# Pre-1600s, people didn't know that air was a thing/existed?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-1600s-people-didnt-know-that-air-was-a-thing-existed/713010>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 18, 2015, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-1600s-people-didnt-know-that-air-was-a-thing-existed/713010 "2015-02-18T15:37:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 8

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**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-1600s-people-didnt-know-that-air-was-a-thing-existed/713010/8 "2015-02-18T22:17:45Z")

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[Previous thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=487156&highlight=discover) on the subject. I’m particuarly intrigued by post #16 (emphasis mine):

> [@When did people discover air?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-discover-air/467258/16):
>
> I once made a survey of basic vocabulary (my version of the [Swadesh list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list)) from about 200 languages around the world. I included the words for fire, water, air, and earth. At least I assumed that air would be a basic word. Actually, the Swadesh list includes fire, water, and earth-- but not air.
> 
> My survey found that **a great many languages had no word for air per se.** Often the nearest equivalents were the words for either wind or breath.
> 
> Of the languages that did have a word for air, many of them had it as a loanword from one of four languages which provided the philosophical and learned vocabulary for their respective civilizations: Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, or Chinese.
> 
> Thus English & French _air_, Irish _aer_, Italian _aria_, Albanian _erë_ \< Latin _aer_ \< Greek _aer_.  
> Persian/Tatar/Turkish/Urdu _hava_, Uzbek _havo_, Javanese _howo_ \< Arabic _hawa’_.  
> Sinhalese _vayuva_ \< Sanskrit _vayu_; Assamese _batah_, Bengali _batash_ \< Sanskrit _vata_; Khmer _akas_, Lao & Thai _akat_ \< Sanskrit _akasa_.  
> Korean _konggi_, Japanese _kuki_, Vietnamese _không khí_ \< Chinese _kongqi_.
> 
> **These data suggest to me that “air” is a more abstract concept than concrete wind or breath,** because it so often occurs as a loanword from the languages of the major philosophical traditions. Therefore it isn’t something immediately perceptible to the mind the way fire, water, and earth are.

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