Utu

 Utu, Sun: 𒀭𒌓

According to this table, this means god, heaven + day = sun...

But, did the god sign originally mean shiny thing (sun, star)? And did the day sign originally mean "eye"? 

Because if the did, then we would get: shiny thing + eye = to see = sun? 

Makes a lot of sense...At least to me...Cause I am a Slav...Cause Slavs have Svetovid...

svet (world)

svetlo (light)

vid (sight)

Svetovid (sun god) = world, light + to see = sun  

I talked about this in my post "Svetovid"...

Thanks to @selineith for the original sun pic...

Našite

Hittite language  was by Hittites called "nešili, našili, nišili"

This, presumably means "the language of Neša", an important Hittite Old Kingdom city...

But I have my doubts about this etymology...

Here is why:

In South Slavic languages:

Naš means "our"

Naši, Našite, Našinci, means "our people, our compatriots"

Naški, Našinski means "our language"

Now I can already hear you all shouting: "WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH HITTITE LANGUAGE?!?! F*UCKING SERBIAN NATIONALIST!!!"

Well...Hittite dictionary, page 396...

So is it possible that the Hittites called their language

Našili = Naš + ili = Our + adverbial suffix

Just like in South Slavic languages we call our languages

Naški = Naš + ski = Our + adverbial suffix

Which is why, in bilingual inscriptions, Našites used "našili" to mark lines written in "our language"...

After all, Našite (the alternative name for the Hittite language that never caught on) was an Indo-European language 🙂

Sekirica

The (most likely ceremonial) battle axe "sagaris" of the Scythian period, 7th century BC. The Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (Russia)....

The sagaris (Ancient Greek: Σάγαρις) is an ancient Iranian shafted weapon used by the horse-riding ancient Saka and Scythian peoples of the great Eurasian steppe. It was used also by Western and Central Asian peoples: the Medes, Persians, Parthians, Indo-Saka, Kushans, Mossynoeci, and others living within the milieu of Iranian peoples. According to Aristarchus of Samothrace, the legendary Amazons used the sagaris, as well. In The Histories, Herodotus attributes the sagaris to the Sacae Scythians in the army-list of Xerxes the Great...

The word "σάγαρις" is apparently a "...foreign word without known etymology...but one would rather...expect Iranian origin, and it is probably a cognate to Latin secūris (broad axe) and Proto-Slavic *sekyra (broad axe)..."

Hmmm....

Slavic word for an axe is sekira (sikira). While sekirica (pronounced sekiritsa), sikirica (pronounced sikiritsa) means "little axe", from sekira (axe) with "ica" diminutive ending which put together means "small (head) axe"...

Sounds very much like "sagaris" right? Which was a small head axe on a long handle...Like Scythian battle axe...Is there any etymology for σάγαρις (sagaris) in Iranian languages I wonder...If not, is it possible that σάγαρις (sagaris) came into Ancient Greek via an intermediate (Proto) Slavic???

Anyway, It gets more interesting...Enter the Akkadians...

In Ancient Greek, the word for an axe was πέλεκυς (pelekus) and for axe handle was πέλεκκον (pélekkon)...Apparently:

"... πέλεκυς is often considered a Wanderwort (A loanword that has spread to many different languages, often through trade or the adoption of foreign cultural practices), because of the similarity to Arabic فَلَقَ‎ (falaqa) meaning to split apart which comes from Akkadian 𒁄 (pilakku, pilaqqu) meaning wooden handle; spindle, harp, which itself comes from Sumerian 𒁄 (balag) meaning wooden handle; spindle, harp; possibly a split piece of wood or wooden wedge..."

A Wanderwort you say...Well if πέλεκυς is a Wanderwort, why is σάγαρις not one too? Because

Bronze axe head, Akkadian, c. 2340-2200 BC, inscribed with owner's name. Akkadian 𒅆𒆕 "šukurru" (metal wedge, spear, axe)...Officially "not related" to Slavic sekira (axe), Latin secūris (axe) and Ancient Greek σάγαρις "ságaris", Scythian axe. 

Definitely is related...

One of the Akkadian words for "destiny" is "isqu" meaning "lot" which derives from "esēqu" (to make a drawing, to incise a relief) and specifically "to apportion lots"...Etymology of the Akkadian word from: "Luck, Fortune, and Destiny in Ancient Mesopotamia Or How the Sumerians and Babylonians Thought of Their Place in the Flow of Things"...

Which is very interesting, considering that in Slavic languages "sek" (From PIE "sek" meaning to cut) means "to cut",  and "isek" means "to to cut out, to apportion".

How are these words not related? When it comes to Ancient Greek πέλεκυς (pelekus), apparently "...some suggest that the Proto-Indo-European terms are ultimately borrowed from...Akkadian..." Is it possible that  Akkadian words with "sk" root were borrowed into Akkadian from som IE language? Considering that the "sk" root only exists in IE languages...

And interestingly, we again find link between Slavic and Akkadian...I talked about few more in my posts "Kurban", "Pelasgos", "Kaunakes", "Zib-Ba-An-Na"...

Strange...Slavic being "the youngest IE language branch" and all that...

Pop = Djed?

The main column (stake) which supported the roof in old Slavic houses was once called "djed" (grandfather). I talked about this in my post "Baba the main beam that supports the house"...

What is interesting is that in some parts of Serbia (for instance Levče area) this column was also called "pop" (priest).

The word "pop" comes from Old Church Slavonic попъ (popŭ), which from Ancient Greek παπάς (papás) meaning father...Today this means "father of the congregation" but originally this literally meant "the father of the family"...

In Serbia even today it is the oldest man in the family that officiates all the family rituals, which are many. Basically he is playing the role of the family priest...

Now in Serbian the word "baba" (grandmother) also means mother, birth giver, any female ancestor... I talked about this in my post "Baba's day"...

I wonder if the word "djed" (grandfather), once also meant father, any male ancestor...Why? Well, because of an interesting fertility ritual recorded in the Levče area of Serbia.

There is a belief there that a woman which wants to give birth to a male child has to put a placenta from the last birth on the "pop" column, pillar and say "I put you on the priest (pop) so that the priest (pop) can ask god to give me a male child".

Serbian ethnographers and anthropologists believe that this (djed/pop) column once played the role of a house idol, the representation of Dabog, the ancestral deity of all the Serbs, the tribal "djed" (Great, Great, Great...grandfather) of all.

So after Christianisation, this "djed" (male ancestor) column became "pop" (father, male ancestor) column?

Possibly...

Or maybe this comes from the fact that in the Medieval time the local "heretical" Slavic priests from the Balkans were known as "djed" and "starac" (both meaning elder), and "pop" is the literal translation of this term?

The description of the ritual from "Srpski Mitoloski Recnik - Grupa Autora"

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. 

Veliki Vetren

In 1997, a group of hunters was chasing a fox up the slopes of the Veliki Vetren peak on Mount Juhor, Central Serbia. 

Finally the fox reached the area which surrounds the peak and which is littered with giant bedrock outcrops. 

There it disappeared in a hole under one of the rocks...

The hunters sent the hound in, and when it emerged back out with the dead fox in its mouth, the hunters noticed that the fox had "a piece of ceramic in its jaws" and that it was entangled "in some rusted irons"...

Tomica Stefanović from the local museum, who heard the story from the hunters, went to the fox hole to see it for himself. And after some poking around, he managed to get out of it a bronze spearhead...

He immediately informed dr Milorad Stojić from the Archaeological institute about his find. The fox hole dig led by dr Stojić unearthed over 400 metal objects: 

Jewellery of Celtic type

Buttons with a Celtic triskelion 

But the most amazing find was a complete equipment for 14 riders. A complete cavalry unit...A Celtic cavalry unit...From the 2nd c. BC...Why was this equipment buried on Veliki Vetren?

Now who were these Celts from Veliki Vetren? Most likely Scordisci, who at that time controlled northern Balkans...Apparently according to dr Milorad Stojić, the historical sources say that Scordisci cavalry units were lead by a leader and two lieutenants. The equipment found on Veliki Vetren confirms this, as three of the cavalry sets were more luxurious than the others. 

The further digs in the area discovered that the whole top of the Veliki Vetren peak was fortified and turned into a Celtic oppidum. 

Celts built the oppidum walls around the existing bedrock outcrops which they incorporated into the walls. 

They also used large boulders to form the rest of the wall

Why would anyone want to build a fortress on Veliki Vetren? Those who controlled the Veliki Vetren peak, controlled the transport along the Morava valley below it, which was the main North-South transport route across the Balkans...

That controlling this part of Serbia was very important throughout Balkan history can be seen from the fact that remnants of 40 fortified settlements were found so far on the mountain Juhor...

So Celtic oppidum on Veliki Vetren was an important military centre, as can be seen from the military equipment found on the site, but it was also an important metallurgical centre, as can be seen from many smelting furnaces found on the site too...

Local villagers say that Veliki Vetren peak "attracts lightning"...Probably because huge amount of metal deposits, particularly slag, located in and around the Celtic oppidum...

Dr Stojić believes that the Celtic opidium was destroyed during the campaign against the Scordisci lead by the Cornelius Scipio Asiagenus in 74BC. 

Dr  Milorad Stojić published his findings in a book entitled "Veliki Vetren". He has since retired... 

When the news about the discovery of the Veliki Vetren oppidum hit the archaeological circles, it caused a sensation..."Celtic lexicon" gave it a special place in its list of Celtic sites. Veliki Vetren is the only known Celtic fort and metallurgical centre south of the Sava and Danube rivers. Way out of the "Land of the Celts"...

One of the world's leading Celts researcher, professor Vaclav Kruta, considered Vetren one of the most important European Celtic sites. 

But, promises made by the Serbian government that they will finance further digs on Veliki Vetren never materialised...No other investigation of the site was done by archaeologists and Veliki Vetren was soon forgotten...Well, by the archaeologists and the press. Not by treasure hunters who are the only people who dig around Mount Juhor today, based on numerous holes that can be seen everywhere in an around the Celtic oppidum...

Now this is amazing in itself. But it gets better...

There are many legends related to the "Devil's Town" on Veliki Vetren peak recorded in the villages surrounding the mountain. And the most famous story is the one about the "14 horsemen who came down the mountain on foggy nights and abducted young girls". 

How incredible is this??? 

Now is it just a coincidence that the archaeologists have found exactly 14 sets of cavalry equipment in the "Devil's town"? I mean the number 14 is not one of the usual mythological numbers, like 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 15, 30, 100 which are found in so many legends...14 is a very non mythological number...So the chance that this number was picked by the legend makers by chance is very very low... So what then? How old is this legend? Is it possible that it is dating to the time when "riders resided in the oppidum on Veliki Vetren" and from it, terrorised the local population in villages below? How then was it preserved to this day? Passed on from father to son in the villages surrounding Veliki Vetren since the 2nd century BC? 

Now this is amazing in itself...But it gets better...

The legend also says that the riders from the Devil's Town "croaked like ravens" which obviously meant that they spoke in, to the local villagers, foreign and incomprehensible language, which to them sounded like croaking of ravens...

Now, believe or not, in the local Serbian dialect spoken in villages around Veliki Vetren, the word for raven is "gal"...So "the Galli (Celts) croaked like Gali (Ravens)"...

What? Is this a coincidence?

Does this have anything to do with "Galli"??? You know, the Celts? 

I am not entirely sure...This could all be just a coincidence...

But:

Serbian word "gal" which means raven also means black...Black like a corvid...It is the word that gave us Kali and Cailleach...I talked about this in my post "Gal"...

This is indeed very interesting, I can hear you say. But what does any of this have to do with Celts? Particularly when we know that the Hellenistic folk etymology connected the name of the Galatians (Γαλάται, Galátai) to the supposedly "milk-white" skin (γάλα, gála "milk") of the Gauls. 

Well I don't know...

It is this picture that makes me wonder:

"Four Provinces Bringing Tribute to Emperor Otto III" is an illustration from the manuscript: "Gospel Book of Otto III" which was made around the year 1000AD.

What is very interesting is that in this medieval depictions of the people of the Holy Roman Empire, each nation was depicted with different racial characteristics: 

Sclavini, Slavs are depicted with dark skin and red straight hair. 

Germanics were depicted with pale skin and blond straight hair. 

Romans were depicted with pale skin and brown curly hair. 

And

Galls were depicted with dark skin and black curly hair. 

Was this deliberate? Was this based on what people thought Slavs, Germanics, Galls and Romans looked like at the time? Or was this random rubbish which means nothing?

If this was deliberate, is it possible that Gali once meant "people with black hair"???

I think it was deliberate, as Procopius in the 6th century AD says for Slavs: "Their skin is not very white and their hair is reddish".

Just like the depiction of Slavia in the Gospel Book of Otto lll...So I would say the rest is accurate too... 

Also, Celts which lived on Veliki Vetren came to the Balkans in the 3rd century BC lead by Brennus. Apparently: 

The recurrence of the name Brennus makes it possible that it was a title rather than a proper name. Some 19th century scholars connected the name with the modern Welsh word "breenhín", and Irish words "branán, braine, braineach" meaning "a prince, a chief, leader". There is also an Irish name "Bran" with the same meaning. 

Now in Serbian the word "bran" means to defend, "brana" means defence, "Branko" means defender...So is it possible that Celtic Bran (prince, leader, chief) and Serbian Bran (defend), Brana (defence) and Branko (defender) come from the same root? Leader's first duty is defence of his people and his land...

Also, interestingly

In  Breton word Bran means Raven and Crow. 

In Welsh, word Frân mean crow and word Gigfran means raven. Fran is in old Welsh also spelt Bran, Vran and Uran.

In Irish, word Bran means raven. 

In Serbian we have these two words: 

Bran - defend, protect, be a barrier

Vran - black, Crow

And

As early as the 12th century AD, authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth (in his Historia Regum Britanniae were connecting the name Brennus with the Welsh personal name Bran (spelt Vran, Uran, Fran in old Welsh) meaning "Crow". 

I wrote about this in my post Bran Vran...

So I don't know what to think really...

It could be all just a coincidence...

PS: Celtic raven helmet from Romania... 

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...

Teeth

In most Slavic languages "zub" means tooth. Officially it comes from Proto-Slavic "*zǫbъ" from Proto-Balto-Slavic "*źámbas" from PIE "*ǵómbʰos"... 

Hmmm... 

Sumerian word for teeth is "zú"....

Sumerian language was attested from the late 4rd millennium BC, but is probably much older. It is officially not related to IE languages... 

Based on statistical analysis (???) as we have no written sources, Indoeuropean (IE) languages starting branching out from the hypothetical Protoindoeuropean (PIE) language some time between mid 5th and mid 4th millennium BC 

Officially, Slavic languages are much younger and branched out much later, some time after the early 2nd millennium BC...

How come then Slavic "zubi" (teeth) has the same root as Sumerian "zú" teeth? Another ancient root miraculously preserved in "young" Slavic languages?

Just like words for Mind, Writing, Grain, Life, Breath, Grain devouring insect, Sickle whose roots are the same in Slavic languages and Sumerian...

Mystery...

Philistine Inscription from Ashkelon

The origin and the nature of the Philistines is now even more of an enigma. 

The recent Harvard Leon Levy Expedition excavations in the area of the port of Ashkelon recovered 18 jar handles and one inscribed ostracon made from local clay...

According to two researchers, Giancarlo T. Tomezzoli and Reinhardt S. Stein this inscription was written in Cipro-Minoan script. This is the table giving the characters from the inscription with most likely vocal values...

So far so good. 

Now the bad bit. Bad in a sense that it will take some explaining and I can't wait to hear it. 

The proposed reading of the inscription is [L] *IUDI PADI PA WEDIMI, which according to the researchers is "Proto-Slavic inscription meaning 'People, come and see'"...

I would say that wedimi could also be "say to", "teach", "pass knowledge" which are all meaning of the word "ved" (wed) which means knowledge...In which case the meaning could be people "come to pass knowledge"...

Giancarlo Tomezzoli and Reinhardt S. Stein published their findings in "The Philistine Inscription 4.5 from Ashkelon (Israel)"

We know that recent genetic data points to European origin of Philistines...

So what the hell is going on? 

The researchers are not Slavic by the way, so their nationalistic bias is out of question I think...

Ore

And this is why I will never finish my article about Enki 🙂 I was looking for a picture of Tigris and Euphrates river system when I came across the discussion about the etymology of the name Euphrates. 

Apart from a suggestion that the name comes from an "unrecorded substrate language" we also have a suggestion that the origin of the name Euphrates could be Proto-Sumerian *burudu, Sumerian urudu (copper). Which would make Euphrates "The copper river'. 

"Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical" By Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, Vjaceslav V. Ivanov

The explanation for this proposition is that Euphrates was the river by which the copper ore and metal was transported from the rich copper mines in the Maden/Elazığ region where we also find the source of Euphrates...You can read more about these copper mines in "Geochemistry: Earth's System Processes" by Dionisios Panagiotaras

Now this Sumerian word for copper is very very interesting...

"urudu, uruda, urud" (copper, metal). From "ùru" (luminous object), + "dù" (to make, apply, mould, cast)

Now the word "ùru" actually means "watchfire; light; glowing, luminous object, to watch, guard; to protect"

What we are talking about here is the watch fire, the camp fire, made to slowly burn, glow for the night....

The colour of this fire is orange-red-shiny...And so that would mean that the Sumerian word for copper literally means "something made orange-red-shiny"...

Which is basically what copper looks like...

Well if it's found as a pure natural copper...This is the first copper exploited by men. It didn't require any smelting. Just finding it, digging it, and then cold working it into metal objects...

But this type of pure natural copper is very rare...Most copper is found in different types of ores which are not orange-red-shiny. 

They have to be mined, crushed, smelted to be turned into orange-red-shiny copper, which can then be worked into metal objects...

Which means that Sumerians called copper "something we made to be "ùru" (orange-red-shiny)...

Here is the interesting bit: In Slavic languages the word for ore is "ruda" which comes from Proto Slavic word "rudъ" meaning red, which comes from PIE root "h₁rewdʰ-" meaning red (in all its hews from orange to brown) which has cognates in pretty much all IE languages meaning red...Except in Indo-Iranian languages where it means red "metal, copper" 🙂 ...

So Slavic word ruda (ore) literally means orange-red stuff...Why? Why would ore be equal to red? Well because, the first ore (stone mined to be processed by crushing and smelting) was not copper. It was ochre.

Ochre is a natural clay earth pigment which is a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. 

The most popular variant of ochre was "red ochre" which owed it's colour to large amounts of hematite, or dehydrated iron oxide...

Here is what the red ochre looks like when it's found

Iron oxide is one of the most common minerals found on earth, and there is much evidence that yellow and red ochre pigment was used in prehistoric and ancient times by many different civilisations on different continents.

The use of ochre dates to the Middle Stone Age and Middle Palaeolithic. 

The earliest evidence of its use by "Modern Humans" in Africa dates to 307,000 years ago.

The earliest evidence of its use by Neanderthals in Europe dates to 250,000 years ago...

Red ochre was mined in mines like this 20,000 years old red ochre mine discovered in Tzines, Greece...

And red was all the rage in Palaeolithic...

Palaeolithic people used red ochre for painting their skin to protect it from the sun and from insects (there are indications that red ochre is an insect and particularly mosquito repellent) and for painting pictures in caves, like this bison from the cave of Altamira in Spain, painted with red ochre between 16,500 and 15,000 BC.

There is even a theory that the red ochre directly contributed to the human evolution...

The second ore mined was cinnabar. 

Cinnabar was mined to make vermilion, the brightest of red pigments...

And red was all the rage in Neolithic...

The first documented use of vermilion pigment, made with ground cinnabar, dates to 8000–7000 BC, and was found at the neolithic village of Catalhoyuk, in modern-day Turkey. Which means that the people of Catalhoyuk were already mining cinnabar somewhere in the area at that time...Cinnabar was mined in Spain beginning in about 5300 BC. Archeologist Miloje Vasić believed that the vast mines of cinnabarite (mercury-sulfide) on Avala were crucial for the development of the Vinča culture, on the banks of the Danube in Serbia circa 5700 BC. In China, the first documented use of cinnabar as a pigment was by the Yangshao culture (5000–4000 BC), where it was used to paint ceramics, to cover the walls and floors of rooms, and for ritual ceremonies.

So the first ore was red-orange and the second ore was red...

No wonder the word for ore in Slavic languages comes from "rud" (red-orange) + da (give) = what gives us red-orange...

Around the same time people in the middle east started mining and processing native metallic copper. A copper pendant was found in northern Iraq that dates to 8700 BC...

So the third ore was orange-red...

Well this is interesting...

Wait, how old are these Indo-European words then? Could they really have palaeolithic or neolithic origin? 

And are they Indo-European at all? Does Indo-European and Non Indo-European even make sense if we are talking about Palaeolithic and Neolithic???

Considering that the Sumerian word for copper comes from "uru" (orange-red) + du (to make)...Should I mention again that Sumerian "urudu" was also spelled "uruda"? Very similar to rud + da, right??? Or was it originally ru + da??? 

Have a look at this. 

There is another Slavic word "krv" which comes from the PIE root "krewh₂-" which means "blood outside the body (as of a wound)"...What is the original red pigment? Well blood of course...

And our ancient ancestors must have had a word for it...I mean when not killing eachother they were killing animals for meat...Blood everywhere...

So logically, "h₁rewdʰ-" (red) and "krewh₂-" (blood) have to be related...Right? 

The common part for both of these PIE roots is "ru" (rew)...

Interestingly we have several Slavic words for red-orange-brown which are all based on "ru":

rud, rus, rujan, rumen...

Now that would provide the link between the PIE words for ore (ruda) and orange-red (rud) with Sumerian words for copper (urudu, uruda) and orange-red (uru)...

But maybe there is no other link here except the fact that both culture mined "the red ores"...Same experience produces the same linguistic links between red and ore without the need for borrowing...

But....

Did you know that the PIE word for blood "krv" is found as a root for some very interesting Semitic words, going all the way to Akkadian, related to sacrifices...I talked about this in my article "kurban"...

So this is very very interesting...Right?