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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The obvious fact that the sun and stars , themselves divine in traditional thought ,
are seen to be born every day from Ocean and return again into Ocean would
tend to privilege Ocean as an original creative force , and further , as we shall see
...
There are various references to birth from trees and also from stones in ancient
literature . Both are parts of nature , and both may be seen as sharing natural
affinities with the earth . Further , as we see in the story of the creation of Pandora
...
This process of rationalisation can also be seen clearly in accounts of Ireland
such as the following from the fourthcentury AD poet Rufus Festus Avienus : From
here it is a two - day voyage to the Sacred Isle , for by this name the ancients ...
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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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