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. |
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... University of Ireland , Maynooth , for the past five years . So I hope the book will be of interest to students , the general reader , and also to academics who don't work particularly on ancient anthropology and ethnography , but I ...
... University , Special Collections . 122 123 134-5 Fig . 10. Marvels of the East . From a Spanish edition of Mandeville's Travels ( Libro de las maravillas del mundo llamado Selva deleytosa ( Alcala , 1547 ) . Houghton Library , Harvard ...
Anthropology in Antiquity Gordon Lindsay Campbell. Index UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3 9015 06489 8250. Abioi 96 acorns 45 , 50-1 , 54-5 , 82-4 , 88 , 93 , 165 n . 20 , 167 n . 41 , 169 n . 67 Agatharchides , On the Erythraean Sea 49 : 86-7 ...
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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