Strange Creatures: Anthropology in Antiquity
Bloomsbury 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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I have also argued that few if any accounts of creation can be seen as
disinterested scientific studies , and that they will serve a purpose in establishing
, proving or legitimating a writer ' s particular view of the world ; things are the way
they are ...
taking this supposition from seeing that the nurture of all things to be moist , and
the warm itself coming - to - be from this and living by this ( that from which they
come - to - be being the principle of all things ) . 14 ( Aristotle , Metaphysics A3 ...
on origins of things . There , things have not yet settled down . There may be
strange creatures roaming the landscape , creatures from whom the Greek world
must be protected by heroes as policemen of nature and culture . Humans and ...
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The Origin of Life and the Origin of Species
Ancient Theories of Prehistory and the Evolution of Society
Blessed Islands and Blessed Lands
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