To get white

In my post about Russian steam baths called "banya" I postulated that this type of steam bath is the origin of the Finnish and Scandinavian saunas.

Now here is something else interesting about these Slavic steam baths: their name.

In Slavic languages, the word "banya" or "banja" as a noun can mean a steam bath, mineral water spa, bathroom, bathtub, and as a verb "banjati se" it means washing of ones body in general.

The etymology of the word banja is very interesting.

"Banja" (act of bathing, bathing place)
From Proto-Slavic "*banja" (bath)
From Vulgar Latin "*bānea", "*banniu" (bath)
From Latin "balneum", "balineum" (bath, bathing place)
From Ancient Greek "βαλανεῖον", "balanion" meaning "bath, bathing room"

The Wiktionary has this to say about the etymology of the Ancient Greek root "βαλανεῖον", "balanion" meaning "bath, bathing room":

"Etymology uncertain. Attempts have been made to connect with βάλανος (balanos, “acorn”), but are semantically unconvincing. Probably Pre-Greek."

So the root for Slavic word "banja" is Vulgar Latin "bānea" which has root in Latin "balneum" which has root in Old Greek "balaneîon" which has no etymology in Greek. Which "Pre-Greek" language does this word, which was first attested in 5th BC Attic dialect of Ancient Greek, come from?

Let me see if I can solve this mystery.

When I was a kid, I was constantly dirty. Me and my brother spent every moment we could out in the fields, forests, swamps, building sites, farmyards, caves... and were usually covered from head to toe in dirt. Which means that every evening we had to wash ourselves from head to toe too. And this is how my mother explained to us what washing is and when and how to wash:

"When do we wash? We wash when we get dirty. How do we know that we are dirty? We know that we are dirty when our skin is not white any more, when it gets dark from mud, or blood or some other kind of dirt. Why do we wash? We wash to remove dirt from our bodies, from our skin and hair. And when do we stop washing? When all the dirt is removed. And how do we know that all the dirt is removed? We know that all the dirt is removed when our skin is white..."

Indoeuropean languages are languages of Indoeruopean people. And Indoeuropean people are white people (R1a, R1b, I1, I2). And for white people, washing is equivalent to "getting white". Clean = White. 

In Serbian "bel", "beli" means white. The word comes from Proto-Slavic "bělъ" meaning "white". From Proto-Indo-European root noun "*bʰēlHs" or "*bʰel-" ‎(“white surface or stain”). Cognates include Lithuanian bãlas, báltas ‎(“white”), Latvian bãls ‎("pale") and balts ‎("white"), Albanian bal, balo (dog or goat with a white spot on the forehead), Old Armenian բալ ‎(bal, “fog”), Sanskrit भाल ‎(bhāla, “splendour”).

These Latvian cognates are very interesting.

The word "balts" meaning "white" comes from an unattested verb "*balt" ‎(“to become white”) of which "balts" originally was the past participle form. Now in South Slavic languages "belit, beliti, belet, beleti" means "to make white, to become white, to fade". So the "unattested" root verb exists in Slavic languages, showing that the Latvian words are most probably borrowing from Slavic languages.

The word "bals" meaning "pale" was originally a parallel form to an older adjective "*bals" which disappeared but left related terms like the verbs "balot, balēt" to bleach, to fade,"balināt" to whiten, to blanch. In South Slavic languages "bel se, beli se" means it's white, it shines (because it's white), "belet, beleti" means to whiten, to fade. So again I believe that these words are borrowings from Slavic languages.

These Latvian words show that white and pale originally meant one and the same thing.

This is someone with "pale" skin, often seen in Northern Europe.

For all intents and purposes you can call this skin white. And in Latvian "baltā rase"‎ means white (= Caucasian) race. In South Slavic languages this would be "bela, belata rasa".

Latvians have also preserved the original meaning of the word "bel" (white) that we are interested in in this article, which is "bel" (white) = clean.

"uzvilkt sestdienā baltu veļu"‎ ― to wear white linen (clean clothes) on Saturday

Now as I already said, when I was a kid and when I got dirty, I was sent to wash myself. After finishing the washing, and getting white, I would come out of the bath to the comments from my mother that I was now "beautiful".

This link between being clean, being white and being beautiful is very strong in Serbian (and in general Slavic) culture.

In Serbian folk poetry, beauty is always associated with white skin. Someone beautiful has "belo lice" (white face) and "belo grlo" (white neck). 

And now let's have a look at the Ancient Greek word "βαλανεῖον", "balanion" meaning "bath, bathing room" which is supposed to be the root of the Slavic word "banja" meaning "bath, bathing".  

The Wiktionary says that the word "βαλανεῖον" has "uncertain etymology" and that the word is "probably Pre-Greek".

Now in my post about Slavic wash houses called "banja" I talked about the fact that the early Greek records mock the Slavs as "the people who wash in banjas every day".

An early description of the banya comes from the East Slavic Primary Chronicle of 1113. According to the Chronicle, or as it was called by its authors, The Tale of Bygone Years, the Apostle Andrew visited the territories that were later to become Russia and Ukraine during his visit to the Greek colonies on the Black Sea. The belief was held that Andrew crossed through East Slavic lands from the mouth of the Dnieper River, past the hills on which Kiev would later be founded, and went as far north as the ancient city of Novgorod. He had this to say about the Slavic bathing customs:

"Wondrous to relate," said he, "I saw the land of the Slavs, and while I was among them, I noticed their wooden bathhouses. They warm them to extreme heat, then undress, and after anointing themselves with tallow, they take young reeds and lash their bodies. They actually lash themselves so violently that they barely escape alive. Then they drench themselves with cold water, and thus are revived. They think nothing of doing this every day, and actually inflict such voluntary torture on themselves. They make of the act not a mere washing but a veritable torment."

And what happens when the people who belong to the white Indoeuropean race, like Slavs, wash themselves? They get white. And in Slavic Indoeuropean languages the word for white is "bel". So the process of washing is the process of getting white. So is it possible that the wash house, bath, bathing room was originally seen as the place where you "get clean, get white"? And is it possible then that the word used for such place would have word for white in it? Like "bel" meaning white and "bele(a)n" meaning "made white". I believe so. 

So the Ancient Greek βαλανεῖον meaning "bath, bathing room, place of bathing" can be broken into: 

βαλαν + εῖον 

βαλαν (bele(a)n) - Pre-Greek, PIE, Slavic verb meaning "made white, whitening". Modern Serbian beljen.
εῖον (eîon) - Ancient-Greek ending meaning "the place of"

Together they give the meaning "the place of whitening, the place of cleaning, the place of washing, bathing"...

So how did this word enter Ancien Greek? 

What do you think about this?

O and by the way. Today's Greek word for bath, bathroom is "λουτρό" (loutro). The word comes from Ancient Greek "λουτρόν" (loutrón) meaning "bath, bathing-place, water used for bathing". 

This Ancient-Greek word is said to come from Proto-Indo-European "*lówh₃trom" meaning "that which is used for washing", which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European "*lewh₃-" meaning "to wash, bathe"... 

Now here is something interesting. Apparently this PIE root has descendants in:

Albanian: laj
Ancient Greek: λούω (loúō), λουτρόν (loutrón)
Italic: *lawaō
Latin: lavō, lābrum (possibly)
Celtic: *lowatrom 
Germanic: *lauþrą, *laugō
Old Armenian: լոգանամ (loganam), լուանամ (luanam)

All meaning "to wash, to bath"

There are no cognates in Slavic languages. 

However in Slavic languages we find the word "lev" meaning "pouring". Which is what we do when we wash. The verb "levati" means "to pour" and the word "levanica" means "libation". And guess what? The Ancient-Greek word λουτρόν (loutrón) which means "bath, bathing-place, water used for bathing" also means "(poetic) libation to the dead"...

Eeee....

Lion killing snake

I came across this very interesting object on edgarlowen.com auction site:

9764. ROMANESQUE MARBLE SCULPTURE. France or Northern Italy, Romanesque period, c. 11th-13th century. A free standing triangular sculpture, likely from an early church, with a man with unkept hair, most likely Jesus, grasping the head of a lion which in turn holds a serpent in its mouth. Clearly a highly symbolic piece though the exact meaning is somewhat obscure. 5.5 x 10.5 x 19 inches. Excellent condition, all original with no repair or restoration. Extremely rare and a very remarkable piece of early Christian iconography.

Though not certain, the symbology of this piece most likely refers to Psalm 91:11-13 "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet." which is traditionally taken to refer to the defeat of Satan (represented by the serpent and the lion) by Jesus. The passage led to the Late Antique and Early Medieval iconography of Christ treading on the beasts, where beasts were most often depicted as lion and snake, both of which represented the devil, as explained by Cassiodorus and Bede in their commentaries on Psalm 91.  

The earliest and one of the most beautiful example of the depiction of the "Christ treading on the beasts" scene can be found in the "Basilica of San Vitale" in Ravenna which was built by Ostrogoths and completed by the 27th Bishop of Ravenna, Maximian, in 547 AD.

In my post "You will trample the great lion and the serpent" I wrote that this scene could actually have a secret meaning linked to the solar cult, which Christianity was trying to replace at the time when this scene started to appear. 

Summer starts on the 6th of May, Day of Jarilo, Beltine. Jarilo represents the sun's heat, symbolized by the snake and the dragon. Funnily Jarilo was Christianized into St George, the Dragon killer :) In Serbia, St Jeremija who is celebrated at the beginning of May is known as the Snake Saint. His day (1st of May according to the Julian calendar, 14th of May according to the Gregorian calendar) is the time when people perform magic ceremonies for protection from snakes...Interesting both names Jarilo and J(a)eremija have the root "jar" meaning "bright heat".

Summer ends on the 2nd of August, Day of Perun, Lughnasadh. Day of Perun falls in the middle of the Leo (Lion) zodiac sign. 

So summer is the period between the Day of Jarilo (Snake) and the Day of Perun (Lion). And in the middle of the summer is Day of Svetovid, the Summer solstice. The point when Sun in the northern hemisphere reaches its highest point above the horizon. 

Now have a look at "Christ treading on the beasts" scene again: 

Christ standing with his legs spread, with one leg on the snake (the beginning of the summer) and the other leg on the lion (the end of the summer). His head, with the solar halo is right at the point of the summer solstice, when Sun god is the most high...

If you make the Most High your dwelling...you will trample the great lion and the serpent...

You will be in the summer on the northern hemisphere...

How look at the above artefact again.

Christ is gone, and instead we see a head with what looks like dreadlocks. I believe that this head is the head of Helios, the old Titan Sun God. On Ancient Greek coins, he is portrayed in three different ways:

A man with dreadlocks hair and long sun rays

A man with dreadlocks hair and short sun rays

A man with dreadlocks hair and no sun rays

The sun's heat increases all the way through the summer until we reach the hottest point of the summer, the 2nd of August. This point marks the end of the summer and the beginning of autumn, the end of the heating and the beginning of the cooling of the northern hemisphere. I talked about this in my post "Two crosses".

The 2nd of August, is when Serbs celebrate Sveti Ilija (St Elijah) who is Christian version of Helios.

This is Helios

This is Elijah

As I already said, the sun's heat is represented by a snake. And the 2nd of August, the end of summer, the end the heating of the northern hemisphere, falls in the middle of the zodiac sign Leo, lion. 

The Serbian folk tradition says that every year at the end of the summer, St Elijah gets so angry that he wants to "burn the whole world down". But he never does, because right on the day of St Elijah, the summer ends, the lion kills the snake and the autumn begins...

Very interesting, right?

Solar breads from Croatia

This is a wooden "peel" or spatula (called "lopar" in local Croatian dialect). 

This tool is used for manipulating bread loaves inside bread ovens. 

Lopars can also have shorter handles, like these ones:

They were used for shaping bread dough and placing it on the hot baking (cooking) floor heated by charcoal. So the handle didn't need to be long. The bread was then covered with a metal or ceramic lid and the charcoal was piled on top. 

Here is baked bread being taken from under the lid.

Now here is something very interesting. These are short handle lopars from island Pag, Croatia, which are dated to the 19 century. 

They have very interesting decorations, don't you think? Here is the close up of one of these lopars:

These particular type of lopars was used in this way: the dough would be placed on the pattern side, and pressed down using the palm of one's hand to impress the pattern on the surface of the bread. Then the dough would be left to prove (rise) on the board. Once the was risen, it would be flipped over onto the hot hearth floor. The bread would then, as I already said, be covered with a metal or ceramic lid and the charcoal was piled on top. 

And here is the final product. This picture is from Bosnia and was taken in 1970:

The you see the pattern in the middle? Interesting don't you think?

Gu-za

Sumerian: gu-za - throne, chair
Serbian: guz, guza, guzica - bottom, arse. From proto Slavic *gǫzъ, *guzъ (rus. guz, slov. goza, polj. gąz)
Persian: guz - fart

I find this very funny

"Sumerian Lexicon, Version 3.0" by John A. Halloran
"Elementary Sumerian Glossary" Author: Daniel A. Foxvog

The last megalithic ritual in Europe

There are many large isolated stones littering the Belorussian countryside. Many of these stones have been, or still are, venerated as cult, or sacred stones. Over 500 of these cult stones have been worked by people.

The map of the locations of the cult boulders with man-made holes on the territory of Belarus, taken from this page of the "Культовые валуны с рукотворными углублениями".

Legend:

1 - flat stones with cup-shaped depressions;

2 - cylindrical stones with cup-shaped depressions;

3 - stones with holes (round holes, cup marks) with a depth of 0.5 to 7 cm and a diameter of 3 to 7.5 cm;

4 - stones with pits of irregular shape from 5 to 15 cm and dia. from 7.5 to 15 cm.

Some of theses stones were dated to Neolithic and Bronze age.

The above pictures were taken from this page of the "Культовые валуны с рукотворными углублениями" (Cultic stones with man made depressions).

According to a Belorussian legend one of these holy stones, which contained "footsteps of god" (was hollowed), was taken by a wealthy farmer who was building a house and was put in the house foundation. But the stone has become wet, "it starded crying", the wall went moldy and began to cause the people in the house to get sick. The farmer then  had a dream, in which he was told to take the stone to its original location. The next morning, the farmer took the stone from the foundation, loaded it on a cart and drove it to the place from which it was taken. The legend says that it was strange that although four horses barely managed to bring the stone from its original location to the house, it only took one horse to bring it back from the house to its original location. 

The most interesting among these hollowed stones is this stone from near the village of Kremenets in Lugoisk region in Belorusia, which has been dated to bronze age. It is known localy as Dabog's (Daždbog's) stone.

In Belorusia it was once believed that Dabog (Daždbog) lived in a castle somewhere far away in the east. Every morning he would drive out through the gates of his castle in his chariot and would drive accross the sky towards the west. His servants washed his face with rain. This is why his name is Daždbog, god of rain, dažd. This Belorussian belief explicitly identifies Dabog as the sun god as well as the rain god.

The same link between Thunder god (Perun) and Sun god (Svetovid), is also represented by the character of Ilija the Thunderer, the Thundering Sun god...Which shows that Dabog and Ilija the Thunderer are one and the same god. 

According to the local old people, the stone has been there since the time immemorial and it has always been considered sacred. The stone lies on a stone platform which was in the past surrounded with a stone fence. In the corner of the sacred area there was a "well without bottom" which was always full of water and the water from this well was considered holy and medicinal. People visited the stone regularly but special masses were held at the stone on Ivan Kupala day, Easter and Pentecost. People used to come to the stone at the sunrise. They would bring with them offerings (flowers, money, bread, apples...) and would place them at the stone. They would then draw a bucketful of water from the well. A handful of water would be poured into the hollow marks on the stone which are called "God's footprints". The rest of the water would be used to wash the sore spot on the body because it was believed that the water has magical medicinal properties and could cure illnesses.

Now here is something very very very (I don't think there are enough verys I could put here) interesting about this Dabog stone which makes it probably one of the most important stones in the world. 

According to the same local old people, the villagers also turned to the stone for help during the periods of droughts when it did not rain for a long time. A special ceremony involving Dabog stone would then be performed. The ceremony was led by one of the oldest grandmothers in the willage. She would walk through the village and gather nine widows. They would take wooden stakes cut to a man's height. They would go to the stone, lift it using the stakes as leavers, and would perform a special prayer to the stone asking it to send down the rain.

The last such rain ritual at the stone was performed during the dry summer of 1985 and the locals say that the rain came after three days. You can see the video of the whole ceremony here.

Now this is absolutely incredible in so many ways. 

First the stone is clearly identified as the seat of Dabog, as Dabog personified. This can be seen from the fact that people prayed to the stone as if it was Dabog himself. 

Second, the raising of the stone was part of the prayer ceremony. Is it possible that this is a remnant of the ancient megalithic raising of the stone ceremonies which left us all these thousands of standing stones all over Europe? Did ancient Europeans raise all the standing stones as part of the praying ceremony dedicated to the the Sky god? I already suggested that this was a possibility in my post entitled "Grandmother's cudgels (clubs)" which talked about Orion, "The father of gods" and the original "Thundering giant" who during the Bronze Age caused climatic chaos with his stone clubs (meteorites) which he hurled from the sky. In Serbian "Thunder giant" is "Grom div". I already wrote in several posts that I believe that "Grom div" was the original name of the Bronze Age sky god whose name came to us as "Hromi daba" the main epithet of Dabog, Serbian and Slavic sky god and as "Crom dubh", the name of the Irish sky god...Now during Bronze Age the prayer ritual dedicated to the Sky god, Grom div, was probably performed during the extreme climatic events which threatened the survival of the people. During the praying ritual a new stone was hewn in the likeness of the Orion's stone club (meteorite) and was raised and left standing pointing at the sky. This was eventually replaced with the pretend raising of the single stone which represented the Sky god Dabog, Hromi daba...So this stone raising ceremony preserved in Belorussia could be the last remnant of the Bronze Age megalithic sky worshiping religion...

Third, considering that the stone is equated with Dabog, the raising of the stone was in effect the raising of Dabog. Do you know of of any other raising of the god ceremony? (This is a trick question :)). Dabog  is in Serbia also known as Djed, meaning Grandfather, The ancestor. He is seen as the ancestor of all the Serbs. This is why Dabog is in Serbian mythology seen as the sun god, Giving god (rain and grain god) and the good of the dead. So raising of the Dabog stone is effectively raising of the Djed...

And in Egyptian religion "djed" was a pillar associated with Osiris. Interestingly the word "djed" is also used in Egypt today to address grandparents...The djed pillar was an important part of the ceremony called 'raising the djed'. The act of raising the djed has been explained as representing Osiris's triumph over Set. The djed hieroglyph was a pillar-like symbol that represented stability. It was also sometimes used to represent Osiris himself. Osiris the sun god, the god of grain and the god of the dead. Osiris whose soul was Sahu, constellation Orion, the Thundering Giant of the Bronze Age...

So, very interesting isn't it?

References:

"Кременецкий камень благополучия" from Виртуальный музей города Логойска

"КУЛЬТОВЫЕ ВАЛУНЫ С РУКОТВОРНЫМИ УГЛУБЛЕНИЯМИ" - Винокуров В.Ф, Дучиц Л.В. (кандидат исторических наук), Зайковский Э.М.( кандидат исторических наук), Карабанов А.К.(доктор геолого-минералогических наук)

Crop devouring insect

A weevil is a type of beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily. They are usually small, less than 6 mm (0.24 in), and herbivorous. Many weevils are considered pests because of their ability to damage and kill crops. One of the most dangerous species of weevil is the grain or wheat weevil (Sitophilus granarius) which damages stored grain. This Beatle can devastate granaries and destroy all the grain stored inside of them. 

Here is a picture of a wheat weevil on grains:

In Serbian the word for weevil is "žižak" dialectal "žižek". The same word is also found in Croatian and Slovenian and in Hungarian as a borrowing from South Slavic languages where the word is "zsizsik".

The word comes from the word for grain "žito". The word "žito" is said to come from Proto-Slavic "*žito" meaning "grain, corn".  And this word is cognate with the Slavic word "život" meaning life and comes from the same root which I postulated to be "ži" meaning "breath, breath of life, life force". I talked about this in my post "Breath".

At the same time in Sumerian language we find this word:

"zi" (ži?) - breathing, breath (of life), life, throat, soul...
zíd, zì - flour, meal (life + motion as in grinding).
zíz (žiž?) - emmer (wheat) (reduplicated zé or zi)
zìz (žiž?) - a crop devouring insect


Interesting right?

Breath

In Serbian the word for "life" is "život". This word comes from the root "živ" which means "alive".

These two words have their direct cognates in all Slavic languages, as well as Ancient Greek, Old Armenian, Baltic languages and Indo-Iranian languages:

Ancient Greek: ζάω (záō) - I live.

Tocharian B: śāw-, śāy - to live

The more to the front you pronounce "ž", the more it changes from "ž" to "š" then to "z" and then to "s".  

Baltic languages

Latvian: dzivs - alive, living
Lithuanian: gyvas - alive
Old Prussian: giwato - alive, living

Also if you add "d" to it you get "dž".

Indo-Iranian

Sanskrit:

जीव (jīva pronounced djiva) - alive, living
जीवन  (jīva pronounced djivana) - life

Avestan: ǰva - alive, living
Old Persian: 𐎪𐎺 (jiva) - alive, living

Persian: زیست (zist) - life, existence, زیستن (zistan) - to live

Old Armenian: կեամ (keam) to live

The more to the back you pronounce "ž", the more it changes to "đ" (dj) then to "k" and then to "g"...

Also consonants b,v,p,m also belong to the same group and can easily morph into each other depending on how your speech apparatus works. 

So it is easy how the above words are cognates. Now here is the problem (at least for me):

Official etymology says that all these words come from these two PIE roots: "gʷeyh₃-" meaning "to live" and "gʷih₃wós" meaning "alive".

To me this doesn't make any sense. Why would all these "ži", "dji" words have a root that starts with "gw"? Well because of the Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz, from which English word quick was derived. The word "quick", which today means "speedy" once meant "mobile, alive". This word has direct cognates in all other Germanic languages. The root "gw" was coined so that Germanic words can somehow be linked with Indo-Iranian words. The thing is the Germanic "qw"ic can not be the root because it can be derived from "qiv"ik which can be derived from "djiv"ik...

Now have a look at this:

Ancient Greek: ζάω (záō) - I live. 

This word is actually derived from Linear B "za" symbol which is in the shape of the Egyptian ANKH which means "life".

This symbol is traditionally transliterated as "za", but some people suggest that the sign should be transliterated as "ka".

This is very interesting as it shows the antiquity of the "z" root for the word for life. 

But I believe that we have even more proof that the "ži", "dji" root is indeed the original root for the above cluster of words meaning life, living. 

Let me ask you this question: What does it mean to be alive?

Some would say that to be alive means to have a soul still inhabiting your body. Interestingly, Hittite word "zi" meant "soul, spirit, seat of life, person"...

But at the most basic level, you are alive if you are breathing. I remember once when my kid was very sick, I used to come to his bedroom and stand over him while he was lying asleep, motionless, looking for signs that he was breathing in order to reashure myself that he was still alive.

So we could say that "breathing", or "breath" is at the root of life. And so does Genesis 2:7:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

And here is a very interesting thing.

In traditional Chinese culture, "qi" or "chi", pronounced as something between these two transliterations very close to dj, and represented by logograph 氣, is believed to be a vital force forming part of any living thing. This Chinese word literally translates as "air" and figuratively as "material energy", "life force", or "energy flow".

The logograph 氣 also has a rare archaic reading "xì" which means "to present food".

The primary logograph 气, the earliest written character for "qì", consisted of three wavy horizontal lines seen in Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) oracle bone script, Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) bronzeware script and large seal script, and Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) small seal script.

You can see how this logograph ended up looking like air going through mouth and throat...

The secondary logograph,  mǐ 米 "rice" was added during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Official explanation is that this is supposed to indicate "steam (rising from rice as it cooks.)"??? I believe that the rice was added to breath to indicate that both of these substances are "life energy givers".

We also have Chinese symbol (zǐ 子) meaning son, child, seed, egg...Basically life...

At the same time in Sumerian language we find this word:

"zi" (ži?) - breathing, breath (of life), life, throat, soul...
"zi(d)" "še" - flour, meal
 zíz - emmer (wheat)
"še" - barley, grain

Now this is very very interesting. Here we have two "unrelated" distant languages containing the word for "breath of life" which has the same root as the above Indoeuropean words for "life, living". And when are we alive? When we have the breath, energy of life within us. In Slavic languages the word for alive "živ" could be derived from "ži" + v = breath, energy of life + in, within. Or the above words for "breath of life" could be derived by not pronouncing the two main Indoeuropean words for living:

Slavic "živ" --> "žiw" --> "žiu" --> "ži"

Indo-Iranian "jiv" --> "jiw" --> "jiu" --> "ji"

What is also very interesting is the link between the word for the breath, the energy of life and core food of the early farmers: grain, rice. We find this link in both Chinese and in Sumerian language.

We also find the same links in Ancient Greek:


ζάω (záō) - I live. 

σῖτος (sitos) - grain encompassing wheat and barley, the cereal grains used by the ancient Greeks, bread as opposed to meat, food as opposed to drink

Lin. A, B: se (ear of corn)

Also in Sanskrit we find:

जीव (jīva pronounced djiva) - alive, living
जीवन  (jīva pronounced djivana) - life, food, grain, milk, water, marrow, wind (breath)

And we see the same link in Slavic languages

In Serbian the word for "life" is "život". This word comes from the root "živ" which means "alive".

živ - alive

život - life, stomach
zev - yawn (possibly related as yawning is breathing so it could be a remnant of the old meaning zi - breath)

žir - acorn (the original first starch food which predates grain. You can read more about human consumption of acorns through history in these posts). In the Balkans the word žir in the past actually meant all plant food. In Eastern Slavic languages, the word for acorn is "želud" which is interesting because in Serbian the word for stomach is "želudac". This word also has the same root as žir.
žito - grain

I think that this is amazing. But how could there possibly be a linguistic and cultural link between such far flung cultures? The answer is this: Eurasian steppe:

The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. It stretches from Romania and Moldova through Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, and Mongolia to Manchuria, with one major exclave, the Pannonian steppe or Puszta, located mostly in Hungary.

Since the Paleolithic age, the Steppe route has connected Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China, South Asia, and the Middle East economically, politically, and culturally through overland trade routes. 

And from the early copper age until the early medieval time, this vast area was solely controlled by metal weapons wielding, horse riding, chariot building Indoeuropean cultures.

The most important of them been Yamna culture.

The Yamna culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC. The Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language.

The people of the Yamnaya culture were the likely result of admixture between eastern European hunter-gatherers (via whom they also descend from the Mal'ta-Buret' culture or other, closely related people) and a Near Eastern people, with some research identifying the latter as hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus or a similar people also related to Chalcolithic people from what is now Iran. Their material culture is very similar to the Afanasevo culture, their contemporaries in the Altai Mountains; furthermore, genetic tests have confirmed that the two groups are genetically indistinguishable.

And most importantly, the males in both of these cultures genetically belonged to R1a and R1b haplogroups, which have been the main carriers of the Indoeuropean culture and language. It is funny how this link between the genes and the language is now becoming something completely normal. But when I wrote this blog post suggesting the genetic background of the language groups I was almost crucified...

Yamna culture is also closely connected to later, Final Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures which spread throughout Europe and Asia, especially the Corded Ware culture, but also the Bell Beaker culture as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubna cultures. In these groups, several aspects of the Yamna culture (e.g., horse-riding, burial styles, and to some extent the pastoralist economy) are present. Genetic studies have shown that all these cultures derive from Yamna culture.

As I already said, Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) in the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas. It is the strongest candidate for the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language, along with the preceding Sredny Stog culture. Significantly, animal grave offerings were made (cattle, sheep, goats and horse), a feature associated with Proto-Indo-Europeans. The culture was predominantly nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers and a few hillforts. Characteristic for the culture are the inhumations in pit graves under kurgans (tumuli). The dead bodies were placed in a supine position with bent knees and covered in ochre. Multiple graves have been found in these kurgans, often as later insertions. While the earliest evidence of horse domestication was found in Sredny Stog culture sites, the earliest remains of a wheeled cart were found in the "Storozhova mohyla" kurgan (Dnipro, Ukraine, excavated by Trenozhkin A.I.) associated with the Yamna culture.

It is the domestication of horses and the invention of wheeled carts that enabled the Indoeuropean people to quickly spread throughout a huge area or Eurasian steppe and the land around the steppe.

It was the metal weapons which enabled the Indoeuropeans to become the absolute rulers of the steppe and to exert a huge political and cultural influence on all the lands lying to the south of the steppe: Mesopotamia, India, China.

And so this is how we can find these common words for "living", "life", "breath of life" and "core food, grain, rice, acorn" distributed across such a huge area and embedded into such diverse languages.

What do you think of this?