The Iceman's Berries

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/14/01 10:57:30 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

> Actually what becomes fairly apparent is that if "PIE-speakers" did know
> about the yew, there would be no way of telling.

-- well, a word for it would be a helpful hint.

We have *eiwo, and *taksos

*ei-wo produces cognates in Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, and (possibly) Hittite.

*taksos has cognates in Latin, Celtic, Greek, and Indo-Iranian.

> The simplistic connections that are used to trace many of these words -
> like "yew" and "red deer" - very quickly disappear.

-- not if you actually use the standard methods of linguistics.

> This statement gives me pause.  Is any one on this list who is uncomfortable
> with the idea that its plausible that yew comes from PIE *eiw- 'berry'?

--- "related to" rather than "comes from".

There are two PIE words for "berry"

*og, with cognates in Baltic, Slavic, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic, and
possibly Armenian.

*oi-wo, with cognates in Latin, Greek, and Armenian.  *oi-wo may well be
_related_ to the word for yew.

[clip of irrelevant stuff about mummies and bears]