Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew

[Douglas G Kilday]

Rick Mc Callister (25 Apr 2001) wrote:

>	I read a recent article in either Natural History or National
>Geographic (or some similar magazine) that olives were first cultivated in
>present Syria.
>	If so, one would expect a Semitic root for the word
>	Yet, if I remember correctly, the origin of Latin oliua either from
>or cognate to Greek elaia, elaion is unknown
>	As far as I know, Semitic is the only recorded non-intrusive
>language group in that specific area.
>	Arabic has zayt "oil (of any kind)", zaytun "olive", whence Spanish
>aceite, aceituna. I think the Hebrew forms are cognate.

Hebrew has <zayith> 'olive, olive-tree', but the generic term for 'oil'
(also 'fat', 'fatness') is <s^emen>: hence <s^emen zayith> 'olive-oil' and
<ze:yth s^emen> 'oil-olive' (i.e. oil-producing olive-tree). Since
'olive-tree' is expressed in full as <!e:c, hazzayith> 'tree of the zayith'
while 'wild olive-tree, oleaster' is <!e:c, s^emen> lit. 'oil-tree' it seems
likely that <zayith>, like its Arabic cognate, originally meant 'oil'. This
was evidently supplanted by <s^emen>, derived from <s^-m-n> 'to be or become
fat'.

>	If olives are indeed from that area, any idea where the word may
>have come from?

At the risk of being accused again of peddling unfalsifiable hypotheses, I
would refer *elaiw- to Pelasgian.

Latin <oli:va> evidently comes from Etruscan *eleiva by regular changes:
Etr. short /el/ generally becomes Lat. short /ol/, and Old Lat. /ei/ becomes
Class. Lat. /i:/. The Etruscan lexeme is attested in adjectival form (TLE
762, bucchero aryballos) <aska mi eleivana> 'a vessel (am) I pertaining to
oil' = 'I am an oil-vessel'. This in turn looks like a borrowing from
Western Greek <elaiwa:> (cf. Etr. Eivas from WGk Aiwa:s 'Ajax'). I'm not
sure how to explain the shorter Lat. forms <olea>, <oleum> vs. <oli:va>,
<oli:vum>.

This borrowing-path suggests that olives were introduced to Italy by Greeks
trading with Etruscans. The earlier Pelasgians of central Italy presumably
didn't know olives and couldn't contribute the word to the Italic languages.
BTW this hypothesis could be "falsified" by the discovery of olive-pits or
strigils at the Villanovan level or below.

Returning to the Greek forms, we have a chicken-and-egg problem: was oil
(elaion) named after the olive (elaia:) or vice versa? In the Arabic words,
it's clear that 'oil' is the primary notion, and 'olive' is derived. This is
retained in Spanish; one of the first words I learned was "aceite" in the
sense of "motor-oil", not the Filippo Berio stuff. Hence it's plausible that
the original meaning of *elaiw- was 'oil', applied later to an oily edible
fruit and the tree which produces it.

I don't see a problem with Pelasgians antedating Semites in the NE
Mediterranean. Hebrew <ke:ph> 'cliff, crag' and <s'a:s'> 'garment-moth'
(along with Aramaic cognates) are possible derivatives from Psg. substrate
(cf. Gk. Ke:phi:sos 'name of several rivers', <se:s> 'moth').

DGK