Re: Magdalenian experiment (continuation)

Magdalenian BIR and English bear,
a test case, part 6

'Berg' became the word for mountain in German.
LAD for hill and comparative LAS for mountain
pose a problem. They disappeared from the
Indo-European languages. My only evidence
for LAS is AD LAS Atlas Atlantis, hypothetical
ancient name of Eurasia, the land along the
very long mountain barrier from the Cantabrian
Mountains in northern Spain to the Himalayas
in Asia. Atlas, the Greek god who carried the
sky on his neck and shoulders, obviously
personified a high mountain. In Switzerland
we have a magnificient mountain group around
the Aletsch, a mountain and a glacier, the latter
a world heritage site under the protection of
the Unesco. Geographical names in the region
may be derivatives of LAD and LAS: Lonza
Lötsch- Lütsch- -letsch-, AD LAS Aletsch ...
The name of the Valais south of the glacier
means valley or dale, from DAL, inverse of LAD.
In the Valais we have the villages of Lax and
Laden. 'Las' in the Upper Valais was the word
for water flowing down a mountain slope, akin to
auslassen, let water flow out. English let German
lassen might be derivatives of LAD and LAS,
remembering the gods and goddesses who
resided on hills and mountains and granted
water, letting it flow down the slopes. 'Glacier'
might go back to the compound GO) LAS or
GOL LAS, meaning much as edible mountain,
made of stone that can be licked, melted and
drunk, and used for cooking. From GOL LAS
we easily get to glass, a material resembling
ice. While glaciers dominated the world of the
Ice Age hunters, shining surfaces of glass
dominate the business world in our modern
metropoles. The beautiful new opera house
in Helsinki, built of concrete and glass, looks
like an artificial iceberg ...

(to be continued)

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Magdalenian BIR and English bear,
a test case, part 5

Bear comes from PIE *bher-, which has many
meanings, but all of them can be related to fur
and especially to bear fur: *bher- 'brown' -
explained before // *bher- 'weave, twine' -
the fur of a sheep is longhaired as the one
of a bear // *bher- 'seethe, bubble; roast' -
the meat of a skinned animal // *bher- 'strike
(through), split, cut' - one has to kill the animal
to get its precious fur and its meat // *bher-
'carry' - explained above // *bher- '+- cure with
spells and/or herbs' - curing a patient using
spells and a warming bear skin impregnated
with fat and medical herbs // *bheré(o) 'bear
(a child)' - explained before //*bherg- 'growl,
bark' - sounds made by a bear // *bherg-
'high, hill' - the shape of a bear, magnified
by fear, would have been seen in a hill or
a mountain German Berg. Old Indic rksa
may combine the genuine word for bear,
namely ARC, with RAG for the line of the back,
first line drawn by a cave painter according to
Leroi-Gourhan, strongly evocative of the whole
animal; RAG is present in the name of the bear
in several Indic languages. (PIE forms after
Mallory and Adams 2006)

(to be continued)

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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)
.

Relevant Pages

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