Charioteer

Wow...This turned out to be even cooler than I thought it was when I first saw it: 

Proto Slavic word for man, čelověkъ, is derived from Proto Slavic and further down Proto Indo European words for wheel/cart/chariot and child/clan member/soldier...

Proto-Slavic čelověkъ (man), from...Proto-Balto-Slavic *kelawaikas, (child of a clan).

The first part is from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kwel- (crowd, people), from *kʷel- (to turn, roll > to travel on wheeled vehicles, settle, cultivate; town)...

In Lithuanian we have

kelias (road)

vaikas (child)

What's interesting is that vaikas comes from the PIE root weyk meaning to separate, fight, conquer, overcome...

Now in Slavic languages and Proto-Slavic we have these two words

kolo (spinning circle, wheel), kola (cart, chariot, literally wheels) 

vojakъ (soldier) which comes from PIE root weyh meaning to chase...

Put this all together and in Proto Balto Slavic you end up with

men = wheel/cart/chariot + clan members/soldiers/warriors =  Indo Europeans...

How old are Balto-Slavic languages again?

Not us

High status families in late Neolithic and Bronze Age Germany kept slaves from other tribes which were genetically unrelated to them... 

Also, analysis of strontium and oxygen deposits in bone revealed that the men remained in the community across multiple generations. The women, in contrast, were largely born outside the area – some coming from region more than 350 km away, on the other side of the Alps...

This custom of marrying women from "unrelated" clans was preserved in the Balkans until recently. Men from my paternal grandfather's village always used to marry women from villages "across the river" who were "not one of us"...

Interestingly, the article entitled "History of Diplomacy" from Encyclopedia Britannica says that:

"...the earliest diplomatic negotiations occurred during the time of the earliest tribal societies which had to negotiate marriage, trade and hunting rights."

Diplomats are sent to the foreigners as the first contact (before all other) to represent us, (stand for us,  before us). Interestingly Greek word for embassy is "πρεσβεία" pronounced "presvia" which in Serbian literally means "before all other"??? I talked about this in my post "Embassy"...

Serbian wedding customs have preserved the memory of the time when getting a woman to marry was dangerous business. Wedding parties going to get the bride from her house to groom's house are little clan armies, armed to the teeth and ready for battle. I talked about this in my post "Wedding party graveyards"...

 

Onos

Ancient Greek, ὄνος (ónos) = ass, donkey...

According to Wiktionary, etymology = uncertain. Perhaps from Pre-Greek...

Hmmmmm...I wonder what Pre-Greek language could it be?

Slavic 

"o" = on, on top

"nos" = carry

onos = o + nos = on + carry...

What are donkeys used mostly for???

Mysterious coincidence...

Big man

This is Naram Sin, The Great king of Akkad, trampling his enemies...Appropriately, the Great King is depicted as a Big Man much bigger than his dead enemies...

Akkadians and their Great Kings, succeeded Sumerians as the rulers of Mesopotamia...And in Sumerian the word for "King" (see capital K) was  "Lugal" which comes from "lú" (man) + "gal" (big) and literally means a Big Man...

Now here is something "weird"...

In Serbian, the word for people is "ljudi", from Proto-Slavic *ľudьje (“people, men”)...

In Serbian, one of the words for big is "golem",  from Proto-Slavic *golěmъ...Cognate with Lithuanian "galėti" (to be able) and Lithuanian "galià"(power, might)

So coincidence that the roots are the same in Sumerian and Slavic? Again? Just like the roots for all these unimportant words:

Scribe, Tablet, Mind, Breath, Life, Grain, Teeth, Sickle

Just to be clear, Sumerian is a language isolate and has nothing to do with Slavic languages or any other Indo-European language for that matter...So what's going on here? Who borrowed all this from whom? Where? When? Or is this just an incredible coincidence...

Mast

I was walking through the forest yesterday and I noticed that the oaks were full of acorns. I think this year could be a "mast year"...

Mast is English term used for the fruit of forest trees, most of all acorns and beach nuts, that have accumulated on the ground...

These were and still are in some parts of the world (Pic: knocking acorns for black pigs in Spain), used for fattening domestic pigs. Basically for quickly getting then build a lot of meat and fat before the first frost arrives and it's time for pig slaughter...

A mast year is when the trees that produce these fruits have a bumper crop and produce much more fruit than they normally would...Like this year in Dublin...

The English term "mast" (food for pigs) derives from the Old English "mæst" (food for pigs) with uncertain etymology. Apparently "from West Germanic; probably related to meat"...

If we go to the etymology for "meat" we find "Compare also Old Irish mes (animal feed) and Welsh mes (acorns), English mast (fodder for swine and other animals), which are PROBABLY from the same root as meat"...

Now have a look at this: Proto-Slavic "mastь", pronounced "mast" meaning fat, lard, grease. It is also found as "mas" without final "t". Derived from it are "maslo" (butter) and "maslina" (olive)...All fatty, oily things...

Also have a look at this: Proto-Slavic "męso", pronounced "meso" meaning meat, but not derived from the same PIE root as "meat"...

So 

We use "mæst" (Old English-uncertain origin) to fatten the pigs so that they can give us a lot of "mastь" (Proto-Slavic)...

Or 

We use "mes" (Old Irish-uncertain origin) or "mes" (Welsh-uncertain origin) to fatten pigs so they can give us a lot of "męso" (Proto-Slavic)...

I always found this very funny 🙂 Particularly the fact that "there are no etymological links between these words"...

For those interested in oaks and acorns and particularly human consumption of acorns here are few articles that talk about it. 

Gal

There are several words in Serbian that mean black. 

The most common one is Crn, which comes from Proto-Slavic *čьrnъ...

Then we have the word Vran...This word means crow, raven in most Slavic languages, so the literal meaning is "like a crow, raven"...

Then we have the word Garav. This word comes from the word "gar" meaning soot, so literal meaning is "like soot"...

Then we have the word "Mrk" cognate with "mrak" (darkness). 

Finally we have a very little known word Gal. It comes from Proto-Slavic Galъ, and is of uncertain origin...

I would like to talk here about this word...

In dialectic dictionaries of Crna Trava region and South Morava region of Serbia we find these interesting words:

Gal - black, dark

Gal - raven

Galica, Galja, Galjka, Galjes, Galjča - black or dark brown cow or sheep.

Galati - make dirty, black (gal)

Galin - black (gal) horse
Gal, Galić - raven, black (gal) bird

Galjan - black, dark person, negro

Galičast - black (gal)
Galovran - black (galo) crow. This one is very interesting. Because black crows don't live in Serbia...

Galka - chough

Both yellow billed

And red billed

Galobela - Sheep with black (galo) head and white (bela) body
Galoš - black (gal) string plated into hair in Serbia

In the same dictionaries we see that "kalj, kal" is the equivalent of "galj, gal":

Kal - dirt, blackness 

Kaljav, Kalovit - muddy, black (kal)

Kaloka - person or sheep with black, dark (kal) rings around their eyes

Kalušast- person or sheep with black, dark (kal) rings around their eyes

Kaljav - dirty, black (kalj)

Kaljuga - muck, blackness (kalj)

"k" and "g" and "l" and "lj" are interchangeable sounds which depend on dialect and pronunciation abilities which gives us "kal", "kalj", "gal", "galj" all with the same meaning "black, dirty"...

Interestingly we find the same root (gal) with the same meaning several other languages:

In Croatian we find

Galka, Galica - chough 

In Bulgarian we find

Gal - pitch black, dirt

Galica - Black corvid, raven, jackdaw, chough

Galata - dirt, black 

In Czech we find

Gał - pitch (black substance)

In Ukrainian and Russian we find

Galka - jackdaw

In Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Romani we find 

kala - black

In Nepali we find 

kalo - black

This is the root of the name of the Goddess Kali...

And in Gaelic we find 

"Cailleach" 

which has several very interesting meanings: 

Cailleach dhubh - Cormorant. Cormorant literally means the raven of the sea, the black bird of the sea. So Cailleach dhubh basically means "black black bird". I believe that dhubh was added later when the original meaning of the word Cailleach was forgotten. In Serbian cormorant is called Vranac, meaning black like a crow.

Cailleach - old hag winter, old woman (wrapped in black shawl), nun (in black habit). By the way this is how Romans depicted the "winter spirit":

So we have the word kal, kalj, gal, galj meaning black. 

Now, where does this word come from...

Another black bird from the crow family is rook which is in Serbian called "gačac". Here you can hear the sound of rooks. It sounds like "Ga, Ga, Ga". This is why this bird is in Serbian called "gačac", the bird that says "Ga".

One proposal is that the words "gal", "galka", "galica" used for black corvids are onomatopoeic and come from the sound all these corvids make: "ga!"... 

And then the word gal (black) would literally mean "like a bird that says ga" 🙂

This is a very very interesting word indeed...I will come back to it in few of my next posts...

Few years ago, i did this survey on FB: When you are on a toilet, constipated, and you are straining to push things out, what is the sound you are making? Does it sound like "nnnnn"? What about the sound you are making when you are pushing something away? The same? 🙂

Most people answered yes. The sound made was like "nnnnn". Made through closed teeth & mouth, tongue pressed against the back of the upper teeth and the roof of mouth...Interesting. Why? Well, why do words for "no" 🙂 in most IE languages start with "n"? Ever thought about this?

Is this an example of natural, involuntary sounds evolving into words? Is this maybe one of the oldest words in IE languages? I mean people recognised the meaning of "nnnnn" instinctively...From there to "no" is a very short step...

I would even go as far as to say that "nnnn" is the second oldest word in the word... 🙂 The oldest word in the world I think was "aaaa". You all know that word. You all used it and heard it being used 🙂...

I explained why I think so in my post "The oldest word in the world"...

I don't know which number in the top 10 oldest words in the world is "mmmm", but it is definitely close to the top 🙂. You know the word. When something is "mmmm". Like honey. The first truly "mmmm" thing humans tasted. 

I have no idea where the word honey comes from, because in most IE languages the word for honey starts with "mmmm". I talked about this in my post "mmmmm"...

Anyway...

Priapus

This is Priapus, Ancient Greek god of the male reproductive power and fertility and the fertility of nature in general. Allegedly he originated in Hellespont from where his cult moved to the Balkans and then throughout Greek and later Roman world...

Priapus was a peasant god, god of shepherds, farmers and beekeepers...For Classical Greek city dwellers he was apparently "a bit of a joke"...What else could be expected from the city people who lost touch with nature...

The Olimpians definitely couldn't stick him. They refused to allow him to live on Mount Olympus and threw him down to Earth...Which is where the archaic god of fertility should be living anyway...

It is interesting that such an obviously single role god doesn't have a name that denotes his function: fertility...The official etymology says: "Latin Priapus, from Ancient Greek Πρίαπος (Príapos), the origin of his name is unknown. The name may have originated from the Hellespont, the birthplace of his cult“

I want here to thank Aleksandar Miladinović who alerted me the fact that maybe the name of Priapus actually does denote his function. Just not in Greek. Or Latin...

Have a look at this:

Sanskrit: प्रिय (priya) – love, kindness, favour, pleasure, beloved, dear, liked, favourite, wanted, lover, husband
Serbian (Pan-Slavic): prija - what is nice, good, beneficial, pleasant
Avestan: 𐬟𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀‎ (friia) - dear, beloved, friend, well-wisher
Germanic: *frijōną - to love, to free

From PIE "preyH-" (to love, to please)

Sanskrit: याभ (yAbha) – to have a sexual intercourse
Serbian (Pan-Slavic): jeb (yeb) - to have a sexual intercourse
Ancient Greek: οἴφω (oíphō) - to have a sexual intercourse

From PIE "h₃yebʰ-" (to penetrate, to enter, to copulate)

Sanskrit: priya+yAbha=prijaba=priap - enjoy+sexual intercourse=love=procreation=fertility
Serbian: prija+jeb=prijeb=priap - enjoy+sexual intercourse=love=procreation=fertility

I presume this is quite suiteble name for a god of fertility with a giant erection...

Considering that Ancient Greek doesn't have a word for love based on the PIE root "priHós" the name Πρίαπος (Príapos) could not be of Greek origin...

Considering that only Slavic and Sanskrit have both words required to create Priapus's name, it is one either Slavic or Indian culture where we should look for the origin of Priapus...

We know about Siva lingam worship...

It could be tempting to propose that the name came to Greece from India after the Alexander's campaigns there. But I don't know of any Indian deity whose name sounds like Priap...And the dates don't match...

The first extant mention of Priapus is in the eponymous comedy Priapus, written in the 4th century BC by Xenarchus. He was already taking the piss out of Priapus at the beginning of the 4th century BC...

Greeks in Lampsacus in Asia Minor, where the cult of Priapus is said to have originated, already minted Gold staters with the ivy-wreathed head of Dionysus/Priapus between 360–340BC.

Alexander was not born until 356BC and he died during the Indian campaign in 323BC. So I don't think we should look at India as the place from where Priapus came to Greece wielding his giant dick...

So what's left?

A giant coincidence?

One last thing. Did I mention that the PIE root "h₃yebʰ-" which apparently "originally meant "to enter, penetrate" with a semantic narrowing to "copulate" can in Slavic languages be broken into "je" + "bo" = her + pierce, stab, penetrate = copulate....

Kudurru

Kudurru was a type of stone document used as boundary stones and as records of land grants to vassals by the Kassites in ancient Babylonia between the 16th and 12th centuries BCE...

The kudurrus recorded the land granted by the king to his vassals as a record of his decision. The original kudurru would be stored in a temple while the person granted the land would be given a clay copy to use as a boundary stone to confirm legal ownership...

The Kassites controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire c. 1531 BC and until c. 1155 BC. They gained control of Babylonia after the Hittite sack of the city in 1595 BC, and established a dynasty based first in Babylon and later in Dur-Kurigalzu...

The Kassites were members of a small military aristocracy. The chariot and the horse, first came into use in Babylonia at this time...

The original homeland of the Kassites is not well-known, but appears to have been located in the Zagros Mountains, in what is now the Lorestan Province of Iran...

This is interesting: The Kassite language has not been classified...Officially "their language was not related to either the Indo-European language group, nor to Semitic or other Afro-Asiatic languages, and is most likely to have been a language isolate"...

Even more interesting: "However, the arrival of the Kassites has been connected to the contemporary migrations of Indo-European peoples (Chariots!!!)"...

Even even more interesting: "Several Kassite leaders and deities bore Indo-European names, and it is possible that they were dominated by an Indo-European elite (military aristocracy!!!) similar to the Mitanni, who ruled over the Hurro-Urartian-speaking Hurrians of Asia Minor..."

Why is this interesting? Kudurru, "the gift stone". Apparently "...a word probably of Elamite origin that means both 'boundary marker' but also 'eldest son'"...This is interesting as it is the eldest son who usually inherits the land in Indo-European culture...

KUDURRU specifies WHO the land was GIVEN AS GIFT

In Serbian (and other Slavic languages) we have these two words:

KO, KUJ (who)-from Proto-Slavic *kъto, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷos
DAR (gift)-from Proto-Slavic *darъ, from Proto-Indo-European *deh₃rom.

Was kudurru more like a Indoeuropean ko+dar=who+gift?

When was Kudurru first recorded as a word? During Kassites rule or before? Maybe this is just a coincidence...

Janus

Article, in which, considering that today is the 1st of January, I would like to ask few questions about Janus, Ancient Roman god of beginnings (and ends), gates, transitions, time...and the god after which January was named...

So to start: Happy new beginning (and end)

Question 1: Why is Janus the god of beginnings? 

This is a valid question that I couldn't find answer to...Romans believe that he was the Primordial god with no parents. His main epithet, Pater, means that for Romans Janus was the first of the gods and thus their father...But why?

To understand this we need to look at the rights performed in honour of Janus. They were performed at the beginning of the Year, at the beginning of each month and at the beginning of each day...Nothing strange here, god of the beginnings...

Well...

First strange thing: Why was the beginning of the year celebrated on the 1st of January, after Winter Solstice which was celebrated on the 25th of December? 

Remember my post about the end of time (calendar) and the dead days? In it I talked about Lunisolar calendar which is at the base of Serbian ritual calendar. It consist of a Solar year, solar "kolo" (wheel) which is ever turning...This solar year has 12 full moons. The last full moon of the solar year ends on the 30X12=360th day. What is left are 5 "extra" days. Five days which lay outside of the "calendar" (koledar?). Five "dead days" as they are called in Serbia. 

Beginning of this 5 day period is the end of the old Solar year and the end of this 5 day period is the beginning of new Solar year. They are not the same day...In Serbia dead days are still marked as last five days before winter solstice (Christmas). In Bulgaria they marked after winter solstice (Christmas)...

Romans probably also did what Bulgarians do today...Which is a later change as Solar year is calculated from Winter Solstice to Winter solstice Solstice using full moons...

Janus had another epithet: Iunonius (Junonius). He was the patron of all 12 kalends (moons) from the republican calendar, which were associated with Juno. Macrobius says that: "Iunonium...not only does he hold the entry to January, but to all the months...all the kalends being under the jurisdiction of Juno"...

At the time when the rising of the new moon was observed by the pontifex minor the rex sacrorum assisted by him offered a sacrifice to Janus in the Curia Calabra while the regina sacrorum sacrificed to Juno in the regia...Why?

Well because we are talking about lunisolar calendar here. 

Solar year, which starts on winter solstice, indeed holds the key to all 12 moons which comprise it...Juno does rule the moons, small "kola" (wheels)... But Janus rules both the solar year, big "kolo" (wheel) and all 12 small "kola" (calends, wheels). 

All this points at Janus being the Solar year and Juno being the lunar month...Together they create Time...And interestingly, it is this cyclic "Time", the result of the continuous oscillating, rhythmic interplay between Sun and Earth, which drives the change of seasons. And the change of seasons is what is behind all the phenomena which we built our gods from...

This is why Janus is the god of gods...

Was he seen as Sun himself? 

Well he has another interesting attribute: Janus Quadrifrons ("Janus Fourfaced")...Why? Well, interestingly Slavic sun god Svetovid (the one who alights and "sees" everything) was depicted with 4 faces... 

Is this in anyway linked? 

Well maybe...

Here is when I will ask my second question: Why is Ianus (Janus) called Ianus??? 

No one really knows...Romans couldn't agree on the meaning of his name, which means that it had no obvious etymology in Latin. 

To me this is very very strange. The primordial god, god of beginnings, the god of new solar year, the god of new calendar, the father of all gods, if he was indeed Native Roman god as they claimed, had to have name which clearly depicted his function in Latin. But he didn't...

Interestingly (again) the name of this god of new beginnings has perfect etymology in Slavic languages...Etymology which describes his role of god of new beginnings: "Ja+Nov" (pronounced as Janov, Janow, Janou) meaning "I+New"...

Now the Slavic word "nov" (new) is an ancient PIE word with cognates in every IE language, including Italic languages, where we find "*nowos". So this part could have come from some Italic language... 

But the problem is the beginning of Janus's name. In Latin, the word for I, Me is "ego", from Proto-Italic *egō,  from Proto-Indo-European *éǵh₂. If we look at the descendants of this root, we see that the only one which sounds like "Ia" (Ja) are Slavic languages...

This of course makes no sense. If this is a coincidence, this is bloody crazy coincidence:

Fourfaced epithet of Janus - Slavic 4 faced sun god
Solstice and New Year are different days - 5 dead days, days outside calends (full moons) in solar calendar of Slavic folklore
Kalend and Great Kalend - kolo wheel in Slavic, 
Janus has no Latin etymology - Janov, Janow, Janou+s (I new in Slavic), great name for the God of Beginnings

Anyone has any idea what's going on here?

In the end, there is also a hidden message in the two faced image of Janus. 

It describes the biggest predicament of humanity: inability to be in "now"...

Every moment in time is "now", the only moment in time that really exists. Yet in every one of these moments, we are either focused on the past or on the future, completely forgetting about the fact we only exist when we are focused on that ever changing "now"...

Which unfortunately results in most of us never really existing or experiencing during our journey between our beginning and our end...

Pelasgos

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the second-century AD, who lived in the time of Roman emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. He wrote "Description of Greece" in ten books, each dedicated to some portion of Greece

One of the books was about Arcadia (Greek: Ἀρκαδία), a region in the central Peloponnese, the old and mysterious place where Pelasgians, the followers of Pelasgus, started human civilisation.

Pausanius tells us that it was Pelasgus who "invented huts that humans should not shiver, or be soaked by rain, or oppressed by heat. He also invented coats of sheep-skins, such as poor folk still wear in Euboea and Phocis." 

I talked about the history of these sheep skin coats in my post "Gown"

Pausanius also tells us that Pelasgus "introduced as food the nuts of trees, not those of all trees but only the acorns of the edible oak." He notes that still in his own time, the Arcadians were fond of acorns.  

This is one of the Arcadian coins with the depiction of an acorn:

You can read more about depictions of acorn eating in ancient texts in my post "Acorns in ancient texts".

This is very interesting because acorns were the first starch food eaten by people, before they switched to grains...

When people lived in the "Garden of Eden" which is in the Old Testament described like this

I wrote about this in my post "Garden of Eden"

In my article about Garden of Eden, I proposed that the name "Eden" comes from PIE root for eating, which would make "Garden of Eden" "Garden of edible tree fruits" like acorns, nuts, apples, pears, cherries... 

In my article "Eat to break fast" about Eid ul-Fitr, Muslim holiday feast that marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, I talked about the fact that the Arabic word Eid (festivity) could come from PIE root for eating...

The time when people lived in the Garden of Eden was to the Greeks known as the "Golden Age", which Ovid describes in Metamorphoses 1. 88 like this:

"The Golden Age (Aetas Aurea) was that first age [of mankind] which unconstrained, with heart and soul, obedient to no law, gave honour to good faith and righteousness. No punishment they knew, no fear; they read no penalties engraved on plates of bronze; no suppliant throng with dread beheld their judge; no judges had they then, but lived secure. No pine had yet, on its high mountain felled, descended to the sea to find strange lands afar; men knew no shores except their own. No battlements their cities yet embraced, no trumpets straight, no horns of sinuous brass, no sword, no helmet then--no need of arms; the world untroubled lived in leisured ease. Tellus (Earth) [Gaia] willingly, untouched, not wounded yet by hoe or plough, gave all her bounteous store; men were content with nature's food unforced, and gathered strawberries on the mountainside and cherries and the clutching bramble's fruit, and acorns fallen from Jove's [Zeus'] spreading tree. Springtime it was, always, for ever spring; the gentle zephyrs with their breathing balm caressed the flowers that sprang without a seed; anon the earth untilled brought forth her fruits, the unhallowed fields lay gold with heavy grain, and streams of milk and springs of nectar flowed and yellow honey dripped from boughs of green..."

And interestingly, the tradition arose in Greece that the site of the original Golden Age had been Arcadia, an impoverished rural area of Greece where the herdsmen still lived on acorns...

For those with dirty minds, you would fit right into Ancient Greece. The word for acorn in Ancient Greek was βάλανος (Balanos). The same word also meant glans penis (dick head)... 

Now here is something that has been bugging me for a while. The main thing Pelasgos did was to introduce acorn into human diet. Is it possible that Pelasgians just means acorn eaters??? I will try to explain why

Slavs living in the Balkans have been eating acorns until the mid 20th c. Most only during "hungry years", but some mountain populations regularly, to supplement their poor diet.

To ensure the supply of edible acorns, sweat oak forests were planted and maintained on village boundaries. Edible acorns were called "sladun" (sweat) "medun" (honney) "granica" (food)

These "sacred" oak forests were called "gaj" (cultivated forest), "zabran" (forbidden forest), "lug" (light forest) and for us particularly interesting "zabel, zabela" (???) name used in Serbia and Macedonia

In the book "Leskovački zbornik" (History of Leskovac) we find that certain forests in the area are caled zabel.

In another book called "Uzroci nestajanja šuma u Srbiji u XIX veku" (The reason for disapearence of forests in Serbia in the 19th century) we find that oak forests are called zabel, zabran in the south of Serbia. 

Another book "Скопље и његова околина" (Skoplje and its surrounding) we find that zabel is "родовскa својнa" (clan property), basically a clan, village forests which is not allowed to be cut, because it is used for the collection of acorns for human and animal consumption.

The book "Istorija seljackog društva. Deo III" (The history of the agricultural society part 3) talks about the evolution of the clan oak forests to village oak forests (zabel, zabran), and how they are used by the villagers.

In the book "Narodna književnost Srba na Kosovu", (Folk literature of the Serbs in Kosovo) we find that zabel is also called zabe and that it is a general word for a clan forest. 

In the magazine "Brastvo, broj 7" (Brotherhood) we find that zabran is called zabel and zabeo.

In "Antropogeografski i etnografski spisi" we find that the names for communal forests are branjevina, braničište, branište, zabran, zabel. 

In the book "Задужбине Косова" (Legats of Kosovo), we find that in Metohija, part of Old Serbia, the common name for protected oak forests among the Serbs was zabel and among Ghog Alabanians Gogaj. 


These were ancient oak forests left to grow between village lands or specifically planted on the boundaries of the village lands and which were forbidden to be cut. These oak forests were not just source of acorns, but also a natural habitat for wild boar, deer, rabit...important sources of meet. Every autumn villagers would go into the village oak forest and collect acorn, which was used both as animal feed and for human consumption. Each familly would collect over 1000 kilos of acorn every year which is a very significan amount of food. 

There is no etymology for "zabel". One possibility is that it comes from the fact that the sacred oaks were in Serbia marked with crosses. Like this one

These marks, and the trees on which they are made are called "zapis"

These kind of marks are also called "beleg", because of the lighter colour of the scar tissue, so it is possible that the zabel comes from za + bel = for + white, marked trees, but this is unlikely...

Ancient Greek word Balanos which means both acorn and oak comes from PIE root *gʷelh₂ (acorn) which in Greek became bel, bal. Is it possible that somehow in the Balkan mountains this word was used to build zabel = za + bel, bal = for oaks, for acorn???

Pelasgos is said to mean "Ancient", but wiktionary says that it is "likely of Pre-Greek origin" and of unknown meaning. As cognates we find Akkadian Pilistu, Palastu and Hebrew Pəlíštim (Philestines, Palestinians) 

Based on the latest genetic studies we know that Philestines came to Middle East from Europe. Based on ethnographic studies we know that in the middle east we have a sharp division on people who eat acorns: Palestinians and people who don't: Jews...

Now if we look at Pelasgos, Pilistu, Palastu, Pəlíštim, we can see that all of these names for acorns eaters start with "pel, pal". Is it possible that these names come from (pal) bal, (bel) bel + jes(t) = acorn + eat? 

"ἐσθίω" is the Ancient Greek for I eat...

"Coincidentally" in South Slavic languages where "zabel" = "za" + "bel" = "for" + "acorns" means "cultivated oak forest" we find that "jesti" means "to eat". So beljest = bel + jest = acorn + he eats = acorns eater = Belest

And interestingly, Pelasgoi was also spelled Pelastoi...Was it Pel+jest+toj (pronounced pelyestoy) = acorn+eat+they = acorn eaters?

This is very possible, as the so-called Harris Papyrus, a biography of Ramses III written under his son and successor Ramses IV, tells us that the pharaoh defeated the "Peleset" – as the Egyptians called the Philistines and other Sea Peoples early in his reign (around 1190 B.C.E.) and brought them back as captives to his lands...

Another interesting thing: in Macedonia where we find "zabel" cultivated oak forests, lowland people use "acorn eaters" as a derogatory term for hillbillies who eat acorns because their land is poor and they can't grow enough grain.

So If Pelesti (Belesti) really comes from pel, bel (acorn) + jest (eat), could Pelasgoi, Pelastois once have been used as an insulting term for the "acorn eaters" by the grain eaters?

Now have a look at this: 

Hebrew: balut - acorn
Iraq: bellut - oak, khubez bellut - acorn bread; 
Zagros mountains, Iran: Beli - acorn
Kurdish = bellot - acorn
Aramaic: bəllūṭā, ballūṭā - oak, acorn

So In all these languages root "bel" means acorn and oak...

So how does this fit with the official etymology of the Ancient Greek "βάλανος" (oak, acorn) which says that this word comes from Proto-Hellenic "*gʷə́lanos", ultimately from Proto-Indo-European "*gʷelh₂-" (“acorn”)...

Isn't it more likely that it is related to all the above Semitic words? And if so did Greeks borrow this word from the Semites?

Well I think the borrowing actually happened the other way round. Look at this:

Aramaic word bəllūṭā, ballūṭā, “oak; acorn” possibly relates to Akkadian 𒋾 (balāṭu, “to live...life-bringing trees or seeds”) and 𒄑𒁁𒀖 (be-lit, baluṭ, “a strong tree...bearing edible produce”) 

But this is not the main Semitic root meaning oak, acorn. The main Semitic root meaning oak, acorn is Akkadian 𒀠𒆷𒀭 (ʾallānu, alyānu) from Sumerian 𒄑𒀠𒆷𒈝 (allanum, “oak; acorn, acorn-shaped”)...

So how and when did "bel" (oak, acorn) come into Semitic languages??? Did it happen during the Bronze Age collapse when Pelestoi (Philestines) came to Middle East from Europe? But how do we then explain the Akkadian words with the root "bel"???

I think this is a very interesting subject which needs further investigation, don't you think?