Strange creatures: anthropology in antiquityIn 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 many strange creatures, from the savages of Britain, Gaul and Ireland, to the Man-faced Ox-creatures of Empedocles, the Dog-heads of India, the Amazons, the Centaurs, and the Tupinamba of Brazil. |
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Page 70
Horace gives little geographical hint of the location of his blessed isles, but long
before this they had begun to find a location in the Atlantic Ocean: They say that
in the sea outside the Pillars of Hercules an uninhabited island was discovered ...
Horace gives little geographical hint of the location of his blessed isles, but long
before this they had begun to find a location in the Atlantic Ocean: They say that
in the sea outside the Pillars of Hercules an uninhabited island was discovered ...
Page 71
As time goes on, and perhaps as a result of increasing geographical knowledge
gained from Atlantic seafaring, the geographical details of the Fortunate Isles or
Isles of the Blessed become better defined, but without any diminution in the ...
As time goes on, and perhaps as a result of increasing geographical knowledge
gained from Atlantic seafaring, the geographical details of the Fortunate Isles or
Isles of the Blessed become better defined, but without any diminution in the ...
Page 74
anthropology in antiquity Gordon Lindsay Campbell. of the myth: Homer's
account of the Isles of the Blessed was informed by real geographical knowledge
but this is overlain by and embroidered upon by the narrative of the myth. This
process ...
anthropology in antiquity Gordon Lindsay Campbell. of the myth: Homer's
account of the Isles of the Blessed was informed by real geographical knowledge
but this is overlain by and embroidered upon by the narrative of the myth. This
process ...
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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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Common terms and phrases
acorns agriculture Anaximander ancient animals anti-primitivist Arcadians Aristotle atomic barbarians barbaric beasts become blessed lands Cambyses cannibalism chaos civilised clearly climate Columbus cosmogony creation creatures culture Darius Democritus described diet Diodorus Siculus divine Dog-heads earth and water east eating elements Empedocles Epicurean Ethiopians ethnocentric ethnographic extremes Fortunate Isles Gauls geographical Germans gods golden age Greece Greek Hartog Herodotus Hesiod Hieros Gamos History human Hyperboreans ideal ideas India Indies inhabitants Isles king Lery Lery's Libya lifestyle living Lucretius luxury moral myth mythological nature noble savage norms Ocean origin of species Ovid Panchaia Paradise Pelasgus perhaps Persians philosopher Plato Pliny prehistory Presocratics primitivist produce Prometheus race rationalisation realm river Roman Romm sacred islands Scythians seafaring seems seen sort status story Strabo technologies Theogony theory things Timaeus tion tradition Trans Tupinamba warfare wild Zeus