Cognate food words reveal the differing livelihoods of pastoralist and agricultural peoples

Evidence

In Hebrew lehfiem means bread, whereas the Arabic lahfim means meat. Both obviously derive from the same word, and designate a major foodstuff. Similarly, samn in Arabic means clarified butter; the cognate Hebrew word shemen means oil. A moment’s thought is enough to explain the difference. For the pastoral Arabs, these basic words designated meat and butter; for the agricultural He­ brews, bread and oil. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 222

Categorization

• CANDY: A single cognate pair (bread/meat) silently encodes a whole pastoral-vs-farming ecology.
• XREF: connects to: A shared ancestral word split meaning along pastoral-agricultural lines