| Abstract: |
Use of metals derived from smelting (extraction of metals from metallic ores) arose in advanced neolithic/settled communities (high temperature pottery kilns a prerequisite for smelting) after 6000 BCE in the Middle East, and definitely later (not before 3500 BCE) in East Asia. These dates by and large fall within a period of great interest to comparative linguists: the period of such proto-languages as PIE, PTB, PST, PAN (with all the uncertainties relating to the dating of proto-languages). If the users of a certain metal in a certain part of the world were also the speakers of one such proto-language, we should expect their name for that metal to be retained, with the usual sound correspondences, in at least some of the daughter languages.
|
