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 37
... Roman province and most remote from the softening effects of Roman culture , are the toughest of all the Gauls.31 Likewise the Helvetii also outstrip the rest of the Gauls in their toughness ( virtus ) and warlike natures . Hence the ...
... Roman culture at the same time as showing them as primitive barbarians . The Germans , as well as being dangerous barbaric savages , are also moral exemplars who can teach the Romans a thing or two about purity , simplicity and virtue ...
... Roman culture into Gaul . If he were speaking of the role of luxury in Roman history almost no Roman moralist would disagree with him , 35 but using the topos in ethnography leaves the Romans with a peculiar problem : their enemies are more ...
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