anatomical place names...

May 03, 2007 18:53

or the coupling of Aphrodite and Hermes

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ancient history, maps, place names, article, linguistics, geography, anthropology

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chanaleh May 15 2007, 14:20:37 UTC
This is totally fascinating.

It reminds me a lot of The Word -- are you familiar with that book?

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davidfcooper May 15 2007, 16:52:57 UTC
No, I'm not, but I suspect that both are highly speculative theories. WRT the latter, Indo-European was originally a middle eastern language related to Semitic languages so it should not be surprising that they share vocabulary. The original modern human inhabitants of Europe, who in all likelihood spoke languages similar to Basque, were conquered by middle eastern Indo-european speakers who imposed their own languages on the native population. Similarly the people of Asia Minor whose ancestors spoke Hittite (an Indo-European language) were conquered by the Turks and today speak Turkish. According to the Tanakh Jews have both Hittite and Semitic ancestry.

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