Kurt A. Raaflaub & Richard J. A. Talbert 
Geography and Ethnography [PDF ebook] 
Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies

This fascinating volume brings together leading specialists, who
have analyzed the thoughts and records documenting the worldviews
of a wide range of pre-modern societies.

* Presents evidence from across the ages; from antiquity through
to the Age of Discovery

* Provides cross-cultural comparison of ancient societies around
the globe, from the Chinese to the Incas and Aztecs, from the
Greeks and Romans to the peoples of ancient India

* Explores newly discovered medieval Islamic materials

Tabella dei contenuti

List of Figures vii

Notes on Contributors xi

Series Editor’s Preface xvii

1 Introduction 1

Richard J. A. Talbert and Kurt A. Raaflaub

2 Where the Black Antelope Roam: Dharma and Human Geography in
India 9

Christopher Minkowski

3 Humans, Demons, Gods and Their Worlds: The Sacred and
Scientific Cosmologies of India 32

Kim Plofker

4 Structured Perceptions of Real and Imagined Landscapes in
Early China 43

Hsin-Mei Agnes Hsu

5 Nonary Cosmography in Ancient China 64

John B. Henderson

6 Knowledge of Other Cultures in China’s Early Empires
74

Michael Loewe

7 The Mississippian Peoples’ Worldview 89

Kathleen Du Val

8 Aztec Geography and Spatial Imagination 108

Barbara E. Mundy

9 Inca Worldview 128

Catherine Julien

10 Masters of the Four Corners of the Heavens: Views of the
Universe in Early Mesopotamian Writings 147

Piotr Michalowski

11 The World and the Geography of Otherness in Pharaonic Egypt
169

Gerald Moers

12 On Earth as in Heaven: The Apocalyptic Vision of World
Geography from Urzeit to Endzeit according to the Book of Jubilees
182

James M. Scott

13 ‘I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea’:
Geography and Difference in the Early Greek World 197

Susan Guettel Cole

14 Continents, Climates, and Cultures: Greek Theories of Global
Structure 215

James Romm

15 The Geographical Narrative of Strabo of Amasia 236

Daniela Dueck

16 The Roman Worldview: Beyond Recovery? 252

Richard J. A. Talbert

17 The Medieval Islamic Worldview: Arabic Geography in Its
Historical Context 273

Adam J. Silverstein

18 The Book of Curiosities: An Eleventh-Century Egyptian View of
the Lands of the Infidels 291

Emilie Savage-Smith

19 Geography and Ethnography in Medieval Europe: Classical
Traditions and Contemporary Concerns 311

Natalia Lozovsky

20 Europeans Plot the Wider World, 1500-1750 330

David Buisseret

Index 344

Circa l’autore

Kurt A. Raaflaub is David Herlihy University Professor, and
Professor of Classics and History, at Brown University. His
numerous publications include The Discovery of Freedom
(2004) and Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (2007,
co-authored with Josiah Ober and Robert Wallace). He is also the
editor of Social Struggles in Archaic Rome (Blackwell,
2005), and War and Peace in the Ancient World (Blackwell,
2007), and co-editor of A Companion to Archaic Greece
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

Richard J.A. Talbert is William Rand Kenan, Jr, Professor
of History and Classics at The University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. He is the editor of the Barrington Atlas of the
Greek and Roman World (2000), and co-editor of Space in the
Roman World: Its Perception and Presentation (2004), as well as
of Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fresh
Perspectives, New Methods (2008). His major study
Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered will
appear in 2010.