Re:Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t dr...
by rsj_hn on Monday September 07, 2020 @04:12PM
(#24402369)
For the etymology, capital today can mean everything from the capital city of Spain is madrid, to a "capital crime", a capital column, etc. I refer you to the second meaning here:
Since we are talking about neolithic cattle culture, the word does not come from Latin but from the PIE root "kaput" meaning "head", as in counting heads of cattle or the chief (principal) part of a loan as opposed to the interest paid, which is the secondary part.
The word "Cattle" also comes from "kaput".
Other words coming from "kaput" are "chapter", "chief", "caudillo".
My source for this is the AMAZING BOOK "A History of Interest Rates", by Sidney Homer, which is available on Amazon Kindle and is highly recommended for anyone interested in financial history.
Here is S.H.:
"Cattle breeding has supplied us with many financial terms used in later money economies. For example, there is our
own word capital and our term pecuniary, from pecus, meaning a “flock” in Latin. Sumerians used the word mas for
calves and for interest. The Egyptian term ms, meaning interest, is derived from the verb msj, which means “to give
birth.” Early Greeks, in fact, valued their precious metals in terms of cattle. In the Odyssey one of the suitors promised to
bring Ulysses a contribution “of bronze and gold to the value of twenty oxen.”
Cattle probably comprised the first true productive assets or capital of tribes or individuals. Ownership of cattle
determined the social position of individuals and families and still does in parts of Africa and, indeed, in parts of the United States. Surplus labor could be stored and retained in the form of cattle. "
Re:Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn’t dr...
by rsj_hn on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @03:40PM
(#24425021)
Yeah, I should have said "both capital and cattle come from the same PIE root, originally used in a financial sense when referring to heads of cattle".
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Capital
Since we are talking about neolithic cattle culture, the word does not come from Latin but from the PIE root "kaput" meaning "head", as in counting heads of cattle or the chief (principal) part of a loan as opposed to the interest paid, which is the secondary part.
The word "Cattle" also comes from "kaput".
Other words coming from "kaput" are "chapter", "chief", "caudillo".
My source for this is the AMAZING BOOK "A History of Interest Rates", by Sidney Homer, which is available on Amazon Kindle and is highly recommended for anyone interested in financial history.
Here is S.H.:
"Cattle breeding has supplied us with many financial terms used in later money economies. For example, there is our own word capital and our term pecuniary, from pecus, meaning a “flock” in Latin. Sumerians used the word mas for calves and for interest. The Egyptian term ms, meaning interest, is derived from the verb msj, which means “to give birth.” Early Greeks, in fact, valued their precious metals in terms of cattle. In the Odyssey one of the suitors promised to bring Ulysses a contribution “of bronze and gold to the value of twenty oxen.”
Cattle probably comprised the first true productive assets or capital of tribes or individuals. Ownership of cattle determined the social position of individuals and families and still does in parts of Africa and, indeed, in parts of the United States. Surplus labor could be stored and retained in the form of cattle. "