Thread by @serbiaireland

Thread: How old is the Irish (Gaelic) language? Why am I asking this? Because there is something very interesting in the Irish language, which can possibly help us determine when and where this language had originally developed...This:

This image shows a person standing at the door of his house. The door is facing east. What is astounding is how these words for direction of movement and orientation match in the Irish (Gaelic) language...

This language characteristic can only be explained if we assume that this part of the Irish language was developed by the culture which lived in a world which faced east...Where facing east was something everyone did every day...

Like if their houses were built in such a way that the house entrances faced east...

It turns out that most rectangular [Irish] Neolithic houses had east facing entrances...

The same goes for the Irish Bronze Age round houses, which were also predominantly built with their doors facing East or South East...

So if you were a person living in this kind of the world, then your language will naturally develop in such a way that North is Leftward, South is Rightward...

I can't see any other reason why such a strange cultural trait would develop...Can you?

So when did this part of the Irish language develop?

During Neolithic, 4th - 3rd millennium BC?
During Bronze Age, 3rd - 1st millennium BC?

Irish dictionaries

celt.ucc.ie//Dinneen1.pdf
teanglann.ie

Neolithic houses

books.google.ie/books?id=g_Xdc…

Bronze Age houses

mooregroup.ie/2013/05/bronze…
eachtra.ie/index.php/jour…
heritagecouncil.ie/unpublished_ex…

...

PS: The only other culture where I found something similar is Hebrew culture...An examination of Iron Age buildings and settlements in ancient Israel indicates that a large number of them were oriented toward the east, while the west was extremely under-represented...

An examination of various climatic and functional considerations does not seem to explain the phenomenon. But ethnographic studies, show that cosmological principles can have on the planning of buildings and settlements, and that in many cases the east is preferred...

The common Biblical Hebrew word for east is qedma
(forward), while the west is ahora (backward). Additional words for these directions indicate that the east had a good connotation while the west had a bad one...

Thus, the archaeological pattern, along with language and texts (which are used as a substitute for human informants), seem to give an important insight into some of the cosmological principles of the ancient Israelites...

From:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/14…

Anyone knows of any other similar cultural traits?