Strange Creatures: Anthropology in AntiquityBloomsbury Academic, 2006 M06 8 - 256 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
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... Zeus, as name of a ship 987o Zeus Hypatos, as name of a ship 876o Zeus, king of Crete 9400 9410 9420 Zeus, the planet Function: yivcnsS58o Zibeleizis Cult : Getai 822 851 Etymology: 823 Zio See Ziu Ziobe See Zougo Zioter (Zeter) 1212 ...
... Zeus the Showery 1 . This enigmatic allusion is expounded as follows by the scholiast and by Tzetzes . Elis once suffered from a prolonged drought , till the inhabitants consulted an oracle and were bidden to offer Zeus a human ...
... Zeus Idatos in Crete thus fall into line with the mystics of Zeus Sabázios in Phrygia ( supra p . 395 f . ) . And this may be ultimately the meaning of the phrase eaλáuevua Kovphтwv used by Euripides ( infra n . 2 ) , of the formula ÚπÒ ...
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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