Henry Oliverin The Guardian:
The words we use feel inevitable. We take them for granted. But they began life about 6,000 years ago, when copper was being smithed in the lands to the west of the Black Sea. Spinney says “an aura of magic must have hovered around the early smiths, who drew this gleaming marvel from blue-green rock”. New language hovered around them, too.
Novel technologies needed a novel vocabulary to describe them. The goods produced were transported across the Black Sea, which required the language of travel and exchange, as well as words that prepared merchants to meet with bears, boars and lions. Smithing brought new specialisations: metallurgy, casting, mining, charcoal-burning. All had to be named.
As the traders travelled, the words they shared went with them across the Black Sea and then around the world: from the forests of Romania to the steppe of Odessa, now with the development of larger and larger settlements, now with steppe herders becoming global traders, now with roads, now with the crossing of the Volga, sped up by the wheel, and on to the edge of China.
More here.
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