The historical-cultural and linguistic biography of flax (on the problem of interdisciplinary research)

This article examines the history of research into one of the Slavic and European Kuiturworter-the word лён (flax, Linum), attested from prehistoric times, beginning with Cretan-Mycenaean and Ancient Greek texts. After more than a century of etymological study, linguists generally concur that, on the one hand, this term possesses considerable (pre)historicai depth, potentially extending to the Nostratic period. On the other hand, they have advanced a hypothesis regarding its primary meaning in European languages, interpreting *iino- as a derivative of *iei-/*ii- (‘to pour'), thus iinking it to the process of retting flax stems. A typoiogicai paraiiei, proposed by proponents of this view, between ancient Indian uma- (‘flax') and Latin umere (‘to be wet') has not gained support among speciaiists in Indo-Iranian studies. An interdisciplinary approach, drawing on data concerning the history of Indo-European settlement in Europe, historical connections between European peoples and the Mediterranean, archaeological evidence, the development of arable farming, textiie crafts, and methods of fiber extraction, aiiows for an aiternative interpretation of the European term for flax. The hypothesis put forward by Sergey A. Starostin, suggesting that the designation of the flax piant may constitute an Indo-European-North Caucasian isogioss, finds confirmation in the work of Nikoiay I. Vaviiov and his followers. Their synthesis of data on the expansion of agriculture in Europe indicates that the primary assemblage of cultivated plants was formed from elements of the West Asian cuitivated flora, which inciuded flax. Moreover, both in Centrai/Northern Europe and on the East European Piain, Coichian flax is considered the ancestrai form from which aii other cuitivated varieties in Transcaucasia and Western Asia descended.

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