A concepção de alma/espírito na Pré-História: um estudo semântico do Nostrático

Abstract

Nostratic is a hypothetical language infered by Holger Pedersen in the beginning of the 20th century. Since the hypothesis was set up in the scientific world, several generations of linguists have been trying to solve the problem it created. Ancestral language of Greek and Hebrew, the Nostratic indicates in its vocabulary a lifestyle forgotten lifestyle by both cultures, but though its marks did not disappear in their lexicon. Spoken in the Mesolithic, when the Early Stone Age was in transition to the Polished Stone Age, this language followed in its existence the change from a hunting and gathering economical culture to an agricultural and urbanized one. The study of the nostratic root *ʕ̱oṭ∇- breathe, blow allowed to perceive it as cognate for the Greek ἀηκóο blow, breath, air and the hebrew root √qṭr incense, scent , whereas in its sister languages, in both linguistic families, it has often meant soul, phantom, spirit, deity . The Greek, an example of the Eurasiatic Branch of the Nostratic Languages, more specifically the Indo-European, still keeps in its vocabulary some relation with the shamanic religion. On the other hand, the Hebrew, example of the Afrasiatic Branch, from the Semitic family, already suffered deep changes due to the advent of agriculture, which reached that people in more archaic periods than the indo-europeans. To illustrate this, there was a selection of the older literary texts in each language, which allowed us to analyse the most primitive reccurrence of this lexicon, for comparison. For this comparison, a semantic study was accomplished in order to check which elements of its semantics are more persistent and which are lost in the evolve of these languages, and thus it was possible to chart which archaic concepts for soul in the Nostratic religion are still present today.