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. |
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Perhaps the other most significant aspect of Hesiod ' s cosmogony for my
purposes here is its explicit anthropomorphism . Earth comes into being as a
gendered creature , ' broad - breasted Earth ' , and indeed it is also easy to see in
the ...
For example , a nomadic lifestyle can be viewed as a positive aspect of the noble
savage life , one that assimilates ... does not rule out that people being used at
the same time in an anti - ethnocentric way to criticise aspects of the writer ' s own
...
So India is a land of monsters , wonders , and sages , and all these can be seen
as aspects of the ethnocentric gaze . As I said above , India gains some of its
exoticism and sacredness from its proximity to Ocean , and indeed this aspect of
...
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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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