I'm not seriously proposing that words for "death" all across the Northern Hemisphere are related, but I'm not entirely not proposing that, or at least that there may be an ancient wander-word (possibly driven by taboo replacement?) that made its way across much Eurasia …
Here we have three possibly tied groups: Afro-Asiatic *ʔariĉ̣-: "earth" (e.g. eretz), Indo-European *h₁er-: "earth" (e.g. earth) and Indo-European "to plow" (e.g. arable)
There are several indicators that *h₁ was pronounced as a glottal stop, including a number of other …