3) Problem

As always, in order to understand Paleolithic culture, we have to begin with the here and now, because even if we aren't aware of it, we still live in the Stone Age, especially in the business world. Michel Berger was well aware of this when he composed his magnificent song « Le monde est stone » (The World is Stoned, from the French musical Starmania).

A business is first and foremost a group of people working together. For managers, especially within large corporations, a major issue is the optimum distribution of their staff - and more generally of their resources - between teams, groups, divisions, so as to make cooperation easier. That's why, every year, teams - and sometimes even entire divisions or subsidiaries - are restructured (staff is « cut »), partitioned and merged.

Of course, it is not only teams and staff that need to be well distributed and shared throughout an organization : it is also (and maybe most importantly) the added value it generates.This question of how to share added value has obsessed economists and politicians for centuries, but it is also at play on a smaller scale in any business, in what are known as profit-sharing and commission plans, which managers design to motivate and engage their employees, particularly in sales positions.

Any manager drawing up a commission plan knows just how complicated it is to figure out the right formula to calculate bonuses and commissions. These of course, need to be incentive-based, but not too much, and above all, they have to avoid pernicious impacts such as threshold effects. Senior officials at the Ministry of Finance face the same challange when working out the rules for calculating our taxes. In short, sharing value is a daily challenge.

It's hardly surprising that the act of cutting and tranching (slicing) is so crucial for any business. After all, cutting and tranching have been essential to hominids for millions of years. Even today, one of the first things we learn as soon as we know how to read and write is to organize our ideas by grouping them into parts and sub-parts, whether for an essay, a composition, a professional presentation, or even a YouTube video. In my video projects, I spend almost as much time collecting loose ideas as I do sorting and organizing them.

Finding the right sections and sequences is crucial in making complex subjects accessible. This is also why composing a song, or a rhapsody, is like stringing together bits of song one after the other, creating a sort of string or chain, « ShaRShaR » in Hebrew, as I explained in my video about orality.

Therefore, we are bound to find this act of tranching in many covenant and commitment rituals, which structure cooperation. For instance in Genesis, chapter 15, verse 9, in the famous covenant of the parts, or in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 34, verse 18, or, of course, in Ancient Greece, where taking an oath was oRKia TeMNein, « to cut an oath », and where people walked between the parts of an animal cut into pieces.

But you’re already familiar with all this : I delved into it at length in my video on the « Covenant of the Parts ». The novelty is that every day, without being aware of it, we utter thousands of times the archaic word that embodied parting/sharing for our Paleolithic ancestors. And that word is « Ta Ra ».

4) Erratum

However, before diving into the world of « Ta Ra », let me take a few minutes to look back at the « Ra » sound we studied in my previous video. Remember, I explained that this sound was probably the most archaic of all, as it was found in all the semantic fields related to communication : perception, transmission, medium, spatial and temporal separation and, of course, sharing. It was a long video. I thought I'd covered it all, but I missed several extremely important points.

First of all, I should have mentioned that the suffix -eR was widely used for kinship words in Indo-European languages. SiSTeR, BRoTheR, FaTheR, MoTheR. Also found in Greek and Latin: PaTeR, MaTeR. As a matter of fact, in these languages, the suffix -eR is related to the human being: ViR in Latin, « aRya » in Indo-Iranian languages, which we find in the name of the country of Iran. A human is a creature who uTTeRs.

Then I told you about Ruo, which gave the French « Ruer » (to kick), the English « RuSh » and expresses the idea of a violent movement, or even the RuTTing of animals. But I'd missed uRo, which means to BuRN, and above all ReoR, which means to think, and which we'll come back to in a few moments. A thought is something that SPRiNGs to mind out of nowhere.

Coming back to the suffix -re, we find it in the English comparatives : MoRe, BeTTeR - related to the idea of PoWeR. What's interesting in English is that superlatives end in -ST : MoST, BeST. Here we find the three fundamental sounds Ra, Sha and Ta with which I chose to start my Paleolithic linguistics course. And you'll see that these three buddies usually come together.

But there's more: I had completely omitted uRus, the auRoCh, the ancestor of today's bull, TauRus, the ultimate symbol of power, which our ancestors were drawing 20,000 years ago in Lascaux. How ironic for a Paleolithic expert!

Lastly, I haven't told you about iéRos, a VeRy important Greek word meaning the supernatural, the divine, the SaCRed. Hence, for example, hieRaRChy, hieRoGLyPh or even the first name Jerome, or Geronimo - literally « the sacred name ». But originally, especially in Homer's - oMèRoS - work, iéRos isn't the sacred, it's the RaPiD one, the powerful one. All these words bring us back to the power of sound springing FoRTh; just like the power of love éRos, this unstoppable FoRCe.

It’s a shame that I completely missed out on an extremely important culture to understand the origins of Palaeolithic language. That of... Ancient Egypt. Yes, you heard me right : Ancient Egypt.

Now, I had identified that the god RO was associated with the sun, the symbol of power springing FoRTh, which the Egyptians drew with STRoKes representing its RaYs. But I should have burrowed way deeper into hieroglyphs. It turns out that the « Ra » sound is depicted with a mouth and a stroke. We find here the exact same semantic group that includes the stroke and the power of the sound. What is more, not only does this hieroglyph represent the mouth and an oVeRture, but it also represents ... a ShaRe, a PaRT, a portion. Unbelievable, isn't it ? I think it’s impressive.

Anyway, the hieroglyph meaning the sun god RO, is written by combining the hieroglyph for the « Ra » sound next to a sun, and a giving hand (the same hand we sometimes see drawn at the end of the sun's RaYs). The « Ra » sound can further be found in many Egyptian words expressing GReaTness and power, such as WeR, meaning RiSing, aPPeaRance or disaPPeaRance. In other words, the same kind of semantic relationship that exists between iéRos in Greek and oRioR by the Romans, which is where oRiGiN and oRieNT come FRoM.

Now, another fundamental hieroglyph is IRI, shaped like an eye (remember Raʔah in Hebrew and oRao in Greek). This eye looks a lot like the mouth of the « Ra » sound, but counter-intuitively, it doesn't mean to see, but to do, to act, to conceive. Instead, the eye is written IReT, with again the eye and the stroke, and a bread bun for the Ta sound, to which we'll return soon.

Let's get back to IRI : this hieroglyph expresses the fact that for the Egyptians - whose culture had been one of the written word for several thousands of years - doing, conceiving, creating was first and foremost a visual matter. This idea is echoed in the hieroglyphs YWuR, meaning to conceive (especially a child), and YRuW, meaning CReaTor, FoRM and RiTuaL. Remember, ritual is always a RiGhT FoRM, as I explained at length last year.

The « Ra » sound is also found in ReK, meaning eRa : a PeRioD of time. It's also found in the lion, RuW, and the goose, RA, two « RoaRing » animals. Lastly, to conclude and return to our topic of the day, cutting and TRanChing, a knife is pronounced IRY and more importantly, « two-ThiRDs » is pronounced RuWI, written with a mouth and two strokes.

In short, if you've watched my previous video, you'll find exactly the same semantic fields associated with the « Ra » sound in Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and the same polysemy of the stroke as a symbol of sound, brightness and parting. But this connection with ancient Egyptian is even more interesting than it sounds. For, as you'll see in this video and the following one, the « Ra » sound is the only one for which this semantic connection is that overt.

It is therefore a strong marker of the archaic nature of the « Ra » sound, which I believe predates the emergence of our species, Homo Sapiens, and was probably shared with our extinct cousins, the Neanderthal human and Homo Heidelbergensis. But we'll come back to these chronological issues shortly. Anyway, Roger Lécureux and André Chéret got their inspiration quite right when they called their HeRo « Rahan », the son of FeRal ages. Ra Ha. RuwaḤ.