As regards Europe, for a long time the ‘classic’ study of Greek was compulsory at universities, and Greek philosophers, mathematicians and astronomers are revered to this day throughout the world. But all indications are that the Greek civilisation admired, learnt from and copied much of its learning and ways from the more ancient civilisation of Egypt in North Africa. In this article we are going to go further than this and relate the Greek prefixes para, peri and circa with Setswana with the intention of demonstrating that they originate from a common but long-lost mother language that I am steadily uncovering.
One factor these terms have in common is that they are all fundamental to a measurement and physical dimensions. Greece was an empire that expanded and then disintegrated in the lifetime of Alexander the Great of Macedonia (a region of today’s Greece). Centuries later, it was defeated and followed by an ardent admirer and emulator of all its best attributes: Rome. And it was Rome that penetrated most of Europe and brought ‘civilisation’ to Europe’s ‘barbarians’. (Greece only overran and consolidated its surrounds, conquered Egypt, and headed eastward to Babylon, where Egypt’s famous Oracle of Delphi had assured Alexander that he can meet his true father the god Amun (Baal or Belus).
