Strange Creatures: Anthropology in AntiquityTraces 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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Placing a paradise on an island far across Ocean is after all nothing new as we have seen , and as in Panchaia , the sacred ... Another question , in addition to whether Paradise has a location within this world , is whether it is to be ...
Then , however , by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ , they approached that belt of darkness , which surrounds Paradise . Clouds produced a thick obscurity to keep out the descendants of Adam . The darkness was so thick that anyone in ...
And so the heavenly and mundane realms unite in Paradise . Hugo of Saint Victor makes this clear : Asia has many provinces and regions whose names and location I shall set forth briefly , beginning with Paradise . Paradise is a place in ...
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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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