A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language

NYT ^ | March 16, 2004 | NICHOLAS WADE

[Charles Henrickson]

So you're saying that the Finns are *ethnically* Scandinavian but not *linguistically*. OK. I know for sure that the Finnish language and even the names are *much* different from Swedish/Norwegian/Danish.

[Mamzelle]

For lurkers, too--Spinning creates the thread and yarn--weaving creates the fabric from the yarn. It takes much longer to spin the yarn and thread (particularly if all you have is a spindle) than the weave the fabric, even with the most elemental of looms.

A spindle is not a wheel--Sleeping Beauty (story by Perrault, approx 1700) is generally shown pricking her finger on the *distaff* of a flax spinning wheel (a distaff is the small pole/cross that holds the fiber--most often prepared flax/linen--while the spinner draws out the fiber and feeds it onto the draw-spindle wheel). A distaff is not sharp, nor is anything else on the conventional spinning wheel. This is something I see in illustrations that always irritates me--why not get it right? The other thing is to show a woman riding sidesaddle on the wrong side, but, anyway... The pretty little European wheels were first adapted for flax/linen, but can be useful for wool, silk and even the short-fibered cotton.

But a hand-spindle typically as two sharp ends--it had to have been this that Perrault was writing about.

Now, the large wool-wheels seen often in antique shops in the US, also called "walking wheels" because the spinner is on foot, walking from side to side as she feeds the wool fiber onto a classic, dangerous sharp spindle instead of the fly-wheel of the more complex flax wheel. This walking wheel is awkward, primitive and miserable for anything but wool. I inherited one, but dislike using it. A hand spindle is easier than this wheel. The nice thing about the walking wheel is that it is easy to construct--but you don't see many of these in European spinnery.

The flax used to make the exquisite linens that survive ancient Egyptian times was spun into thread on hand spindles, an item every child and woman and even a lot of men wielded to amass the quantities of thread needed to make even a small amount of woven linen. You see many illustrations of these spindles in art books which photograph the walls of temples and tombs.

Hand spindles have been around as long as history. Nomads and bedouins to this day carry them and spin camel hair, while on the camel's back! To use a hand spindle, it is handy to stand on a stool (or sit on a tall camel) so that you have a little more distance between youself and the spindle, and can create a longer yarn before you have to stop spinning and wind the spun yarn onto the "stick" of the spindle.

Flax is a fascinating and useful gift to mankind. Fields of blue flowers, then the plant yeilds the seeds to make flour and oil, and the stalks processed into long flax fibers, to be spun into linen. The length of these fibers makes the spinning easy, even for a hand spindle.

A hand-spindle looks like something like a child's top--and it's nice when they're well-made. But I've taught many a child to spin wool with a pencil stuck into a potato.

Vocabulary associated with spinnery is feminine--"Spinsters" were unmarried relatives relegated to the unrelenting processing of fiber. And the "distaff" side of a room refers to the women. The holder of the flywheel on a flax-wheel is called "mother of all."

Twill is a weave, not spinning, and is not at all hard to accomplish with a tapestry-style loom that you also see in illustrations of ancient Egyptians.

[CobaltBlue]

Thank you for the explanation. It's very interesting and helpful.

The word we were discussing - and in English that word is "circle" - was the word "galgal" in Arabic - and it's plain as day that "circle" and "galgal" are cognate.

I don't speak any Arabic whatsoever, but I do use words borrowed from Arabic, like alchemy, alcohol, alembic, which tells me that Arab speakers could easily borrow words from Indo-European speakers - the contacts have been extremely extensive over time.

However, according to the article, the root word is "k'el", to rotate - and it seems to me that you are describing a process which requires rotation. The fibers are twisted into thread and the thread is wrapped around something.

Whoever invented that process may have used the word "k'el" to describe the process of turning the spindle around to wind the thread or turning the thread around the spindle -- seems to me that turning the spindle around is the easiest way to do it but again this is just a guess.

[CobaltBlue]

Why are spindles sharp?

[Mamzelle]

On a walking wheel, the spindle is sharp because you are holding the wool fibers against it as you feed in the wool--it's hard to explain if I can't "show" you, but the fibers are fed in tension with the triangular "draw" of your fingers as you feed. I took the sharp spindle off my walking wheel because it was a hazard--I rarely see walking wheels for sale that have the original spindles with them. They are usually long lost.

Some hand spindles--sometimes called "drop" spindles because you drop them like a top--have a sharp point on the bottom, and many have a sharp point at the top of the stick for the reason I explained before. For pictures of ancient spindles, google search words " egyptian flax spindles".

Spindles don't have to be sharp, it's just better when you get experienced to have a point--I don't work with children with sharp spindles.

Now, with the elegant little flax wheels you see in the fairy stories "spinning straw into gold"--they have no spindle at all, but a bobbin that winds in opposition to the string that turns the wheel, powered by the foot that works a pedal. Some wheels have a system of two strings turning the wheel--creating a system of braking. Very complex compared to either the hand spindle or the walking wheel. You feed the fiber into a little hole, and the tension of the fiber is against a smooth peg or even the side opening of the bobbin. No way to prick your finger.

I guess I can really run on about textiles...

The flax wheel was an important innovation in spinning, enabling good speed in producing yarn from fiber. They were not known in Europe before the early Renaissance. The peasant who boasted of his daughter "spinning straw into gold" was perhaps a metaphor of this innovation. Even aristocrats had their spinning wheels in the ladies' salons, though the poorer classes made their own drop spindles. When shepherds and shepherdesses tended their flocks, they also carried fiber and spindle with them to be spun into thread and yarn.

Spinning is easy to learn, but hard to master. It is difficult to turn out consistent thread and yarn.

Spinning can be a very meditative and relaxing hobby, too, which is why Sleeping Beauty was fascinated with the skillful fingers of the spinner in the fairy tale.

[Mamzelle]

K'el-- first thing I thought of are the winding shapes of Celtic design-- wonder if those words are related, I don't know what "Book of Cels" really means.

[visualops]

The Book of Kells is named so for the cathedral at Kells, County Meath, in Ireland.
"An Irish manuscript containing the Four Gospels, a fragment of Hebrew names, and the Eusebian canons, known also as the "Book of Columba", probably because it was written in the monastery of Iona to honour the saint. It is likely that it is to this book that the entry in the "Annals of Ulster" under the year 1006 refers, recording that in that year the "Gospel of Columba" was stolen. According to tradition, the book is a relic from the time of Columba (d. 597) and even the work of his hands, but, on palæographic grounds and judging by the character of the ornamentation, this tradition cannot be sustained, and the date of the composition of the book can hardly be placed earlier than the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century. This must be the book which the Welshman, Geraldus Cambrensis, saw at Kildare in the last quarter of the twelfth century and which he describes in glowing terms (Topogr. Hibern., II, xxxviii). We next hear of it at the cathedral of Kells (Irish Cenannus) in Meath, a foundation of Columba's, where it remained for a long time, or until the year 1541. In the seventeenth century Archbishop Ussher presented it to Trinity College, Dublin, where it is the most precious manuscript (A. I. 6) in the college library and by far the choicest relic of Irish art that has been preserved. In it is to be found every variety of design typical of Irish art at its best."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08614b.htm

[SunkenCiv]

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[blam]

The Gods Must Be Crazy.

In Click Languages, An Echo Of The Tongues Of The Ancients

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Do some of today's languages still hold a whisper of the ancient mother tongue spoken by the first modern humans? Many linguists say language changes far too fast for that to be possible. But a new genetic study underlines the extreme antiquity of a special group of languages, raising the possibility that their distinctive feature was part of the ancestral human mother tongue.

They are the click languages of southern Africa. About 30 survive, spoken by peoples like the San, traditional hunters and gatherers, and the Khwe, who include hunters and herders.

Each language has a set of four or five click sounds, which are essentially double consonants made by sucking the tongue down from the roof of the mouth. Outside of Africa, the only language known to use clicks is Damin, an extinct aboriginal language in Australia that was taught only to men for initiation rites.

[snip]

[SunkenCiv]

The reasoning behind that is, the clicks are hard to learn (though obviously everyone has the same set of basic tools built right in), and that it’s easier to imagine that the clicks might have been in the original language(s), but were also easy to wave bye-bye to.

Naturally, odds are good that I don’t agree with that. ;’)