It’s traced back to about 8000 years, but not through records. Its history is reconstructed by linguists. So, it is often considered one of the oldest consistently used words, but I should not have called it the oldest “recorded word.”
Yeah, I found that article in my research. The 8000 year thing is just referring to the dating of when PIE was spoken (which is debated) and isn’t unique to the word *laks. There are lots of words which can be confidently reconstructed in PIE with consistent meanings, including mother, father, brother, sister, wine, eye, ewe, head, foot, to bear, to eat, to sit, to stand etc. Lax is just particularly interesting because of its stable form and geographic distribution.
Very interesting…
It’s traced back to about 8000 years, but not through records. Its history is reconstructed by linguists. So, it is often considered one of the oldest consistently used words, but I should not have called it the oldest “recorded word.”
Yeah, I found that article in my research. The 8000 year thing is just referring to the dating of when PIE was spoken (which is debated) and isn’t unique to the word *laks. There are lots of words which can be confidently reconstructed in PIE with consistent meanings, including mother, father, brother, sister, wine, eye, ewe, head, foot, to bear, to eat, to sit, to stand etc. Lax is just particularly interesting because of its stable form and geographic distribution.