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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Unfortunately, so far as I know (and listers are encouraged to
> disabuse me of the notion), there is precious little about day to life
> at any stage in the past. 

That's it.  We have, for example and from a homesteader's point of view, some 
record of how major crops of barley and wheat were raised, but when someone 
tried to document kitchen gardens in the middle ages, they found there was no 
information whatever.  All we have are those anachronistic paintings of 
ancient 
or bibilical scenes where they depicted everyone as if they dressed and ate 
in a contemporary manner.  In those paintings we get a glimpse of a kitchen 
cabbage garden or such.  But nothing conclusive.

> 
> Figuring out the origin of words in another science all on its own
> 

There we have a few more clues.  For example, almost every word in the 
English language has been cataloged as to when it first appears in print or 
literature.  If someone speculates about word or a phrase arising from the 
1500's but 
it doesn't appear anywhere in any written from until the 1890's, then it's a 
pretty safe guess that the 1500's origin is fanciful.

We also have comparative linguistics to give us some clues.  In the case of 
the word 'heckle' that was just discussed, the 'heck' part of the word has 
the 
same linguistic root as 'hook' and 'hack' and comes from the Saxon word for 
'annoy'.  So are hecklers so called because they act like the 'heckles' for 
carding flax, or are the spiked blocks so called because they heckle the flax 
like 
a heckler annoys the prefromer.  Which is the origin and which the 
derivitive?     </HTML>