also visualisations of SAI for life,
existence, namely the life of the Ice Age people
depending on fur and meat // *bher- 'carry' --
explained above // *bher- '+- cure with spells
and/or with herbs' -- we might imagine a healing
ceremony involving spells, herbs, and a warm
bear fur // *bhére/o. 'bear (a child)' -- explained
above // *bherg- 'bark, growl' -- sounds made
by a bear // *bherg- 'keep, protect' -- as a bag
made of a hide keeps and protects a baby,
German bergen. Female bears are devoted
mothers, and a bear fur may thus have had
a magical meaning for a human mother. On
the other hand, bear furs may also have been
used in burial ceremonies - enveloping the
body in a bear fur could have secured him
or her a second life in the beyond, hence bury
and burrow (the burrows in Southern England).
In fall, a bear goes in quasi hibernation, and
returns in spring, which may have been regarded
as kind of a regeneration. In autumn, a bear
eats up to 150,000 berries, and so English
berry German Beere may also come from BIR.
Dutch brombeer 'growling beer' is practically
the same as German Brombeere 'black berry',
so we may assume three possibilities: 1) bears
like black berries very much, or 2) black berry
thornbushes were grown around settlements
in order to protect them from bears and other
wild animals, or 3) alleys through black berry
thornbushes were used as bear traps. Pear,
Latin pire from an unknown source, may refer
to the shape of a bear's head, round with a long
snout. Beard German Bart is obviously a further
derivative of BIR.

In any case, bear means the furry one, provider
of the best fur, longhaired, soft and warm. Two
German names or nicknames refer to this meaning,
Zottelbär 'shaggy bear' and petz female petze,
in fables Meister Petz. Grimm, in his Wörterbuch,
quotes Hagedorn: "da sträubet sich der petz"
which means: here the petz bristles up and stands
on end. Petz can only mean pelt, German Pelz,
and this, I believe, comes from an important word
field. PAD --- activity of feet. Comparative form
PAS --- everywhere in a plain, here, south and north
of me, east and west of me. Lateral association
PIS --- water in motion. Petz petze Pelz pelt (and
Latin pellis 'fur') would then come from PIS for
water in motion. The relation to water is kept in
pelt, as verb meaning heavy raining. Leonardo
da Vinci observed that flowing water resembles
hair. The same observation may well have been
made in the Ice Age. The bear is the furry one,
having a brown fur also the brown one, and being
a wild and when attacked furious animal also
the wild one. However, the PIE etymologies are
secundary or tertiary, and apparently they did
not convince Mallory and Adams, who leave them
out in their PIE bible from 2006. I regard the problem
now as solved. My Magdalenian approach reaches
deeper than PIE. While PIE relies on sound patterns,
Magdalenian relies on semantic patterns or word
groups. Both approaches can well complement
each other. Let me finish by saying that the verbal
morphospace (of the Eurasian languages) keeps
more intact and retrievable information on the
human past (especially in the last Ice Age) than
previously held possible.

Postscript. BIR means fur, especially the fur on
which a newborn was laid. This custom may have
survived in the bearing-cloth mentioned by William
Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale, Act 3 Scene 3,
a rich cloth (or mantle or gown) in which a child
was carried to be christened. Antigonus lays
a baby on the ground, next to it a bundle containing
(as we learn later on) "a bearing-cloth for a squire's
child" and gold, then he is chased away by a bear.
May it be that some of the bearing-clothes were
made of bear hides? and is the bear chasing
Antigonus in revenge for all the bears that had
been hunted for their precious fur?

I explain bear as furry one. In Ostyak the bear
is called fur-man, in Lapp wooly one. The Norse
berserks wore shirts made of bear-skin. Old
English beorn, a cognate of bear, means warrior.
Also fear and fury and peril and perish might
come from bear and testify to the danger of
bear hunting. Bare could once have meant
skinned, a bear stripped of its fur. As fur covers
the living animal, bark covers the trunks and
branches of trees. Consider also bark barque
German Barke as protection of people against
the water on which they swim. Bast was used
for clothes in Neolithic times, hence birch
German Birke as further derivative of BIR.

Old Indic rksa meaning bear may be a combination
of ARC and RAG, suggested by words for bear in
several Indic languages. RAG means the first line
of the head and back of an animal drawn by a cave
painter, strongly evocative of the whole animal
(Leroy Gourhan). The curved line of a bear's back,
magnified by fear, could have made people see
bears in the contours of hills and mountains,
and could then account for German Berg 'mountain'.
Hypothetical BIR would have been a very productive
word.

Albanian pare Sanskrit purva Tocharian B parwe
Lithuanian pirmas English first may also be
derivatives of BIR, as Latin pario parens parentes
-- parents are the happy people who can lay
a newborn on a fur, and in later times wrap it
in a bearing-cloth and carry it to a church where
it was christened, first event in the religious life
of a Christian.

Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess.
One Porphyrios described a custom of laying
a newborn on a bear fur in the third century AD,
and the same custom survived until the twentieth
century in eastern Slavic regions, where it was
the grandmother who laid the newborn on a bear
fur. A Vinca figurine from around 4 500 BC shows
the divine mother or nurse wearing a bear mask
and holding a baby in her arms, while another
Vinca figurine from between 4 500 and 4 000 BC
shows the divine mother or nurse wearing a bear
or bird mask, and, riding high on her back, a bag
for the baby. We may then assume that mothers
living in the Ice Age carried their babies in the
same way, in a bag on their back, in a bag made
of fur, and preferably of the thick, longhaired, soft
and warm fur of a bear.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Greek Psi
    ... BIR means fur, especially the fur on which a newborn was laid ... he will name it a bear ... ... for the PIE explanation of bear as the brown one, which, in my ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Greek Psi
    ... BIR means fur, especially the fur on which a newborn was laid ... he will name it a bear ... ... for the PIE explanation of bear as the brown one, which, in my ... I can easily unite the six *bher- homonyms under BIR, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Greek Psi
    ... BIR means fur, especially the fur on which a newborn was laid ... he will name it a bear ... ... for the PIE explanation of bear as the brown one, which, in my ... I can easily unite the six *bher- homonyms under BIR, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Bear, a Magdalenian test case
    ... brown one, from *bher- 'brown', and as the wild one, ... BIR meaning fur, ... hence BIR is also the origin of PIE *bher- 'brown'. ... The bear provides the best fur, longhaired, soft ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Greek Psi
    ... BIR means fur, especially the fur on which a newborn was laid ... he will name it a bear ... ... for the PIE explanation of bear as the brown one, which, in my ... That is, in fact, why PIE theory keeps changing. ...
    (sci.lang)