week

The seven day circle, by Eviatar Zerubavel, explains the root of the modern 7 day circular week as being derived from the Jewish Sabbath tradition being a cultural artifact rather than a natural observation (such as the lunar month or diurnal year), producing a pulse effect (one special day per period, a peak of the week), as opposed to the Chaldean 7 day week which was aligned to the 7 "wandering stars/planets" which had no significant peak. I think both Chaldean/Babylonian astrological and Jewish temporal divisional/divinity weeks came from earlier African early agriculture market gatherings (pasar) which split the seasons into smaller quasi-regular periods, which then adapted to Egyptian/Ethiopian/Sabaan local social caravan trade environments where they were partially aligned with the lunar month which was highly significant to long distance trade (eg. frankincense, salt) where desert travel in mid-day heat was impossible before camels were domesticated.
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Seven_Day_Circle.html?id=Cd5ZjRsNj4sC

Ainu - Utari [Arab: ain=wellspring, Grk: ydr & Skt: udr/utar=water]
Basque - Euskara [skal ~ chal/hald/high]
Sun/Sunday: Basque (Igandea: high, related to Tamil kandi: high and Chaldean Haldi: heavenly) relates to peak/pulse of week), Albanian: e diele.
Moon/Monday: Basque (astel ehena) maybe links to Albanian (e Hene/moon) [astel - astro-star-ishtar], both related to Hebrew sheni and Arab ithnin.

week: Dutch: week. Chaldean/Armenian: shabat/shapti, Hebrew: shavua, Persian: shambah, German: woch, Finnish: viikko, Lapp: wakko

Week relates to vector/vika/weave/vaya/wicker/way, in alternation of travel, that is back and forth in a repeated sequence of circular-temporal but linear-spatial fashion.

Ancient Egypt deified the sun and mostly ignored the moon in calenders because they were entirely Nile based, whose flow came from far south Sudan. They had 3 10-day weeks per month but used a perfect harmony of 36 constellations to match 36 weeks of the calendar, rather than lunar matching."The rise of the Sabbath cult in Judaism coincided with the withdrawal from worshipping the celestial bodies, and particularly the moon. In other words, the dissociation of the week from a natural cycle such as the waxing and waning of the moon can be seen as part of a general movement toward introducing a supranatural deity... untouched by nature in any way".

Also see my post on ancient calenders: http://the-arc-ddeden.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/shared-traits.html

Update:
Basque: nekaz = (low) furrow (of week); Igandea = high (peak of week)
[nekaz also means farming/cultivation, but originated from track, same as English and Norse "last"]
Compare these parallels: from nek|az (furrow) to az|ken (plow-follow a furrow) and en|autsi (say) to esa|n (say); in both, one syllable reverses while the other shifts. (During shifts and reversals, syllables often change sound slightly, eg. itsa to esa) to smooth speed/temper of speaking.)
http://www.aixerrotabhi.net/eusk/curriculumat/euskara/euskararenhistoria1_4.pdf
Russian: Lekha = furrow (confirmedby Vlad)
Scot. lireag = fallow ridge
Latin: lira = footprint

Basque days of the week: (from Buber)
Monday Astelehen/a  (aste=week, lehen=first)
Tuesday Astearte/a  (aste= week, arte = middle, mid of wk)
Wednesday Asteazken/a (aste=week, asken=last, last of wk)
Thursday Ostegun/a  (day after the week is over (egun=day, oste=after)
Friday Ostiral/a  (?)
Saturday Larunbat/a  (bat = 1)
Sunday Igande/a  (high)
http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/days.html

etxe bat 'a house'
bi etxe `two houses'

etxe asko `many houses'

etxea `the house'
etxeak `the houses'
etxe zuria `the white house'
etxe zuriak `the white houses'
Aquitaine: Osso-, Basque. otso `wolf'.

Basque numbers 123 bat, bi, hiru or eka, bi, hiru
1 bat  - badeh 11 hamaika ~ hameka
2 bi ~ bideh (twinen) 12 hamabi
3 hiru ~ thirur(thelatha)  13 hamahiru ~ hamahirur
4 lau ~ laur  (kwror?)14 hamalau ~ hamalaur
5 bost ~ bortz  15 hamabost ~ hamabortz
6 sei  16 hamasei
7 zazpi  17 hamazazpi
8 zortzi  18 hemezortzi
9 bederatzi  19 hemeretzi
10 hamar  20 hogei

Compare to Arabic/Hebrew numbers:
1 wahad sunday=ahad
2 thenin/(twinin)/isnin
3  thalatha/(thrtha) selasa
4 arbu/wednesday = rabu
5 hamse/khamis cf panca/panj/pent so panchams?
6 sit ueh  jumaat
7 shab et/sabtu (Heb shavua week, shabath sat.)

Albanian numbers: 123 nje, dy, tre


Basque months are cultivation-vegetation oriented, so furrow fits
montaine Basque - Sunday Igandea high to Wednesday midweek low furrow nekaz
lowland (Dutch &) English - Wednesday midweek "hump"

English "last" means both la(te)st and track/furrow (probably related to the last of a shoe in some way).

Long before there were names for planet gods, there was weaving (all great apes weave their bowl nests, probably for 10+ million years),  very likely earliest Hs were weavers with associated words. Weaving back and forth produces rows and columns, similar to the Chemistry periodic table or the weekly/monthly calendar.

I left a comment at Maju's blog, thus begetting a dialogue which I copy here, specifically because he has said he will delete my comments there, and I don't want to lose the terms and definitions. Because I'm am always so hurried online, I copy it directly and analyse later the specifics. http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2012/04/claim-that-japanese-are-60-72-neolithic.html?showComment=1334677027111

MajuApr 14, 2012 09:41 AM


A bunch of amateurish pseudoscientific junk, sorry. The first thing you could do is to check etymologies or in the case of astelehena, realize that it's a composite word from 'aste' (week) and 'lehen(a)' ((the) first): the first of the week, ironically the last of the week (asteazkena) is wednesday and nobody knows why (I speculate that the weekend was four-days long but who knows).



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DDedenApr 14, 2012 11:25 AM

"A bunch of amateurish pseudoscientific junk, sorry."



First, online I'm always rushed, (like right now!)so its a mess, with info from the book and also from my own research mixed up. In that sense, yes, amateurish junk. Certainly not intended as psuedoscientific. And possibly correct & revealing.



"The first thing you could do is to check etymologies"



Etymologies are often subjective and incomplete.



" or in the case of astelehena, realize that it's a composite word from 'aste' (week)"



aste is astral/planet related, planets "wander", English-Dutch "week" ~ wander/vika/weave back & forth/via/vector/vaya.



"and 'lehen(a)' ((the) first): the first of the week,"



likely cognate to isnin/ithnen/eka (first)



"ironically the last of the week (asteazkena) is wednesday and nobody knows why (I speculate that the weekend was four-days long but who knows)."



nekaz = azkena?



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MajuApr 14, 2012 05:28 PM

Do you speak Basque even a little bit? Obviously not. Hence shut up.



"Aste" is week. Astelehena is literally week-first, asteartea (tuesday) means "week-midle" and asteazkena means "week-last". Then come osteguna (the day of Ost, the Sky, later Jupiter and the Judeo-Christian Yaveh-God), etc. all with special meanings.



Astral comes from aster (star, see the common etymology?). Star in Basque is izar, which may be related to the IE word but does not seem related with aste at all (not in any obvious way certainly). Whatever connection of these words is in any case not with Ainu but with a geographically closer language family: Indoerupean (may be wanderworts, coincidences of sound or even remotely shared etymologies).





[lehen] "likely cognate to isnin/ithnen/eka (first)"



After such blatant idiocy, I don't want to see your shadow again in this blog. It'd be a brutal waste of time.



I know the saying "ignorance is arrogant" but never thought I'd be faced with it such an insulting way.



"nekaz = azkena?"



FYI no. Nekaz or rather nekez is with effort. Form the verbal root neka(-tu): to get tired.



You have not the slightest idea but you dare to make such arrogant claims... get lost!



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eurologistApr 15, 2012 03:13 AM

planets "wander", English-Dutch "week" ~ wander/vika/weave back & forth/via/vector/vaya.



"week" has nothing to do with "wander" - instead, it is related to the Germanic word for "change" - still surviving in the German word "Wechsel" with the same meaning. It refers to the periodic changeover of planet-gods that watched over specific days of the week. See also the Latin word "vices" with the same meaning.



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RepliesMajuApr 15, 2012 03:43 AM

Yes it's all crazy! I'm not deleting those comments because he's a one-time commenter but anyone posting that kind of junk repeatedly would for sure get me very annoyed.



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DDedenApr 16, 2012 08:59 AM

I can only say that I did not expect emotional reaction, just objective discussion. I'm not claiming Basque and Ainu are closely related, nor am I claiming the opposite.



Nekaz = (low) furrow (of week); Igandea = high (peak of week)



montaine Basque wednesday midweek bottom (sunday high)

lowland Dutch & English wednesday midweek "hump"



English "last" means both la(te)st and track/furrow (probably related to the last of a shoe in some way).



Long before there were names for planet gods, there was weaving (all great apes weave their bowl nests, probably for 10+ million years), very likely earliest Hs were weavers with associated words.



ReplyDelete

RepliesMajuApr 16, 2012 01:13 PM

In order to deserve objective discussion your proposals would need to have some merit. You're just like that imaginary illiterate character who imagined a "tree" in the letter T and "forest" where there were Ts, etc.: no absolute connection with reality.



All you say is mere rambling.



I don't want you wasting my time or that of my readers anymore so it's your last warning: any future posts will be systematically deleted.



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DDedenApr 17, 2012 08:37 AM

Again, I can only say that I did not expect emotional reaction, just objective discussion.



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eurologistApr 17, 2012 05:10 AM

Where do you get this stuff from? Wednesday is derived from Wodan's day (the planet-god), and that by itself is most likely a translation from Latin (dies Mercurii = Mercury's day). By the way, German, Polish and Russian don't share this, but instead use literally "middle of the week."



This is how the planet-gods were thought to permutate watch over the hours of each day during the week (each was responsible for the first hour, the others for the subsequent hours, in order; the 25th hour is then the first hour of the next day associated with that respective planet-god; the line segments below are simply shortcuts so one does not have to count to 25, and form a heptagram):



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Weekday_heptagram.svg

a comment from Maju: "astelehena, realize that it's a composite word from 'aste' (week) and 'lehen(a)' ((the) first): the first of the week, ironically the last of the week (asteazkena) is wednesday and nobody knows why (I speculate that the weekend was four-days long but who knows)."
-

[I don't know why Blogger inserts so much space between the sentences and paragraphs copied.]

The heptagram is triangularly woven around a center, while a 4-5 week monthly calendar is orthogonally woven (vertical columns x horizontal rows).
I don't know if Maju recognizes the similarity of aste (week)/oste (sky)/astro (stars)/Ishtar (goddess)/izar (star)/Tsar/Shah/Shabbat (Chaldean day-week)/Sabbath (Hebrew 7th day)/Sabtu.

Azkena and nekaz sound similar, and perhaps have the same origin (furrow of the week).

Did planets plow a furrow/ sky trail across? Would a thread with 7 beads interknotted (bracelet from race/rac) be used as a weekly calender?

Ibarra (which means the valley in Euskera) is a surname of Basque origin meaning 'valley' or 'plain by the river'
Celtic etymology based on bhar-s-, meaning "summit

In Basque, Basques call themselves euskaldunak, singular euskaldun, formed from euskal- (i.e. "Basque (language)") and -dun (i.e. "one who has"); euskaldun literally means a Basque speaker. Not all Basques are Basque-speakers, and not all Basque speakers are Basques; foreigners who have learned Basque can also be called euskaldunak. Therefore the neologism euskotar, plural euskotarrak, was coined in the 19th century to mean an ethnically Basque person whether Basque-speaking or not. These Basque words are all derived from euskara, the Basque name for the Basque language.
Alfonso Irigoyen claimed that the word euskara comes from an ancient Basque verb enautsi "to say" (cf. modern Basque esan) and the suffix -(k)ara ("way (of doing something)"). Thus euskara would literally mean "way of saying", "way of speaking". One item of evidence in favour of this hypothesis is found in the Spanish book Compendio Historial, written in 1571 by the Basque writer Esteban de Garibay, who records the name of the Basque language as "enusquera". It may be however a writing mistake.
In the 19th century, the Basque nationalist activist Sabino Arana posited an original root euzko which, he thought, came from eguzkiko ("of the sun" on the assumption of an original solar religion). On the basis of this putative root Arana proposed the name Euzkadi for an independent Basque nation, composed by seven Basque historical territories. Arana's neologism Euzkadi, in the regularized spelling Euskadi, is still widely used in both Basque and Spanish, since it is now the official name of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. It has also been suggested that the root of eusk- may be linked to the Aquitanian tribe of the Ausci.