Wheat wreath

Harvest, 1902 painting by Serbian painter Nadežda Petrović

In Labor, northern Croatia, when the last sheaf of wheat was cut, it was thrown as high up as possible in the air with these words: "God give us bread as tall as this". 

Then a wreath was made from the sheaf and wild flowers and was placed on the head of the most beautiful harvest girl. She would then take it to the field owner's house. What this girl looked like can be seen on this picture from Ukraine where they had similar ritual.

In Ukraine it was important that the girl was also a virgin. This is in accordance with many other Slavic fertility rituals which directly link female fertility and Earth fertility. Earth being "Virgin mother" is here represented by human virgin....

I Labor, the rest of the female harvesters would walk along with the girl carrying the wheat wreath singing:

We are going home, praying to god
God mighty, Bright Sun
Are you at home our lords
We are bringing you a present, a wheat wreath...

Once the procession arrived to the field owner's house, the girl would give him the wreath and in return she would get some change. Then everyone was given vine which they drink in front of the house before going in for dinner.

What this procession of harvest girls from the field into the village probably looked like in Croatia, can be seen on this 1910 painting by polish Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski entitled "Dożynki", which is what this end of harvest ritual was called in Poland.

The wreath was the central feature of most celebrations associated with dożynki, as it symbolised a rich harvest, the prospect of wealth and the power of new life vested in the grain gathered during the Summer. 

In many regions the grain from the wreath was the first batch of grain to be threshed. It was then set aside for next year's sowing and was the fist grain to be sawn. Reenactment of the threshing of the last sheaf grain, Ukraine.

The wheat wreath was also a symbol of sun, solar year and neverending cycle of death and rebirth (sawing, growing, harvesting, sawing...)

Considering that the ritual was found in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe, this was obviously once a Pan-Slavic harvest ritual...

Source for Croatian ritual:

"JUGOSLOVJENSKA ŽETVA - Običaji i obredi s uporedbama" by Ivo T. Franić

Source for East Slavic (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian) ritual

Dozinki (Wikipedia article)

Log cabin

When someone says log cabin, people immediately think of Scandinavia, because everyone knows that log cabins were invented by Scandinavians and that Scandinavians are the best at making them. But what if I told you that log cabins were a late cultural import into Scandinavia from the Slavic lands south and east of the Baltic sea?

The origin of these types of buildings can be traced to Pomeranian culture of the the late bronze age and early iron age, which developed from Lusatian culture. One of the best examples of the Pomeranian wooden architecture is the fortified town of Biskupin. Biskupin was an Iron Age fortified settlement in north-central (Wielkopolska) Poland (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship). When first discovered it was thought to be early evidence of Slavic settlement but archaeologists later confirmed it belonged to the Biskupin group of the Lusatian culture.

There are two settlement periods at Biskupin, which was located in the middle of a lake but is now situated on a peninsula, that follow each other without hiatus. Both settlements were laid out on a rectangular grid with eleven streets that are three meters wide. The older settlement from early Iron Age was established on a slightly wet island of over 2 hectares and consisted of ca. 100 oak and pine log-houses that are of similar layout and measure ca. 8 x 10 m each.They consisted of two chambers and an open entrance-area.These houses were designed to accommodate 10 to 12 persons. An open hearth was located in the centre of the biggest room. There are no larger houses that could indicate social stratification. Because of the damp, boggy ground the streets were covered with wooden planks. This is the reconstruction of one of the log cabins from Biskupin that can be seen in the Biskupin open air museum.

The settlement was surrounded by a tall wooden wall, or palisade, set on a rampart made up of both wood and earth. The rampart was constructed of oak trunks that form boxes filled with earth. The rampart is more than 450 m long and accompanied by a wooden breakwater in the lake. 6000–8000 m³ of wood have been used in the construction of the rampart.

The settlement at Biskupin belongs to the Hallstatt C and D periods (early Iron Age, 800-650 BC and 650-475 BC). However, dendrochronological analysis provided more accurate dating. It proved that oak wood used in the construction of the settlement was cut down between 747-722 B.C. Over half of the wood used was cut during the winter of 738/737 B.C.

What is very interesting is that the tradition of building dwellings and fortifications from logs was during the early Iron age found only in Pomeranian culture south of Baltic sea and not in Jutland or in Scandinavia.

The tradition of building log cabins was continued by the Central European Celts. This is a reconstruction of a Celtic house in Havranok, Slovakia.

The Havránok hill fort was an important religious, economic, and political center of the Púchov culture (300 BCE - 180 CE), in which the dominant Celtic tribe of Cotini mingled with the older people of the Lusatian (Pomeranian) culture.

In the early medieval period we find that the tradition of building dwellings and fortifications from logs was still exclusively found among Slavs living in the same area of the old Pomeranian Culture, south of Baltic sea, and further east, but not in Jutland and not in Scandinavia. As a matter of fact, the similarity between the Iron age Pomeranian log dwellings and fortifications, and Medieaval Slavic Pomeranian log dwellings and fortifications is so striking, that when Biskupin was originally discovered, it was presumed that it was a Medieval Slavic fort. Only carbon dating showed that Biskupin was in fact 1000 years older.

Here is an example of a typical Medieval Slavic fort: Chotěbuz - Podobora:

Slavs built both square semi-subterranean (sunk in) dwellings with heating devices in a corner and ground dwellings. They also used both log only and log frame with wattle doub construction technique.

Here are the reconstructions of completely sunken and semi sunken Medieval Slavic hut from Slovakia based on the actual discovered huts remains dated to the 6th - 7th century AD:

And this is what these types of houses looked like inside. Please note a built stone oven in the corner:

And here is a reconstruction of a Medieval Slavic surface log cabin, based on archaeological finds from Staré Město ("Old Town"), a town in the Zlín Region of the Czech Republic, again dated to the 6th - 7th century AD.

The same building technique using logs was unknown in Scandinavia until the 11th century, the time of the closest cooperation and intermixing between the Norse and the Slavs. This all indicates that log cabins and fortifications are a Slavic cultural import into Scandinavia.

When looking at the introduction of the joint timber houses in the Germanic areas of the Baltic, we have to look at the Jutland and other Danish areas of the southern Scandinavia separately from the Northern areas of Scandinavia. These two areas were politically and culturally separate and were linked to different Slavic tribal group. The Danes were politically and culturally linked with the Western Slavs (Polabians, Obodrites, Serbs, Poles) and the Norse and Swedes were politically and culturally linked with the Eastern Slavs (Rus). There is no wander then that in these two areas of Scandinavia we find two different types of the joint timber construction techniques.

In the Danish controlled areas, the earliest constructions of lying and crossing logs were found in the fortification rampart of Danevirke in southern Jutland, built in the 8th and 9th centuries. A similar technique has been found in a few houses in Haithabu (Hedeby) near Danevirke in the 9th century and in a well in Kaupang in Norway in the beginning of the 9th century. The type of wood used was oak which was cut lengthwise to get appropriate dimensions. The logs had a rectangular section, and the joints had both an upper and a lower notch that were rectangular. In Wollin and Gdansk (Poland), there were also joint timber houses made of oak wood, mostly built of round logs, but occasionally also of rectangular ones. The woodworking skills needed to build these houses were so advanced that they must have been developed somewhere else and then brought to Jutland. This points to the technological import from the South Baltic Western Slavic territories (today Germany and Poland) where joint timber houses were also constructed from oak wood for millenniums. The same types of rectangular oak profiled log houses were also built by Serbs in the Balkans and are still built today.

Here is an example of the advanced joint timber houses from Serbia. You can see that the oak logs were longitudinally split into beams (thick planks) which are then joined together using deep rectangular joins.

This is another house from Serbia which shows even more complicated rectangular log construction technique. This technique combines the wooden frame made out of thick square profile oak logs and thinner horizontal wooden beams (thick planks). The wooden beams with external joins are inserted into the internal joins on the vertical holding beams.

In the Norse and Swedish controlled areas, the earliest joint timber houses were found in Trondheim, Sigtuna and Olso. They all seem to be built around 1000 AD. Before that time all houses built in these areas of Scandinavia were framework buildings with wattle and daub. The woodworking skills needed to build these houses were also very advanced and again the only explanation for a sudden appearance of such advanced woodworking technology is that it must have been developed somewhere else and then brought to Scandinavia. One of the explanations is that this house building technology was perhaps developed in the Scandinavian countryside before the first towns were built. But we did not find any trace of houses built in this way anywhere in the countryside before they appeared in the above mentioned towns. I would say that this is more likely a sign that people who had long experience of using this technique came and settled in the area and built a town there. And people who did have such know-how at that time were Slavs of the old Russian kingdom. The joint timber houses from Staraya Ladoga, and Novgorod, which were built using the same material (pine logs) and the same design and technology (round joints on one or both sides) were built at least as early as the 8th century AD. As I said already East Slavs south and east of the Baltic sea were building these types of houses, from various types of wood since at least the 6th century AD. Norse had extensive political, economic and cultural contacts with the East Slavs in the old Russia for at least two centuries before the first joint timber houses (log cabins) appeared in Scandinavia. It is quite possible that some of the Slavs from the Old Russia settled in Scandinavia and it is them who brought their traditional home building technology with them.

In the work entitled: "About the Introduction of Joint Timber Building in Scandinavia", Karin Rosberg from Uppsala university argues this is exactly what happened.

In the intro to the paper Karin says that the issue of the introduction of joint timber building is old in both Norway and Sweden. Former Swedish researchers, such as Boëthius, Erixon, and Lundberg, have been very uncertain about this, and Lundberg believed it was introduced as early as during the Vendel Period, i. e. 550-800 AD. A few decades later, Hauglid in Norway assumed, with some caution, that it was introduced by king Harald Hårdråde in the middle of the 11th century.

She then proceeds to explain where and when the earliest joint timber houses and other structures were built, after which she describes similarities and differences between the Slavic and Scandinavian joint timber techniques for building houses. Finally this is what the author of this work thinks about the reason why the Scandinavians adopted joint timber building so late (1000 AD), even though they were for centuries in contact with Slavs who built the joint timber houses and fortifications?

"As I said before, joint timber building has very good heat qualities, which is needed in the Scandinavian climate. Accordingly, one would expect the Scandinavians to be quick to adopt a solid building technique which would also save much work with wood cutting for heating. And they did so at last, and the heat qualities were certainly an essential reason for joint timber building dominating in Scandinavia for about 900 years. But they did not adopt it until such a long time had passed as 200 years. Why? I suggest the reason for the delay was cultural. The Scandinavians readily adopted foreign dress fashion and consumer goods, but not so readily foreign housing. They probably had much of their identity in the houses, especially in their dwellings. The house shows who is the owner, and for the Vikings an old family was important. So a traditional Viking long house could be associated with an old and impressing family. In addition, for the Vikings their house was a sacred place and had a religious dimension. Such things made the housing more conservative than other cultural features. There are theories, expressed by Rapoport, about socio-cultural factors having a considerable impact on house form, and about house form having a considerable degree of constancy due to culturally linked aspects. These theories point in the same direction as my suggestion. Towards the end of the 10th century, the cultural difference between the Scandinavian and Slavic peoples decreased. (My comment: This happened due to a long period of political cooperation and cultural and physical mixing (intermarrying) between the Scandinavians and the Slavs. This eventually lead to the large Slavic settlement in Scandinavia and equally large Scandinavian settlement in the Slavic countries). Eventually they both—or at least parts of them—converted to Christianity. All this probably made the Scandinavians more ready to adopt the Slavic joint timber house building tradition. "

But once the Scandinavians did start making log cabins, they made them their own, to the point when today everyone thinks that joint timber log cabins are a native Scandinavian tradition. So much so that today even Slavs believe that they borrowed the technology for building their own joint timber log cabins from Scandinavians. Funny how things like this happen.

The below picture shows a typical joint timber log cabin from Scandinavia (Stockholm). Please note that it uses the same horizontal beam joining constriction technique like the first hose from Serbia that I showed above.

If anyone has any additional info on the development of the joint timber log cabins please let me know. 

As old as a tree

My son found some dead flies lying on the windowsill yesterday. He asked my wife what killed all these flies and she told him that flies only live for a few days and then they die "of old age". 


This made me think of trees which can live for hundreds and even thousands of years. To trees we probably look as short lived as the fruit flies look to us. Generations of people are born, live and die during the lifetime of a tree. People can live a long time, some can live a very long time, but even these longest human lives are just blips in lives of trees. 

I think that this is why the word for "ancient, primeval" in Slavic languages is "drevan". It comes from the same root that gave us the word "drvo, drevo, derevo" meaning tree. So "drevan" would then literally mean "as old as a tree"...

I love my language... :)

Fireflies

Fireflies light up the Midsummer night. This is just one of many amazing photos of fireflies taken by the Japanese photographer Yuki Karo. You can find them on his photo blog here. 

In the Balkans, fireflies come out around the time of the summer solstice. South Slavic words for firefly are "svitac", "svitnjak", "svijetnjak", "svitaljka", "cvitnjak", "kris", "krijes", "kres", "kresnica"...These are also the names used for fires and torches which are lit up on the shortest night of the year, as part of the Slavic summer solstice celebrations...

Happy Summer Solstice

Forest - the shushing place

In Serbian there are many words for forest. The most common word is "šuma". I love this word. It shows how old the Serbian language is and how rooted in nature it is. In Serbian word "šum" means rustling noise, shushing "šššš" "sh" noise, like the noise made by leaves blown and rustled by wind. The same sound is made by animals walking on fallen leaves or moving through the bushes in the undergrowth. 

Here is the sound I am talking about:

1. Light wind rustling sound 
2. Strong wind rustling sound
3. Animals walking on fallen leaves
4. Animals moving through the bushes in the undergrowth

All these sounds are made by leaves, eather on trees or on the ground. The sound is in Serbian called "šum" and the action of making this sound is "šumoriti, šumeti" but also "šuškati" and place where this sound is most heard is called "šuma", the place that makes "šum", the "šu" sound. So word šuma comes from šu + ima = shishing + has = what has a shushing sound, forest or just from šum - a = the shushing place. This is a great example of how words developed from natural sounds.

What is very interesting is that in Armenian "xshum" or "hshum" is the word which means the noise the leaves make when rustled by the wind and the word "ashun" means autumn, the time when dry leaves fall on the ground, the "shushiest" time of the year. 

Central Serbia was until the end of the 19th century covered with ancient oak forest, one of the last ancient oak forests left in Europe. Because of this, the whole area was called "Šumadija" meaning the land of forests.

Oaks

Have you ever wondered why oak trees and oak groves were considered sacred in the past? In the next couple of posts I will talk about oaks, acorns, and people who worshiped Oaks and ate acorns. I hope you will enjoy the story.

I will start with Oaks.

Oaks are the most widespread trees in the world. They belong to the family Fagaceae, native to the Northern Hemisphere. This plant family also includes beeches, chestnuts, and chinquapins. Fagaceae are woody trees and shrubs whose nut is enclosed in a shell-like casing. The Fagaceae family originated in Asia, first appearing in the fossil record during the Early Cretaceous, more than 100 million years ago. Subsequent radiation toward Europe and North America produced geographic dispersion as well as divergence of genera. The extinct genus Dryophyllum, one of the earliest known Fagaceae, is believed to be the ancestor of modern oaks.

Based on molecular genetics analysis, the genus Quercus is estimated to have separated from Castanea about 60 million years ago. Oaks first appear in the fossil record in North America during the Paleogene between 55 to 50 million years ago. Most interspecific separations occurred within the Quercus species between 22 and three million years ago. During this period, oaks became the most dominant tree type in the Fagaceae family.

Depending on the classification scheme, there are somewhere between 450 and 600 oak species; one of the chief points of confusion is the taxonomic status of many hybrid oaks. North America contains the largest number of oak species, with approximately 90 occurring in the United States. Mexico has 160 species, of which 109 are endemic. The second greatest center of oak diversity is China, which contains approximately 100 species. However all the oaks can be divided into two broad sub groups: white oaks and red and black oaks.

The white oaks of Europe, Asia and North America. Acorns mature in 6 months and taste sweet or slightly bitter; The inside of an acorn shell is hairless. The bark is light in color, gray to light gray. The leaves mostly lack a bristle on their lobe tips, which are usually rounded.

The red and black oaks of Europe Americas and Asia. Acorns mature in 18 months and taste bitter to very bitter. The inside of the acorn's shell can be hairless but is in most cases woolly. The bark darker in color. Its leaves typically have sharp lobe tips, with bristles at the lobe tip.

The greatest concentrations of oaks are between subtropical and middle-temperate climate regimes. Further north than this, conifer species typically become dominant; further south, oaks cannot successfully compete with taller trees of tropical rainforests with respect to sunlight, and in some cases due to intolerance to high rainfall combined with high temperatures. Many oaks occur as top level canopy species, but an equally large number are shrubs or sub-canopy level associates.

In Europe, fossil pollen evidence indicates that during the last Glacial Maximum (20 000 years ago), oak species were confined to three main Pleistocene refugia in southern Europe, in Iberia, Italy and the Balkans, and it is believed that oak started to emerge from these refugia as the ice caps began to retreat at the beginning of the Holocene, 12 000 years ago. Since then oak trees have been an important element of the vegetation of much of Europe. The common presence of oaks in forests throughout prehistory is evidenced by the numerous charcoal fragments found within the archaeological record of most prehistoric cultures. In the Boreal period, 9000 - 7500 years ago, mixed oak forests increasingly dominated the forest landscape. Mixed forests expanded from the floodplains into their current range and then gradually transformed to acidophilous (acid loving) oak forests. A new type of forest, in which beech and fir were the dominant species, spread and became dominant in the Subboreal period, late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, 5700–2600 years ago. However, the process of the degradation of mixed oak forest and the spread of modern forest communities did not happen everywhere at the same time and with the same effect. For instance in Central Serbia, ancient oak forests survived until the 19th century giving the place its name "Šumadija" meaning the land of forests.

There is a strong association between human civilisations and oaks, beginning at least 30,000 years ago in Europe and Asia, and 14,000 years ago in North America. The reason for this is that oak is one of the most useful trees in the world.

Oak trees are hardwoods which means that they are strong and hard yet easy to work with. In addition, oak wood is one of the most dense naturally occurring materials, while high content of tannin makes it resistant to both fungal diseases and insects. Because of all these properties, oak wood has been used since ancient times for general construction purposes as roundwood for pillars and split for planks for flooring and furniture. Oak is also used to make shingles for traditional roof construction. In Slavic countries Oak has been the main wood used for house and furniture building since neolithic times. This is an example of a traditional house from Montenegro which contains storage for animals, carts, and tools on the ground level and living spaces on the upper level for the family. The ground level walls are constructed using stones and two wooden reinforcing bands made from oak for stabilisation as well as portions made with oak timber and planking. The upper level walls are constructed using oak timber frame with wattle and daub covered with a plaster material. The covered exterior stair and gallery are typically found in the region. The roofing is framed with oak wooden rafters and purlins and covered with oak wooden shingles (šindra)

Because of its toughness and water and rot resistance, oak has also been used to make agricultural tools like ploughs (19 century Serbia):

 
as well as waggons (20th century Croatia).

 
White oak wood is water and rot resistant but also waterproof and was used for making kitchen utensils such as serving bowls and other liquid containers such as casks, butter churns, bread kneading and washing basins, chopping boards...

For the same reason white oak was used for boat and ship building since the neolithic times. The earliest boats were dugouts made from single oak or linden trunks. In Slavic countries oak dugouts were still being made in the 19th century, like this one from Serbia:

 
Oak wood is extremely good firewood. Dense hardwoods like oak have a higher energy content per cord and so release more heat per firebox load. They also produce long-lasting fires and coal beds. This makes them ideal for domestic heating but also as the source of heat in metallurgy particularly in iron working.

Oak is particularly good for making charcoal. Charcoal is a light black residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from wood, mostly oak. Charcoal is a light black residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from wood, mostly oak. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen. Historically, production of wood charcoal in locations where there is an abundance of wood and dates back to a very ancient period, and generally consists of piling billets of wood on their ends so as to form a conical pile, openings being left at the bottom to admit air, with a central shaft to serve as a flue. The whole pile is covered with turf or moistened clay. The firing is begins at the bottom of the flue, and gradually spreads outwards and upwards. The logs burn very slowly and transform into charcoal in a period of 5 days' burning. The massive production of oak charcoal was a major cause of deforestation, especially in Central Europe. The same traditional method of making oak charcoal is still used in the Balkans. These are burning charcoal piles in Bosnia, present time:

Oak bark is also rich in tannin, and is used by tanners for tanning leather. Tanning is the process of treating skins of animals to produce leather, which is more durable and less susceptible to decomposition. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name (tannin is in turn named after an old German word for oak or fir trees, from which the compound was derived). This picture is showing bark peeling from a cut down oak tree:

Oak apple or oak gall is the common name for a large, round, vaguely apple-like gall (outgrowth) commonly found on many species of oak. Oak apples range in size from 2–5 cm in diameter and are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall wasp in the family Cynipidae. The adult female wasp lays single eggs in developing leaf buds. The wasp larvae feed on the gall tissue resulting from their secretions.Oak galls have been used in the production of ink since at least the time of the Roman Empire. From the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, iron gall ink was the main medium used for writing in the western world.

Oak is also, with beech and birch, a host to one of the most important fungi in the world, Fomes fomentarius. Fomes fomentarius, commonly known as the tinder fungus, false tinder fungus, hoof fungus, tinder conk, tinder polypore or ice man fungus, is a species of fungal plant pathogen found in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. The species produces very large polypore fruit bodies which are shaped like a horse's hoof and vary in colour from a silvery grey to almost black, though they are normally brown. It grows on the side of various species of tree, which it infects through broken bark, causing rot. The species typically continues to live on trees long after they have died, changing from a parasite to a decomposer.

Though inedible, F. fomentarius has traditionally seen use as the main ingredient of amadou, a material used primarily as tinder. Tinder is the material used to catch the spark in primitive fire making and also to transport fire across long distances. Tinder fungus can smolder for days preserving the amber alive.

The 5,000-year-old Ötzi the Iceman carried four pieces of F. fomentarius, concluded to be for use as tinder. It also has medicinal and other uses. F. fomentarius has a circumboreal distribution, being found in both northern and southern Africa, throughout Asia and into eastern North America, and throughout Europe, and is frequently encountered. The species most typically grows upon hardwoods. In northern areas, it is most common on birch, while, in the south, beech is more typical. In the Mediterranean, oak is the typical host.

Mixed oak forests and oak savannahs are also ideal growing ground for numerous edible mushrooms. Some of them grow on fallen trees and stumps, some near the roots, some under the foliage. Different species ripen at different times of the year. Depending on the climate there is at least one type of a mixed oak forest mushrooms that can be harvested pretty much at any time of the year, but the main mushroom season is from late spring to late autumn. Mushrooms would have been one of the main food sources during this time as they are easy to collect and prepare and would by themselves provide enough protein in the diet. The main types of mushrooms which grow on or around oaks are: truffles (tartuf or gomoljača in Serbian), porcini (vrganj in Serbian), lumpy bracket (Jelenovo uvo or hrastov žbunac), Caesar's mushroom (jajčara or rujnica in Serbian), royal bolete (kraljevka in Serbian), the miller or the sweetbread mushroom (brašnjača in Serbian), russula (medena, medenka in Serbian). My favourite is porcini (vrganj in Serbian). Balkans is the home of the giant porcini mushrooms which grow in oak savannahs. Me and my brother used to make a lot of money every year from picking mushrooms in forests. Once when we were 10 and 8, while picking mushrooms with my father on mountain Vlasina in the south east of Serbia, we found a truly giant one which was over half a meter in diameter and over 4 kilos in weight. Unfortunately I don't have any picture of this mushroom, but here are some other giant vrganj (porchini) mushrooms found in Serbia and Croatia:

Oak doesn't lose all the leaves during the winter like other decidious trees. The leaves turn golden but stay on the branches until spring.

In the Balkans at the end of October farmers used to cut the outer branches of young oak trees, specifically grown for this purpose in thickets, and store them in stacks for fodder to feed livestock during the winter. This practise is in English called polarding. Polarding produces "pollard hay", basically dry branches with lots of dry leaves, which are used as livestock feed. The trees are pruned at intervals of two to six years so their leafy material would be most abundant. Apart from oak, ash branches are also cut for this purpose. In Serbian this "pollard hay" is called "lišnjak" or "šuma". The branches are cut and then dried for two days. They are then collected in armloads and brought to the specially prepared stake called "stožina", "stožer" where the armloads of branches are placed around the central stake, leaves towards the stake, in the same way you would place armloads of hay or wheat. As they are laid down, the branches are compressed by standing on them. In the end the top of the stack is covered with fern and hay and thick oak branches with leaves turned outward. This type of fodder is used for feeding sheep and goats during the second part of winter when other animal food like hay is running low. In Croatia Lamb is sacrificed at the beginning of the oak polarding and eaten communally by the men who do the branch cutting. Polarding is considered dangerous, probably because the oak is considered sacred and cutting oaks is activity that brings bad luck. This is a picture of stacked "lišnjak":

The oak inner bark, as well as the inner bark of certain trees like cedar, poplar, linden (basswood, lime), sweet chestnut, willow, elm can be used to make excellent cordage... Tree bark is made up of two portions, the inner bark or phloem (which passes the sugary sap around the tree), and the outer bark, which acts as the waterproof skin of the trunk, protecting from disease and extremes of temperature. The bit that is good for making cordage is the inner bark. It consists of long interwoven fibres that form an interlocking weave. It peels readily from the tree and is easy to work with. Bark from dead limbs provides the best material. The best dead limbs are ones that have been dead for a week or two. Any longer and the bark will have dried out a lot. The inner bark cordage is very strong and durable and it stays flexible without cracking when bent when dry.

Oaks were also used as medicine for millennia. Oak was used to treat bleeding, tumors, swelling and dysentery as well as a diuretic and as an antidote to poison. Snuff made from powdered root was used to treat tuberculosis. The leaves have been employed to promote wound healing. Oak has been used as a Quinine substitute in the treatment of fevers. Tannins provide many of the healing properties of oak. Tannins bind with proteins in tissues, making a barrier resistant to bacterial invasion. Tannins strengthen tissues and blood vessels. They reduce inflammation and irritation, especially of skin and mucus membranes.The plant parts used for healing include the inner bark, root, leaves and acorns. Modern scientific research confirms that oak possesses the following healing properties: astringent, fever reducing, tonic, antiseptic, anti-viral, anti-tumor, and anti-inflammatory actions. In addition, oak has been used to get rid of worms and other parasites.

You can see from all of this that Oak is something of a wonder tree. But the best part is yet to come. Acorns. Oaks produce acorns, a lot of them. Squirrels, deer, wild boar love to eat acorns, sometimes to the point of acorns being 25% of their fall diet.

 
Which makes oak forests ideal hunting grounds for early hunters who hunted with fire hardened spears made from oak or ash like this one.

But people were not going to watch all those animals munching acorns without trying acorns themselves. The rest is history....Acorns have been eaten by humans since at least late Paleolithic times right up to modern times. And I will write about acorns and acorn eaters in my next few posts.

Warmth - Fire - Sun

I would like to present here an amazing word cluster which I have found in Serbian and Irish. The word cluster is related to heat (warmth), the most basic sources of heat and the most basic uses of heat. The fact that this word cluster relates to such basic terms, suggests that it originated very early, maybe even in Neolithic and maybe even in Paleolithic time. Apart from Serbian and Irish, this word cluster is found in part in other "Slavic" languages and in traces in other "Celtic" languages. I would really appreciate any additional information regarding the existence of the words from this word cluster in other languages. 

Heat is extremely important for sustaining life. Without heat there is no life. But the amount of heat has to be just right. Too little heat and the water in our bodies freezes, the chemical processes in our bodies stop and we freeze and die. Too much heat and the water in our bodes evaporates, the chemical processes in our bodies go our of control and we burn and die. The main source of heat in our solar system is the Sun. The reason why there is no life on the planets which are closer to the Sun than Earth is that the amount of heat that reaches them from the sun is too big. On those planets the Sun in the sky is a "blazing scorching ball of fire". The reason why there is no life on the planets which are further from the Sun than Earth is that the amount of heat that reaches them from the sun is too small. On those planets the Sun in the sky is at best a "cold white disc" and at worst a "cold white speck". Luckily the Earth is at the "just right" distance from the Sun so that the amount of heat that we get from the Sun is "just right" to sustain life. On Earth the Sun in the sky is "that warm thing which heats us up".

In Serbian we have these words and expressions related to the Sun and and heat: 

grejati, grijati - to heat
greje, grije - it heats, it warms.
greje nas, grije nas, greje ni, grije ni - heats us, warms us
sunce grane - sun appears, dawns, starts warming
sunce greje, grije - sun heats, sun warms
sunce sine - sun starts shining
sunce sije, sija - sun shines
grejan, grijan - heated, warm

In Irish, the Sun, the main source of heat is called "grian", which in Serbian literally means heated, warm. The sun, "grian", is "that warm thing in the sky", the source of heat which "grije nas" warms us.

Official etymology for the Irish word grian states that the word comes from  Old Irish grían, from Proto-Indo-European *ghreinā, from Proto-Indo-European *gher- (“to shine, glow; grey”)" which of course has nothing to do with burning and heating.  

This makes absolutely no sense. Two major sources of light on earth are the sun and fire, both generating light through burning and producing heat at the same time. Can someone please explain to me how can the name for the Sun, which is yellow - orange, hot, bright, alive (like burning fire), and which gives off both heat and light (like burning fire), be logically derived from the same root used for color grey, which is cold, dead? Gray ash is what is left after fire dies and there is no more light and heat. Does anyone really think that ancient people would do something like that? Even natural shiny grey objects, like moon, stars are linked with cold, night and darkness, not heat, day and light. And all man made grey shiny objects like metal and mirror reflect light, they don't generate it. Plus all the man made shining grey things are much younger than the word for sun. This why I don't agree with the official etymology for the word "grian" and why I think the word "grian" meaning sun, comes from "grije" meaning heats and ultimately from gar, gor meaning fire, burning.

Now someone pointed to me that the above official etymology has changed. Now we read: 

From Proto-Celtic *grēnā. Further etymology uncertain. Possibly from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰer- (“to be warm, hot”).

Matasović reconstructs Proto-Celtic *gʷrensnā, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰrenso- (“warm”) (whence Sanskrit घ्रंस (ghraṃsa, “heat of the sun”) and Proto-Celtic *gʷrensos, whence Middle Welsh gwres (“heat (of the sun, fire)”), compare also Proto-Celtic *gʷrīns, whence derived *gʷrīnsā > grís (“heat (of the sun), fire, embers”).

Now this is more like it. But interestingly this PIE root can be derived from Slavic "grije" (heats) which is not even mentioned as a cognate :) Why?

But the heat that reaches the Earth from the Sun is not always and everywhere the same. Depending on the longitude and altitude, the time of the year and time of the day, the heat given off by the sun can vary dramatically. As a consequence the outside temperature rises and falls. If the outside temperature becomes too high or too low, this can severely affect the biochemical processes in our bodies. This is why the living beings had to develop extremely complex heating and cooling systems and processes in order to regulate their body temperature in a constantly changing temperature of their living environment. 


Like most of the other higher animals, humans developed ability to produce their own heat from food and to warm their own bodies. But producing heat is extremely energy consuming. The colder it gets, the more heat needs to be produced to heat the body up and more food needs to be consumed to sustain this heat production. The problem is that the colder it gets, the less food there is to be eaten. This makes survival in the cold climate very difficult and this is why originally most people lived in warm and temperate areas where it never gets too cold.  

But even in warm and temperate areas it sometimes gets cold. In a cold environment, most of the heat produced and distributed in the body leaks out into the surrounding through the body surface. Animals developed thick furs which insulate them from the environment and prevent the leaking of the body heat out through the body surface. Animals also cuddle, huddle, hug, pile up, get close together, lie on top of each other, to minimize the total surface through which the heat can escape and to maximize the usage of the body heat of the whole group.

People also developed body hairs, but they were nowhere near as good as animal furs in insulating the body from the cold. But luckily humans also developed large powerful brains which allowed them to figure out many different ways to wrap, cover their bodies and prevent the body heat from leaking into the environment. First people also cuddled, huddles and hugged, piled up together and on top of each other. Then they realized that they can also pile dried leaves, grass, moss, branches on top of themselves to create insulating shelters. Eventually humans invented sharp and pointy tools with which they killed fury animals and skinned them. To skin the animal you scrape its skin off using a sharp blade. In Serbian the verb to scrape, scratch is "krz", the word "krzano" means scraped, and the word for fur is "krzno", which literally means what you scrape off the animal. Once the fur is scraped off the animal body and once it is cleaned and tanned to prevent rotting, the fur can be wrapped around the body to stop the body heat from leaking into the cold environment.

Wrapping your body with animal fur as a way of keeping warm is so efficient that it continued to be used almost unchanged until today.


The national library of Aurstralia has these great images of Aboriginal people wearing animal skins to keep themselves warm in the 19th century. 

And here is a picture of a Romanian shepherd today, wearing animal fur cloak (kabanica) and fur hat (šubara). 

People then developed ways to harness wool and other plant and animal fibers and produce cloths and clothes to complement animal skins as insulators, but the idea was still the same: wrap yourself tight with insulating materials to prevent body heat from leaking out. Cover yourself with insulating materials. Get close together, push together, huddle, cuddle, hug, pile up to minimize the group body surface and maximize the usage of the body heat of the whole group.

Irish word "gar" means near, nearness, proximity, get close. In Scots Gaelic the same word "gar" means warm. In Irish the word "gor" means warmth. In Breton the same word "gor" means burning and in Welsh the word "gwrês" means heat and "*gorô" means I warm. The word "gar" is a root of the word "garadh" which means warm, from people huddling close together for warmth. In Scots Gaelic the word "gar" also means us. Us, close together, huddling for warmth...

In Serbian, Czeck and Polish we have all these words which relate to closeness and movement from and to closeness, which seem to all come from the same root:

g(a)r, g(u)r = put close to, next to, press, push, move closer, move towards. 

Serbian: gariti, gurati - push

Serbian: grnuti, grtati, grliti - gather, bring close together, hug

Polish: garnąć, gartąć - gather, bring close together, rake, cuddle, grab, hug

Serbian: ogrnuti, ogrtati - wrap around. ogrtač - robe, cape
Polish: ogarnąć - embrace, encompass. encircle, invade, wrap around, cloth
Czech:  ohrnout - Wrap, roll

From o + gar + nj + ti = around + put next to + it + you

Serbian: zagrnuti, zgrtati - cover it, wrap it. 
Czech: zahrnout - cover, cover with earth, fill, comprise , embrace, include, smother
 
From za + gar + nj + ti = on, after + put next to + it + you

Serbian: nagrnuti - push press through. 
Czech: nahrnout - pile up , heap up , mound
 
From na + gar + nj + ti = on + put next to, press against, push + it + you =

Serbian: odgrnuti, odgurnuti - uncover, push away, clear (away)
Czech: odhrnout - remove, plow off/away, open, draw aside, clear (away)


From od + gar, gur + nj + ti = from + close to, next to, press, push, move + it + you

Czech: vyhrnout - push away, rake out, bulldoze away, roll up 

I am wandering if the root for the above words was "gar" which lost "a" in Serbian and Czech or "gr" which got "a" added in Polish and Irish? The reason why I believe that the original root was "gr" are these words in Sanskrit: 

गृह्णाति (gṛhṇāti) - take, hold,grasp, understand, take back, claim, pick, approve, put on, lay the hand on, grapple, follow, take possession of, receive into the mind, captivate, observe, abstract, imprison, undertake
गृभ्णाति (gṛbhṇāti) - obtain, admit, undergo, include, take away, consider as, pluck, begin, mention, take on one's self, gain over, recognise, choose, overpower, apprehend, understand, keep, take back, draw water, put on 
रभ् (rabh) - clasp, embrace, desire vehemently, take hold of, grasp, wish to embrace, take hold of, keep fast, be grasped or clasped, firmly grip or grasp, seize, lay hold on

The first word is the equivalent of the Serbian word grnuti. The second is the equivalent of the Serbian word grabiti, to grab. The third word is the equivalent of the Serbian word rabiti, to use. Is it possible it comes from g(a)r + rab = bring close, get close, move towards + take, use? Or maybe from ga + rab = him, it + use, take?

Also we have the word "grupa" meaning group. In Serbian we have words hrpa, vrpa, rpa all meaning pile. Is it possible that the word grupa comes from g(a)r + rpa = pul, push close together, get close together, be close + pile? Even the official etymology which you can find in the above link says that the word relates to the meaning pile, so it is quite possible that I could be right.

So originally people stayed warm by exposing themselves to the sun or by huddling together or wrapping themselves with insulating materials like furs and clothes. Then later they started using fire. They were still wrapping themselves with clothes and animal furs, and they will still huddling and cuddling together, but now they were doing this while sitting around the fire.

And in Serbian and Irish we find that the words related to fire, burning, heating using fire have the same root found in the words for sun, heat and getting close together, root gr (gar, gor, gur). 

Serbian word comes from Proto Slavic гореть (goreti) - burn

From Proto-Slavic *gorḗti to burn.
Church-Slavonic: горѣти, горю (gorti) - to burn
Russian: гореть (goret) - to burn
Ukrainian: горiти (goriti) - to burn
Bulgarian: горя́ (gorja) - to burn
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian: го̀рети (goreti) - to burn
Slovenian: goreti - to burn
Czech: hořet - to burn
Slovakian: horieť - to burn
Polish: gorący - to burn
Lusatian: horcy, *horucy - to burn

Cognates:

Lithuanian: gariù, garė́ti - burn, erupt, flaire with anger (goreti - burn in Serbian); išgarė́ti - evaporate (izgoreti - burn out in Serbian); gãras - steam (gori - burns in Serbian)
Armenian: ջերմ (jerm) - warm (gorim - I am burning in Serbian)
Prussian: gorme - heat (gorim - I am burning in Serbian) 
Albanian: zjarm - heat (s gorim - with I am burning in Serbian)


Sanskrit: ghRNoti, gharNoti, gharNute - burn, shine (goreti - burn in Serbian)
Sanskrit: gharma - warmth; 
Hindi: garam - warm; 

Avestan: garema - warm; 

Persian: garm - warm, hot (gorim - I am burning in Serbian)

Old Armenian: ǰerm - warm

We also find these fire related "gr" words in other "Celtic" languages. I would be grateful for any updates on this part of the word cluster from Breton and Welsh speakers.

Scots Gaelic: gar - warm
Breton: gor - burning
Welsh: gwrês - heat and "*gorô" means I warm

And then there are the Irish and the Serbian languages:

Irish: 

goraim -, I heat, warm, burn; bask; hatch.
gorim - warm


Serbian (Slavic):

gori - burns; goreti = gori ti = it burns, to burn
gorim - I am burning

What is interesting is that in Serbian the word "gori" means burns but also "up, upwards". 

gor, gore, gori - up, upwards

The fire goes up and the water falls down. The things go up in flame. Serbs used to burn their dead so that they can get to heaven, which is up in the sky, quicker, carried on the flames. What "gor" (burns) goes "gor" (up). Did the verb to burn come from the word for up, going up?

Irish:

gor - warmth
garadh - warm
goradh -  act of burning; blushing; heat; déan do ghoradh, take a shin heat, incubation, keeping warm
garamhail - useful, profitable, neighborly; warm, snug, friendly;
gorai - place where chicks come out of eggs
gríos - embers, hot ashes; heat; fire; pimples, blotches, spots or rash on the skin;
gríosach - aighe, pl. -acha, f., fire, burning embers; ashes containing small coals of fire; glowing
griosagh - fire

Serbian: 

gori - burns
grejan, grijan - heated, warm

gorionik - burner, torch
gorešnjak - big heat, hot weather
gorotina - what burns, burned place
gariti - to burn, to rush, to go fast
nagariti - put branches into the fire, feed the fire
garište - place where the fire used to burn
zgarište - something burned down
zgoreljak - something burned

Irish:

gris (old Irish) - fire
grios(c) - broil, grill
gríscín - a broiled piece of meat; a piece of meat suitable for broiling; the
word occurs also in a place name, Gleann Ghríscín, a townland in East Kerry, but whether
precisely in this sense is uncertain.

Serbian:

grejan, grijan - cooked

Irish: 

garr - wooden pulp
gairg, -e, -eacha, f., a cormorant, a diver, black bird.
garrail - dirty

Serbian:  

gar - hot ashes, soot
garav, garast, gares - covered in soot, black, dirty
garavilo - black color, paint
gara, garča, garka - names for black, dark animals
garvan - raven
garagan - black person, gypsy

Sanskrit: aGgara - charcoal

Irish:

garach, -aighe, id.garg - fierce, rough, cruel; bitter, acrid.
gorach - heat up, foolish, fickle; inflamed, heated.

gargaigh - make harsh, bitter; exacerbate, intensify (heat anger)
gairgeach - harsh, gruff, surly, irritable
goirt - bitter, sour, salt; sad, painful (also guirt).
gríosaim - I urge, encourage, abet, incite, provoke, exasperate.
gríosadh - act of burning, stimulating, urging; encouragement, excitement (also gríosughadh).

grís-neimh - burning venom, violence.

Serbian:

gorak, gorni, gorčaiv, gorčiv, grenkav, grk - bitter, acidic
ogorčen - angry
garaknuti, garnuti - to encourage, to provoke, to excite, to inflame, to make fire bigger

žgaravica, gorušica - stomach acid which causes burning sensation, reflux

Irish:

garán - underwood, thicket
garrán - grove
crann - tree (probably originally gran)

Serbian:

gora - forest, mountain (the thing which is tall, high and it burns)
grana, granjka - branch (of a tree), the things that burn
granje - branches, the things that burn
granjes - branched, with many branches
granjak - thicket, bushes
grm - bush, undergrowth
grmes - branched, with many branches

ugarak, ugarci - smoldering branches

ogrev - firewood

Old Norse: grein - branch; old Prussian: Garrin, garrjan - tree

I love this sentence in Irish: garrán (grove) is the place where we find lots of crann, originally probably gran (trees). Trees are made from garr. When crann (tree) is put into griosagh (fire) it gives us gorim (heat) and turns to grios (hot ashes) which you can use to grios(c) (cook).

I don't know about the rest of the Indoeuropeans, but the Irish (Celts) and the Serbians (Slavs) seem to have spent a lot of time together huddled around fires talking about warmth to develop this kind of word cluster....

I have left my favorite words from this cluster for the end of this post. 

Slash-and-burn is an agricultural technique that involves the cutting and burning of plants in forests or woodlands to create fields. It is subsistence agriculture that typically uses little technology. It is typically key in shifting cultivation agriculture, and in transhumance livestock herding.

During the Neolithic Revolution, which included agricultural advancements, groups of hunter-gatherers domesticated various plants and animals, permitting them to settle down and practice agriculture, which provides more nutrition per hectare than hunting and gathering. Due to this decrease in food from hunting, as human populations increased, agriculture became more important. Some groups could easily plant their crops in open fields along river valleys, but others had forests blocking their farming land.

In this context, humans used slash-and-burn agriculture to clear more land to make it suitable for plants and animals. Thus, since Neolithic times, slash-and-burn techniques have been widely used for converting forests into crop fields and pasture. Fire was used before the Neolithic as well, and by hunter-gatherers up to present times. Clearings created by fire were made for many reasons, such as to draw game animals and to promote certain kinds of edible plants such as berries.

So in order to clear land for agriculture you burn the forest. This clears the land of trees but is also fertilizes the soil. This burned patch of land becomes a field where you either plant crops or you graze cattle when the grass grows on it. In the south Serbian dialect we have a set of words which mean both the burned down forest and the field, meadow. 

garine, garinje, ogorevina - place where forest burned down
garina, garinka, garinje, ogorevina - meadow, field, clearing created when forest burned down.

What is interesting, is that we find the same words in Irish. But after seeing all the other words from this cluster that is quite to be expected:

garrai - field, garden (from gar + e = burned + is)
gort - field (from gor + to = burned + that, place).

goirtín - a little field; a small field of corn

It is quite possible that these words were the first words used for field and they could have survived together with the rest of this amazing word cluster since the neolithic time. What does this tell us about the link between the Irish ("Celtic") and the Serbian ("Slavic") languages? Should we reexamine this diagram?