Latin humanus, related to humus (ground, soil): the earthly being, possibly set against both gods and animals. Humus's children: humble (low, on the ground), humility, humiliate (to bring to the ground), exhume (out of the earth), and by folk association, humility's cousin homage (originally a man's oath).
The theological rhyme: Genesis has God forming adam from adamah, the ground, Hebrew running the same play as Latin. Two unrelated languages independently naming humanity after soil is either coincidence or the oldest shared self-knowledge.
Humiliate keeps the root's violence: to be humbled is to be put down, onto the humus. The word family implies a topography of status, the high and the low, where the ground is both origin and punishment. Every humility lesson is a geography lesson.
Is humble an insult to humans or the only accurate adjective we have?