PRSR An Introduction
Penis Root Special Report
An Introduction
PwR is about to start an exciting new series called the Penis Root Special Reports. These reports will attempt to trace the etymologies of various words for penis from their source in pre-history up through the present. Before we begin, a short introduction might prove useful.
A language family is, obviously, a family of related languages. In the context of the PRSR's when we talk about language families we are specifically referring to a group of proto-languages spoken way back in pre-history, and from which the majority of modern languages descend.
The basic story is this: before man domesticated plants and animals, he lived as a hunter-gatherer in small groups, widely spaced apart. Observations of some aboriginal australian populations (plus some fancy guesswork from smart people) posits that one person would require roughly 10km2 in order to achieve a sustainable existence. This number comes from the absolutely invaluable and stunningly awesome Colin McEvedy, who also gives us a population estimate for the upper paleolithic (ending c. 10,000BCE) of something just under 4 million people, worldwide[1].
Then came the sea-change. Starting with wheat and barley planting in the 9th millennium BCE, isolated groups of humans began controlling their environment, rather than living in stasis within it. The first attempts were probably clumsy, but their effects were permanent. The 8th millennium BCE saw the domestication of the goat, pig and sheep; the cow was domesticated in the 7th, around the same time stone pottery first appeared[2].
The new lifestyle that arose as a result of livestock raising and agriculture created a society in which specialization was possible. In hunter-gatherer societies, everyone hunts or gathers, but in a society where a small percentage of the population can handle food production, there is some breathing room. Professional smiths, tailors, potters and soldiers begin to appear, as does a ruling class[3]. More importantly, the excess food allows the population to increase dramatically. As that population increases, these advanced civilizations spread out, killing or assimilating the hunter-gatherers they run across and annexing their lands.
This is the recipe which sees us living in a world where the vast majority of the human race speaks languages descended from a handful of progenitors. More to the point, a world in which the proper-name for Captain McTinkles sounds eerily similiar across multiple languages. And that is where the PRSR enters the picture. It is our goal to create an etymological dictionary for the dick. A Codex of Cock if you will.
It is a weighty and massive story we wish to tell. The history of human language encapsulated in how language records the pecker. Wonders will be beheld, secrets will be unlocked, the narrative will shift between nauseatingly longwinded and preternaturally juvenille in ways that will amaze the reader for 3 or 4 seconds before they realize this has nothing to do with the search term I typed into Google!
So join us, if you will, for the adventure of a lifetime! Either that or just skip the entries marked "PRSR," because they're going to be long and boring.
Seriously, though. You really should stick around for at least one compelling reason: if your authors had any talent at all, this whole exercise would be an unimaginable waste of it! A real train wreck, and everybody loves a good train wreck!
[1] McEvedy, Colin, and Jones, Richard, Atlas of World Population History (1978)
[2] McEvedy, Colin, The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History (2002)
[3] Everyone, Any high-school history book ever written (ever)