Strange Creatures: Anthropology in AntiquityIn ancient Greek and Roman thinking, whether the world is flat or spherical it will have imaginary boundaries and liminal areas where the norms of nature and culture are thought to break down. Analogies are constantly drawn between 'primitive' peoples at the 'edges of the world' and 'primitive' people in prehistory. Distance, both in time and space, leads to difference, and the idea that strange things happen out there or happened back then dominates Greek and Roman thinking on other cultures. This book examines ancient ideas of the creation of the world, the beginnings of life and origin of species, humans and animals, utopias and blessed islands, and 'barbarian' cultures beyond the Mediterranean world, before going on to trace the influence of ancient anthropological and ethnological thought on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We begin with primordial chaos and end with the invention of the Americas, taking in many strange creatures, from the savages of Britain, Gaul and Ireland, to the Man-faced Ox-creatures of Empedocles, the Dog-heads of India, the Amazons, the Centaurs, and the Tupinamba of Brazil. |
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Page 6
In front is the sea (water), beneath, the earth, around and above, the air, and
above that the sun, moon and stars which are clearly made of some fiery
substance, or aither. As the world is divided naturally into these four parts which
are in some ...
In front is the sea (water), beneath, the earth, around and above, the air, and
above that the sun, moon and stars which are clearly made of some fiery
substance, or aither. As the world is divided naturally into these four parts which
are in some ...
Page 50
There is no hint here of any golden age and indeed such ideas of prehistory
clearly arise in opposition to golden age theories, hence Lovejoy and Boas' label
'Anti-primitivism'. Very frequently we see such stories of the lives of the first
humans, ...
There is no hint here of any golden age and indeed such ideas of prehistory
clearly arise in opposition to golden age theories, hence Lovejoy and Boas' label
'Anti-primitivism'. Very frequently we see such stories of the lives of the first
humans, ...
Page 74
This process of rationalisation can also be seen clearly in accounts of Ireland
such as the following from the fourth- century AD poet Rufus Festus Avienus:
From here it is a two-day voyage to the Sacred Isle, for by this name the ancients
called ...
This process of rationalisation can also be seen clearly in accounts of Ireland
such as the following from the fourth- century AD poet Rufus Festus Avienus:
From here it is a two-day voyage to the Sacred Isle, for by this name the ancients
called ...
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Contents
The Origin of Life and the Origin of Species | 17 |
Ancient Theories of Prehistory and the Evolution of Society | 39 |
Blessed Islands and Blessed Lands | 61 |
Copyright | |
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acorns agriculture Anaximander ancient animals anti-primitivist Arcadians Aristotle atomic barbarians barbaric beasts become blessed lands Cambyses cannibalism chaos civilised clearly climate Columbus cosmogony creation creatures culture Darius Democritus described diet Diodorus Siculus divine Dog-heads earth and water east eating elements Empedocles Epicurean Ethiopians ethnocentric ethnographic extremes Fortunate Isles Gauls geographical Germans gods golden age Greece Greek Hartog Herodotus Hesiod Hieros Gamos History human Hyperboreans ideal ideas India Indies inhabitants king Lery Lery's Libya lifestyle living Lucretius luxury moral myth mythological nature noble savage norms Ocean Ovid Panchaia Paradise Pelasgus perhaps Persians philosopher Pillars of Heracles Plato Pliny prehistory Presocratics primitivist produce Prometheus race rationalisation realm river Roman Romm sacred islands Scythians seafaring seems seen sort status story Strabo Taprobane technologies Theogony theory things Timaeus tion tradition Trans Tupinamba warfare wild Zeus