Re: Magdalenian experiment (continuation)

Magdalenian BIR and English bear,
a test case, part 4

Having good fur was important for Ice Age
people, and the best fur was provided by the
bear. Judging by its name also the boar Latin
aper German Eber provided a good fur, while
the squirrel *werwer and the beaver German
Biber may come from the doubling BIR BIR.
Latin varius originally meant: of many colors,
a fur of more than one color, wherefrom
German Farbe. Also form may be a derivative
of BIR, so we have German "Form und Farbe"
as a double derivative of BIR.

Bears had to die so that humans could live.
A painting in the cave Les Trois-Frères shows
a bear covered in dots, blood spurting out of
snout and body. The dots represent wounds,
but as phonetic ideograms also SAI for life,
existence - life for the Ice Age people who
utterly depended on fur. In autumn, a bear
eats up to 150,000 berries German Beeren.
Dutch brombeer 'growling beer' is practically
the same as German Brombeere 'brambler,
black berry'. So we may assume that a) bears
like berries, and berries were named for the
bear, or b) settlements were protected with
quickly growing bramblers against wild animals,
or c) bramble alleys were used as bear traps.
Pear Latin pire may refer to the shape of a
bear's head, round with a long snout. Hair on
the chin is called beard German Bart. Bare
could once have meant a skinned animal,
deprived of its fur (as Greek nakae 'goat skin'
became English naked). The Norse berserks
were clad in bear skins impregnated with oil
and herbs that made them go wild. English
beorn means warrior. Also war (stifle) could
come from hunting bears, idem fear, fury,
furious, ferocious, fierce, wary, ward. Peaceful
derivatives may be fair in the sense of blond,
warm, also ware and purchase, remembering
fur as a precious trading good. The same may
account for Italian per French pour German für
English for. We say brrr when it is very cold and
we need a warm coat that would have been
a fur coat in the Ice Age. A feline purrs. A bear
ending quasi hibernation lets go a tremendous
fart German Furz. A bear going to quasi hi-ber-
nation digs a hollow, which may have given
raise to the words fork (originally the bear claw?)
furrow farm farming farmer, Swiss Puur German
Bauer (while English dig comes from DIG
meaning finger, a digging stick prolonging
and enforcing a poking finger).

(to be continued)

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Magdalenian BIR and English bear,
a test case, part 3

English bear German Bär Dutch beer are
explained as the Brown One. Let me propose
a new etymology: the bear was the Furry One,
provider of the best fur, thick, longhaired, soft
and warm. The Ostyak in Siberia call the bear
Fur Man. In Lapp the animal is called Woolly One.
Also two German names or nicknames of the bear
concern its fur: Zottelbär 'shaggy bear', and petz
female petze, in fables Meister Petz. Grimm, in his
Wörterbuch, quotes one Hagedorn: "da sträubet
sich der petz" meaning: here the 'petz' bristles up,
stands on end. So petz can only mean pelt German
Pelz and Fell. These words may be lateral associ-
ations to PIS for water in motion. Leonardo da Vinci
observed that hair resembles flowing water.
The same observation could well have been made
by Ice Age people, while a linguistic connection to
water in motion is preserved in the verb to pelt
used for heavy raining.

BIR would have many derivatives, also of the
second and tertiary order. One can bear a baby
in a pouch made of fur (consider also the bearing-
cloth mentioned by Shakespeare in The Winter's
Tale, Act 3 Scene 3, a rich cloth in which a child
was carried to be christened). By analogy one
has a word for a pregnant woman: she bears
a child. Between the two ways of bearing a child
(inside and outside the womb) happens the event
called birth, a child is born, a newborn, a bairn -
the latter word appears in many variants including
a Scottish bir meaning son. Parents are the happy
people who can lay a newborn on fur. Being laid
on a bear fur was the first event in life (and being
carried in a bearing-cloth to be christened the
first event in religious life), wherefrom Albanian
pare Sanskrit purva Tocharian B parwe English
first, while Turkish bir means one. Female bears
are devoted mothers, patiently licking and fiercly
defending their cubs, and so the choice of bear
fur could also have served a psychological
reason: may a human mother care as devotedly
for her children as a bear mother for her cubs ...
Bears are sleeping through winter, they disappear
in fall and reappear in spring. Neanderthals
apparently buried some of their dead wrapped
in bear fur, a custom seen as evidence for a belief
in regeneration, and this custom, adopted by
Homo sapiens sapiens in Eurasia, would have
given raise to English bier German Bahre,
English bury and burial, perhaps also barrows
(in southern England).

(to be continued)

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Magdalenian BIR and English bear,
a test case, part 2

Magdalenian BIR means fur, especially the fur
on which a newborn was laid. This particular
meaning suggests an ancient custom, and
really, 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 a grandmother laid the
newborn on a bear fur. A Vinca figurine
from the early fifth millennium BC shows the
divine mother wearing a bear mask, holding
a baby wearing a small bear mask in her arms.
Another Vinca figurine from the middle of the
fifth millennium BC shows the divine mother
or nurse wearing a bear mask, on her back
a pouch for the baby ... Marija Gimbutas:
"The maternal devotion of the female bear
made such an impression upon Old European
peasants that she was adopted as symbol of
motherhood."

BIR belongs to the permutation group of BRI
meaning fertile. The word survives in the name
of the fertility giver BRI GID, a triple goddess,
whose other emanations are the fur giver
BIR GID and the fire giver PIR GID. Magdalenian
BRI also accounts for Sanskrit priya- Norse Fru
German Frau. English woman Old English wifman
might have meant: weaving hand, perhaps covering
a still older BIR MAN meaning something like:
she handling fur.

(to be continued)

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Magdalenian BIR and English bear,
a test case, part 1

In early 2005 I reconstructed an amazing
lunisolar calendar from ideograms in the
Lascaux cave, looked out for a matching
language, found none in literature, went
for one myself, relying on the approach
by Richard Fester, proceeded first in
a rather intuitive way, found my first
and second Magdalenian law in 2005

1) inverse forms have related meanings

2) permutations yield words around the
same meme

and my third and fourth one in early 2006

3) D-words have comparative forms in
S-words

4) important words can have lateral
associations

From then on I mined permutation groups
and lateral associations using my four laws,
established a Magdalenian dictionary, and
use it now to etymologize words from recent
languages, like for example English bear.

PIE gives *bher- 'brown' as origin of bear.
A bear is explained as the Brown One.
There are six homonyms *bher-, meaning
boil / brown / carry / cure / strike / weave
(Mallory and Adams 2006). Of the six
meanings, *bher- 'brown' fits best for bear.
However, I find this etymology not very
convincing, so I gave it some consideration,
looked up my Magdalenian dictionary and
found

BIR --- fur, especially the fur on which
a newborn was laid; ancient Greek byrsa
for fur

This peculiar meaning, imposed by the other
words in the permutation group of BRI for
fertility, suggests a peculiar custom, and really,
there was a custom of laying a newborn on
a fur, on a bear fur! So I propose Magdalenian
BIR as origin of bear and all the six homonyms
*bher-, and a plethora of further words. The
bear is the Furry One, provider of the best fur,
thick, longhaired, soft and warm.

(to be continued)

-
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