a FOOD WORD weblog

Food plants in Britain: archaeological evidence

As a survey on this subject I have thus far used, and cited, J. R. Greig, 'Plant foods in the past: a review of evidence from northern Europe' in Journal of plant foods vol. 5 (1983) pp. 179-214.

I could have added a more recent survey by Philippa R. Tomlinson and Allan R. Hall, focusing on Britain and Ireland exclusively: 'A review of the archaeological evidence for food plants from the British Isles: an example of the use of the Archaeobotanical Computer Database'. This was published on line in 1996 in the first issue of Internet Archaeology.

Here's the full set of updates to Food in the Ancient World from A to Z.

Indo-European languages: dating the splits

In Linguistica Brunensia, year 2005, there are two interesting papers on Indo-European philology. In one, Vaclav Blazek collaborates with Petra Novotna on a glottochronological study of the Slavic languages. The hundred-word table that they used is usefully set out in full, for all the languages, on pages 67 to 77. According to their calculations, North Slavic (Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian) split from the rest in AD 520/600, South Slavic (Slovene, Serbo-Croat, Macedonian and Bulgarian) in 720, Czech-Slovak in 900. The remaining three, Sorbian, Polabian and Polish, split in 1020. The split between Russian and the two other North Slavic languages came in 1070, between Macedonian and Bulgarian in 1220, between Slovene and Serbo-Croat in 1300, between Czech and Slovak also in 1300, between Ukrainian and Belorussian in 1630 and between North and South Sorbian also in 1630.

If you believe in glottochronology your faith will probably not be shaken by the enormous differences between this calculation and the one developed by the late S. Starostin at Santa Fe in 2004. Starostin found that the earliest split was between Bulgarian-Macedonian and all the rest, and this happened in 130 AD. North Slavic then separated off in 270, said Starostin, followed by Polabian-Sorbian in 420 and by Slovene-Serbo-Croat in 670. Polish split from Czech-Slovak in 780.

An appendix to this paper gives the glottochronological analysis of the whole Indo-European that emerged from the same research by Starostin, who calculated that Anatolian separated from the rest ofIndo-European in 4670 BC, Tocharian in 3810 BC, Celtic in 3350 BC, Armenian-Albanian-Recky in 3020 BC, Italic-Germanic in 2860 BC. Indo-Iranian separated from Balto-Slavic in 2710 BC. Armenian, Albanian and Recky split in 2590 BC, Italic and Germanic in 2500 BC, Iranian and Indic in 2000 BC, Baltic and Slavic in 1210 BC, Brythonic and Goidelic (the two branches of Celtic) in 1000 BC, and Tocharian A and Tocharian B in 20 BC.

Here's the full set of on-line additions to Notes in the Margin.

Heavenly bodies in Indo-European languages

In Linguistica Brunensia, year 2005, there are two interesting papers on Indo-European philology. One, by Vaclav Blazek, is a study of the names of heavenly bodies in Indo-European languages. It takes the form of a small comparative dictionary, dealing in turn with terms for sun, moon, star, Orion, Pleiades, Polaris, Sirius, Ursa Major. In the case of Orion, there is no clear Indo-European parentage for the Greek name, which may be a loanword ultimately traceable to Sumerian. In all other cases, astronomical names recorded in various early Indo-European languages appear to be cognate and to tell us something about the astronomical vocabulary of proto-Indo-European, though only three terms (for sun, star and moon) can be confidently reconstructed as common to Hittite and other Indo-European groups.

Blazek suggests that pIE sun is inherited from Nostratic, that pIE star might be borrowed from Semitic, and that pIE moon may represent semantic shift from a word meaning month. A quick glance at the list of abbreviations shows that forms from over 90 languages are cited in this 18-page article.

Here's the full set of on-line additions to Notes in the Margin.

Etymology online, continued

The American Heritage dictionary  online includes separate brief dictionaries of Indo-European and Semitic roots, the former by Calvert Watkins, the latter by John Huehnergard.

Dating the origins of Indo-European and Slavic languages

In Linguistica Brunensia (2005) Vaclav Blazek collaborates with Petra Novotna on a glottochronological study of the Slavic languages. The hundred-word table that they used is usefully set out in full, for all the languages, on pages 67 to 77. According to their calculations, North Slavic (Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian) split from the rest in AD 520/600, South Slavic (Slovene, Serbo-Croat, Macedonian and Bulgarian) in 720, Czech-Slovak in 900. The remaining three, Sorbian, Polabian and Polish, split in 1020. The split between Russian and the two other North Slavic languages came in 1070, between Macedonian and Bulgarian in 1220, between Slovene and Serbo-Croat in 1300, between Czech and Slovak also in 1300, between Ukrainian and Belorussian in 1630 and between North and South Sorbian also in 1630.

If you believe in glottochronology your faith will probably not be shaken by the enormous differences between this calculation and the one developed by the late S. Starostin at Santa Fe in 2004. Starostin found that the earliest split was between Bulgarian-Macedonian and all the rest, and this happened in 130 AD. North Slavic then separated off in 270, said Starostin, followed by Polabian-Sorbian in 420 and by Slovene-Serbo-Croat in 670. Polish split from Czech-Slovak in 780.

An appendix to this paper gives the glottochronological analysis of the whole Indo-European that emerged from the same research by Starostin, who calculated that Anatolian separated from the rest ofIndo-European in 4670 BC, Tocharian in 3810 BC, Celtic in 3350 BC, Armenian-Albanian-Recky in 3020 BC, Italic-Germanic in 2860 BC. Indo-Iranian separated from Balto-Slavic in 2710 BC. Armenian, Albanian and Recky split in 2590 BC, Italic and Germanic in 2500 BC, Iranian and Indic in 2000 BC, Baltic and Slavic in 1210 BC, Brythonic and Goidelic (the two branches of Celtic) in 1000 BC, and Tocharian A and Tocharian B in 20 BC.

Etymology online

A splendid range of etymological dictionaries can be found on line at the Santa Fe University site. I leave that link there, but I wonder if this is just one of the portals that leads to the Indoeuropean languages project: if you use this link instead, you'll find some essential guidance on how to use these slightly rebarbative databases.

And here's a site (in German) devoted to Etymology itself, the study of word origins.

Heavenly bodies in proto-Indo-European

In Linguistica Brunensia (2005) Vaclav Blazek has published a little etymological dictionary of the names of heavenly bodies in Indo-European languages. Entries include sun, moon, star, planet, the individual planets visible to the naked eye, the Pleiades, Sirius, the Pole Star, the Great Bear and Orion. In the last case there is no clear Indo-European parentage for the Greek name, which may be a loanword ultimately traceable to Sumerian. In all other cases, astronomical names recorded in various early Indo-European languages appear to be cognate and to tell us something about the astronomical vocabulary of proto-Indo-European.

How did Southeast Asian food plants reach West Africa?

The theory that mariners from insular south east Asia rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached tropical west Africa by sea in early medieval times was argued by the ethnomusicologist A. M. Jones in the 1960s. It is now championed in Robert Dick-Read's new book The phantom voyagers: evidence of Indonesian settlement (Winchester: Thurlton, 2005) ...

As Roland Oliver points out in his review in the Times literary supplement (9 December 2005) the theory can explain how 'the coconut, the banana plantain, the taro and other Asian yams considered by botanists to have originated in South-East Asia' reached west Africa. It could also explain a fact that puzzled European mariners when they reached Benin in the early 16th century, as I mentioned in Dangerous Tastes -- the fact that they found pepper on sale there. The pepper is, however, now said to be a different species from any of those of southern Asia. As for the other food plants, it seems at least equally likely that these were brought to the east African coast by 'Indonesian' mariners (there can be no doubt that they crossed the Indian Ocean, since they settled Madagascar). If so, the plants might have gradually spread westwards from there in cultivation.

Beer: an article from Food in the Ancient World from A to Z

Click here for the article on Beer in the ancient world and here for more about Food in the Ancient World from A to Z

Food words in ancient languages: Dacian

I intended to add to Food in the Ancient World from A to Z the names of foods in other ancient languages -- beyond Latin and Greek -- but I had to give up the idea because it would have taken much too long to get them right. I will gradually add further information to this site.

I've seen discussion on the language forums YourDictionary.com and Alphadictionary.com about the names of two great kings of Dacia (roughly, modern Romania) before the Roman conquest: Decebalus and Burebista. This reminded me that the structure of these four-syllable names, especially Burebista, is reminiscent of some of the words for edible and medicinal plants in Dacian, as preserved by the Greek pharmaceutical author Dioskourides and in the Latin Herbarius attributed to Apuleius.

Extinct for nearly two thousand years, Dacian makes only rare appearances on the Web. So I've extracted the fifty-four recorded Dacian plant names from my database: they can now be found listed here.

Darcini, the Persian name for cinnamon: what does it tell us?

Susan Weingarten asked me to clarify this. On p. 39 of Dangerous Tastes I describe darcini as an Indian name for Chinese cinnamon (the older, Sanskrit name is tvac). So it is; it's used in Hindi and other modern Indian languages. But what is its origin?

It is a compound word meaning 'Chinese wood', and clearly it is a compound of typical Persian-Urdu form: if it had been formed in Sanskrit, the two elements would appear the other way round. In fact I nearly said in Dangerous Tastes that darcini was a Persian word; I didn't do so, mindful that J T Platts, in the Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (1884), derives it from two Sanskrit words, daru = wood + ciniya = Chinese; the latter word is not in Monier-Williams's Sanskrit dictionary, incidentally, but cognates are. I wasn't aware when writing Dangerous Tastes that R S McGregor, in the Oxford Hindi-English dictionary (1993), disagrees with Platts, saying that Hindi darcini is a cross between Persian darchin and Hindi cini. Although I don't know where McGregor gets the form darchin, I am sure he is right to trace the word to Persian. My Persian dictionary has darchini and the early Persian medical text by Harawi, dated to c. 970, has (according to the German translation) darsini. Susan Weingarten tells me it occurs, earlier still, in the Babylonian Talmud. Platts is certainly wrong, therefore. The word is really Persian, and quite early. It was borrowed from Persian both into Aramaic and into Urdu/Hindi and other Indian languages.

Thus the word darcini -- showing that in early medieval times the Persians got their cinnamon through the Chinese trade -- becomes one more scrap of evidence of the contacts between late antique Persia and southern China. The evidence I already had, and set out in Dangerous Tastes, concerned jasmine (p. 77).

Garcia de Orta (Coloquios [Goa, 1563]) gives as his explanation of the name darcini that Chinese traders, having unloaded east Asian produce in Sri Lanka, would load up cinnamon from there and take it on westwards to the Persian port of Ormuz; which is likely enough at certain periods. He is attempting to explain the uncomfortable fact, which I also have difficulty explaining, that although the best cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka, scarcely any sources before the end of the medieval period say clearly that Sri Lanka is the source of it.

Fish sauce: the names of garum

This is a version of my posting to the Apicius group, which has been discussing the names for fish sauce in Aramaic.

In Latin there are four words, garum (a word borrowed from Greek), liquamen (a Latin neologism ‘the liquid, the exudate, what flows off’), muria (unexplained), allec (either linked with the word for ‘shad’, or borrowed from Greek). It’s a sign of the local importance of the product that it has such a rich vocabulary. Sally Grainger is going to publish her view that garum and liquamen mean rather different things. I guess that muria was a garum substitute, perhaps produced by cooking rather than fermentation. By the way, Roman fish sauce as a whole (garum/liquamen/muria complex) was not an expensive product -- more a necessity of life. It was the main way of adding salt to food and one of the ways of not wasting fish. Just as in Thailand or Vietnam now, there could be a whole range of prices from the stuff everyone uses to the fancy brands (garum sociorum etc.) and single-ingredient products. As for the solid stuff, allec, no source suggests that this was expensive so far as I know. The Geoponica seems to tell us that it was the solid by-product of the fermentation of garum/liquamen, and, again southeast Asia offers an analogue.

In Greek there are only two words, garos and alix (and the latter is rare). The explanation could be this. Greeks hadn’t originally seen the attraction of the solid by-product (can one blame them?), and they hadn’t got to the level of garum gastronomy reached by Rome. They just reached out for fish sauce, good or bad, more smelly or less smelly, and called it garos.

In Aramaic there is the word muries, close to Latin muria. Being purely speculative, this Aramaic word could be as specialised as Latin muria, or as general in its meaning as Greek garos. I suppose the word could have been used earlier in the Levant, and could have arrived in Italy by way of Carthage, to be adopted in Latin as a name for the products at the cheap end of the market. Or it could have been borrowed from Latin into Aramaic; in that case it could have retained its meaning of the cheap-end salty fishy sauce, or it could have gained a wider meaning – you can see how that would happen in the provinces – eventually used also for a more expensive imported product if the local elite got interested in it. There is also the word tsir, the name of a product which could be cheap, was fed to workers, might be made from locusts instead of fish. It has been said in the past that tsir corresponds to garum more or less – I said so, following an earlier authority, in Food in the Ancient World from A to Z – but Susan Weingarten is reconsidering the meaning of the Aramaic words and does not believe that tsir is garum.

Relevant to these ancient fermented sauces are the medieval Levantine ones, which Charles Perry has been studying. References follow.

Fish sauce: Charles Perry's work on its medieval analogues

C. Perry, 'Medieval Near Eastern rotted condiments' in Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1987: taste. Proceedings (London: Prospect Books, 1988) pp. 169-177.

Later he made further experiments, and contributed notes to Petits propos culinaires nos 58 and 61 (1998-9), reprinted in The wilder shores of gastronomy ed. Alan Davidson, Helen Saberi. Berkeley, California (Ten Speed Press, 2002) pp. 358-362.

Around this time he was also writing on the subject in the Los Angeles Times: ALL THE LOST FLAVORS May 18, 1995; ROT SAUCE December 21, 1995; WHAT ROT! January 14, 1998; STILL ROTTING February 18, 1998; O. K., IT'S ROTTED, IS IT SAFE? April 1, 1998; ROT OF AGES April 1, 1998; GOT ROTTED MILK? September 2, 1998.

Guineafowl: what varieties were known to Greeks and Romans?

First of all, Alan Davidson, in the Oxford Companion to Food, says that there are several species of guineafowl; but in Food in the Ancient World from A to Z I speak of 'two major varieties', implying a single species. Which of us is right? Both of us. There are several species in the family Numididae, and they can all be called guineafowl, but none has been domesticated except the single species Numida Meleagris (sometimes called helmeted guineafowl), of which nine subspecies are currently recognised. Go to Alan P. Peterson's Zoonomen for an up-to-date list of species and subspecies.

Greeks had only one name for guineafowl, meleagris. Having been domesticated in northeastern Africa and familiar in ancient Egypt, this variety of guineafowl was known even in late prehistoric Greece, before the arrival of the domestic hen.

Romans had several names for them. One was meleagris, borrowed from Greek. The other usual name was Numidica (avis or gallina), i.e. Numidian bird, Numidian hen, and the name suggests it became familiar to Romans from northwestern Africa, specifically the hinterland of Carthage, a long way west from the probable arrival route of the meleagris. There are other names too, such as Africana gallina , Afra volucris, i.e. African hen, African bird, but these are poetic and literary variants of Numidica, not distinct names for a different variety: Columella, the farming author, says that Africana and Numidica are the same.

However, Romans did (sometimes) distinguish meleagris from Numidica. Suetonius lists both separately when he is detailing the fancy birds sacrificed to Caligula after this unpredictable emperor had decided that he was a god. And Columella describes both: the meleagris has a sky-blue (caerulea) helmet and crest, the Africana a red-brown (rutila) helmet and crest.

So, as far as the texts can take us, Greeks knew a single variety, typically with some blue plumage, and it will have been the same already known in Pharaonic Egypt. Romans knew a second variety, typically with some red-brown plumage, introduced to Italy from northwestern Africa.

For precise references see Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (2003) pp. 169-170.