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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 25
These offer an exit into the realm of Ocean , but only for the most intrepid of
heroes . Even to approach the pillars that separate the human from the divine
Oceanic realm outside is described is an act of extraordinary courage and
heroism .
600 BC . of the cosmos , the divine animals ' who form the belt of heaven ' , and
also left - overs of the earlier cosmic order whose banishment from the human
realm was a necessary part of the formation of the present order of things .
... golden age somewhere out there in the Isles of the Blessed . The tower motif
also perhaps suggests Kronos ' defence of his realm from incursions from the
more mundane human realm ruled over by Zeus . So , the journey to this
paradise is ...
What people are saying - Write a review
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 | |
5 other sections not shown