No one knows the actual root of any word. Some other language existed before Sanskrit and Sumerian. I’m interested in things that all people shared before they ever knew the other existed: the “Dog Star,” for instance, and all the so-called divine beings said to die for 3 days to be reborn, or the fact that every mother across the world says “Shhhh” to calm her baby, or the bizarrely similar symptoms of sleep paralysis across cultures and ages, or the “Erm” or “Um” people say when they can’t think of what to say next, and how similar “Um” is to “Amen” (Aum-men) and what’s said to be the primordial sound, “AUM”:
“Aaauuuu-Ooooooooo-Mmmmmmmm” (Um, I mean, um, rather, amen.)