Abnormal Interests

Hi, Duane,

Catalan is with a question mark. Could also be Occitan(?)or, for that matter, Hebrew. Main point is that the trade between Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire (which as Voltaire pointed out was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire)and the Arabs was via Jews located in South France and the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Now that means the Arabic form of the word was available to Europeans back in the late 8th- century CE. However, the term in Middle English is for the actual plant and cloth made from the plant, just as flax (Old English "fleax") is the plant and cloth made from the plant.

This is what I mean by three or four removes... and with a change in focus of the meaning of the word to the plant/cloth from "tunic" -- an article of clothing. (Please bear in mind that the Anglo-Saxons were sticklers for precision in terms and it would be quite usual for them to change the focus from a single article of clothing to the material itself when it was used for other garments.)

Nevertheless, it does seem likely that English "cotton" is related to KID -- following the usual tortuous meandering of loan words.

Incidentally, flax seed seems to have been imported to the "Blessed Isles" at the farthest edge of the "Great Green" by Phoenicians BCE.

Rochelle wrote: "Incidentally, flax seed seems to have been imported to the "Blessed Isles" at the farthest edge of the "Great Green" by Phoenicians BCE."
Interesting, but I'm not convinced. Flax seed was distributed very early in most countries like Germany, France, Netherlands. And I don't think this was all done by the Phoenicians.

Duane,

I wrote that Phoenicians seem to have brought flax see to the British Isles -- and this is according to the folks who study such things. I did not go beyond that. Do note that every site you mention has an Atlantic coast. Did the Phoenicians bring flax to the British Isles? It does seem reasonable considering that:

1)The published in 2006 mtDNA study shows that contact with the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic Coasts of the British Isles, France, Germany, and Sweden dates back to 10,000 BCE.

In other words, trade (and emigration) was going on by sea in precisely the countries you name dating from the end of the ice age when the oceans began to rise again. While the sub-level glacier melt released ca. 10,000 BCE a humongous amount into the water becoming available (not to mention the pluvial periods from 9,000 BCE to 6,500 BCE and again in 5,000-4,000 BCE -- which former may be the pluvial period of Noah's flood), the rate of the retreat of glaciers on land indicates that flax, an Eastern Mediterranean plant, did not have growing conditions conducive to viability until ca. 2,000-1,000 BCE.

2) The undersea mountain pass at Gibraltar is very high making the Atlantic-Med sill shallow -- 400 meters at its deepest. Apparently (according to the Black Sea breakthrough reports) the Med was not high enough prior to ca. 6,500 BCE to break through. This followed from the Atlantic rising high enough to cover the Gibraltar sill with the resultant major influx of water into the Med from the Ocean. Further, it took several thousand years more before passage by sea from the Med into the Atlantic was navigable -- that was one turbulent one-way passage. Hence, direct sea connection between the Med and the Atlantic coasts was simply not possible until ca. 2000-1000 BCE.

3) From the founding dates, it took hundreds of years (between 1200 and 700 BCE) for the Phoenicians to explore as far as the Pillars of Hercules. Cadiz is on the Atlantic coast; it is also one of the ca. 7th BCE Phoenician-founded "trading posts."

So, I think that the folks who claim flax was brought to Britain by Phoenicians have a sound case. Further, once flax was in the Isles, there is no reason to think that the inhabitants of the isles did not trade flax seed to the other coastal areas that they had already been in contact with, by sea, for around 9,000 years.

Whoops,

Sorry Duane, that reply should have been addressed to JP van der Giessen

"Blush"

Interesting, abnormally so:
"Depending on context and to a certain extent dialect, Akkadian šaknu means 'governor,' 'commander,' 'military governor,' or 'manager' of a large household or palace."

It reminds me a lot of the same sort of wide usage seen in the Etruscan word zilχ and Middle Egyptian jmj-r "overseer" both of which, again depending on context, could point to a variety of positions revolving around responsibility of some sort or another. It seems like a common idiosyncracy in eastern Mediterranean languages of this period. Hmmm...