Religious Belief = Mental Illness: A More Venomous Response

[okasha]

378. Uhm, no.

Indo-European languages, of which English is one, do not descend from the same roots as the Semitic languages. Let's put this in nontechnical words, since linguistics seems to be something else you have no expertise in. (And yes, before you ask, I do.)

Long ago, in a grassland far way, there arose a tribe of horse nomads with a hunting-based economy that we now call the proto-Indo-Europeans. Because we are able to reconstruct many of their word-forms, we know that they lived in a landscape that was marked by such things as birch trees, rivers where beaver provided a source of fur, and wide steppes (prairies). They had tamed the wild horses we know now as Akhal Teke, possibly the most ancient breed in the world.

Where exactly their original home was is disputed; Eastern Turkey is a possibility, as is the Khazhak-Khirghiz plain, or the lands between the Caspian and Aral Seas. At any rate, it was somewhere in south central Asia.

In time, they began to diffuse to both east and west. The ones who went east came to what is now western China. Several years ago, some of their burials yielded the "Caucasian" mummies found in Urumchi and its vicinity. Their continuing presence is indicated by such things as the depictions of red-haired, blue-eyed Buddhist monks that predate any later European settlement in the region. These populations settled well east of the Semitic peoples.

The ones who went south became the Indo-Aryans, moving into what is now India, Persia and Afghanistan. These populations settled well south and east of the Semitic peoples.

The ones who went west spread out across Europe well north of Semitic peoples. We can follow them across the map because they left behind the name of the goddess Dan/Don/Dana attached to natural features and some populations. Thus we have the Don River in Russia, the Danaans in anciant Achaia (Greece), the Donau (Danube) River, the Dordogne region in France, a River Don again in England and the Tuatha de Danaan (gods, tribes) in Ireland. (And by the way, Ireland and England are the British Isles, not Aisles.)

Semitic speakers, on the other hand, seem to have originated and diffused from a point to the west and south of the Indo-Europeans. They supplanted Sumerian language and culture in Mesopotamia, moving west into Syria (Aramaea) and from there south into the Trans-Jordan and the Arabian desert. Genesis acknowleges a memory of such migrations in the story of Abraham and the ritual formula, "My father was a wandering Aramaean."

While there must have been early trading contact between the two peoples, the Semitic and Indo-European languages evolved separately. Persian (I-E) and Aramaic (Western Semitic; an offshoot of Classical Hebrew, just as koine developed from Classical Greek), are not related. (Either you or your source seems to have confused "Aryan" and "Aramaic.&quot Known historical contact at a much later date between the two groups did give us some limited borrowings, such as "alphabet," from Hebrew "aleph-beth" via Greek "alpha-beta." These borrowings occurred, however, long after the two unrelated language groups were well-established.

The "reconstructed roots," of Eostre and Ishtar are quite different, by the way. "Eostre," "Eos" and interestingly enough "estrus," derive from an I-E root indicating beginnings, while "Ishtar" derives from WS Ish-, meaning "human." (Masc. ish-, fem. isha-)

Easter is connected to the Spring Equinox because Passover is connected to the Spring Equinox. No other explanation is necessary.