Strange Creatures: Anthropology in AntiquityBloomsbury Academic, 2006 M06 8 - 185 pages Traces the anthropological and ethnological theories of the ancient Greeks and Romans from the creation of the world to the invention of the Americas. In 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 on the way many strange creatures, among them the noble or ignoble savages of Britain, Gaul and Ireland, the Man-faced Ox-creatures of Empedocles, the Dog-heads of India, the Amazons, Centaurs, Columbus, and the Tupinamba of Brazil. |
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ISLAND ISLAND BITTER RIVER ISLAND ISLAND BABYLON WATERSTREAM
MARSH ISLAND ISLAND BITTER RIVER ISLAND Fig . 4 . Reconstruction of a
Babylonian clay tablet world map , c . 600 BC . of the cosmos , the divine animals
...
island is pervaded by fragrance , rising from the rock as from a fountain . (
Plutarch , On the Face in the Globe of the Moon 26 . 26A ) Here Plutarch makes a
direct link between Calypso ' s island in the Odyssey , where Odysseus is
promised ...
find that the Panchaians practise communism , having no private property except
their own houses and gardens , and all produce is given in to the state stores for
fair distribution by the priests among the population of the island . So out in the ...
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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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