Ur Kasdim - First Farmers Cooperative

The true directive and the rest of the story ...

The word kasdim (כשדים) in Ur Kasdim comes from the Hebrew root שדד. This root basically refers to plowing furrows before planting. Consequently, the phrase Ur Kasdim refers to an "original farming community" which has learned to harness nature and to reliably produce food, enabling a relatively settled lifestyle (in contrast to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle) - Ur Kasdim could have been located anywhere.

Knowing the root from which the name of the "original homeland" of Abraham is derived gives us a clue to the actual directive given to Abraham. The directive was specifically to spread the technology of farming to a largely hunter-gatherer human population. Farmers may have went out into the world in all directions from this original first farming community. Abraham's clan may have been one clan of many given this directive - to spread the knowledge of farming to the rest of the human family.

Related - Urheimat and Ur, Original Homelands