The Ancestress Hypothesis

The Ancestress Hypothesis
Author: Kathryn Coe
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2003
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780813531328

In our society it has long been believed that art serves very little social purpose. Evolutionary anthropologists, however, are examining a potential role for art in human evolution. Kathryn Coe looks to the visual arts of traditional societies for clues. Because they are passed down from previous generations, traditional art forms such as body decoration, funeral ornaments, and ancestral paintings offer ways to promote social relationships among kin and codescendants of a common ancestor. Mothers used art forms to anchor themselves and their kin to the father and his kin, and to promote the survival and reproductive success of kin and descendants. Individuals who abided by this strategy, accompanied by its strict codes of cooperation, left more distant descendants than did individuals who did not. Over time, given this reproductive success, large numbers of individuals would be identified as codescendants of a common ancestor and would cooperate as if they were close kin. These cooperative codescendants were more likely to survive and leave descendants. With each new generation these clans propagated not only their genes but also their behavioral strategy, the replication or presence of "art." The book concludes by examining the changing characteristics of visual art -- including a higher value on creativity, competition, and cost -- when traditional constraints on social behavior disappear. Book jacket.

Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis

Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis
Author: Esther Marie Menn
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 440
Release: 1997
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9789004106307

This exploration of Genesis 38 in "The Testament of Judah," "Targum Neofiti," and "Genesis Rabbah" shows how new meanings emerge through encounters between the biblical text and later Jewish communities.

Author: Nancy Willard
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2000-11-01
Genre:
ISBN: 0595138802

In a small Michigan town on the eve of World War II, a young man and woman share a love that is shadowed by tragedy, yet lighted by powers beyond the real.

The Khasis

The Khasis
Author: Philip Richard Thornhagh Gurdon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1914
Genre: Ethnology
ISBN:

Women in the Hebrew Bible

Women in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Alice Bach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1135238685

Women in the Hebrew Bible presents the first one-volume overview covering the interpretation of women's place in man's world within the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Written by the major scholars in the field of biblical studies and literary theory, these essays examine attitudes toward women and their status in ancient Near Eastern societies, focusing on the Israelite society portrayed by the Hebrew Bible.

Blazing the Trail

Blazing the Trail
Author: Victor Witter Turner
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1992-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816512911

Victor Turner (1920-1983) stands as one of the leading anthropologists of the twentieth century, known especially for his work on the process of ritual. This new collection of Turner's writings gathers seven late pieces that reflect his thoughts on such subjects as pilgrimage, sacrifice, and liminal processes. In them he reveals his debt to Freud, his views on morality, and always his fascination with ritual. Representative of Turner's mature scholarship, these essays will be of interest to scholars in literature, mythology, and religion. With its emphasis on symbolic studies, Blazing the Trail serves as a companion volume to the earlier collection of Turner's essays On the Edge of the Bush (Arizona, 1986), which focused on process and performance. The present collection includes a biographical and critical essay by Edith Turner.

Folklore

Folklore
Author: Joseph Jacobs
Publisher:
Total Pages: 832
Release: 1913
Genre: Electronic journals
ISBN:

Most vols. for 1890- contain list of members of the Folk-lore Society.

The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East

The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East
Author: Adam C. Schwartz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2019-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501505335

Since 1899 more than 73,000 pieces of inscribed divination shell and bone have been found inside the moated enclosure of the Anyang-core at the former capital of the late Shang state. Nearly all of these divinations were done on behalf of the Shang kingsand has led to the apt characterization that oracle bone inscriptions describe their motivations, experiences, and priorities. There are, however, much smaller sets of divination accounts that were done on behalf of members of the Shang elite other than the king.First noticed in the early 1930's, grouped and periodized shortly thereafter, oracle bone inscriptions produced explicitly by or on behalf of "royal familygroups" reveal information about key aspects of daily life in Shang societythat are barely even mentioned in Western scholarship. The newly published Huayuanzhuang East Oracle Bone inscriptions are a spectacular addition to the corpus of texts from Anyang: hundreds of intact or largely intact turtle shells and bovine scapulae densely inscribed with records of the divinations in which they were used. They were produced on the behalf of a mature prince of the royal family whose parents, both alive and still very much active, almost certainly were the twenty-first Shang king Wu Ding (r. c. 1200 B.C.) and his consort Lady Hao (fu Hao). The Huayuanzhuang East corpus is an unusually homogeneous set of more than two thousand five hundred divination records, produced over a short period of time on behalf of a prince of the royal family. There are typically multiple records of divinations regarding the same or similar topics that can be synchronized together, which not only allows for remarkable access into the esoteric world of divination practice, but also produce micro-reconstructions of what is essentially East Asia's earliest and most complete "day and month planner." Because these texts are unusually linguistically transparent and well preserved, homogeneous in orthography and content, and published to an unprecedentedly high standard, they are also ideal material for learning to read and interpret early epigraphic texts. The Huayuanzhuang East oracle bone inscriptions are a tremendously important Shang archive of "material documents" that were produced by a previously unknown divination and scribal organization. They expose us to an entirely fresh set of perspectives and preoccupationscentering ona member of the royal family at the commencement of China's historical period. The completely annotated English translation of the inscriptions is the first of its kind, and is a vibrant new source of Shang history that can be accessedto rewrite and supplement what we know about early Chinese civilization and life in the ancient world. Before the discerning reader are the motives, preoccupations, and experiences of a late Shang prince working simultaneously in service both for his Majesty, his parents, and hisown family.

On a Red Station, Drifting

On a Red Station, Drifting
Author: Aliette de Bodard
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2024-07-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1625677340

A new edition of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards novella finalist, from the author of the acclaimed Dragons and Blades series, and set in the same universe as the Clarke Award finalist The Red Scholar’s Wake... For generations Prosper Station has thrived under the guidance of its Honoured Ancestress: born of a human womb, the station’s artificial intelligence has offered guidance and protection to its human relatives. But war has come to the Dai Viet Empire. Prosper’s brightest minds have been called away to defend the Emperor; and a flood of disorientated refugees strain the station's resources. As deprivations cause the station’s ordinary life to unravel, uncovering old grudges and tearing apart the decimated family, Station Mistress Quyen and the Honoured Ancestress struggle to keep their relatives united and safe. What Quven does not know is that the Honoured Ancestress herself is faltering, her mind eaten away by a disease that seems to have no cure; and that the future of the station itself might hang in the balance... Praise for On a Red Station, Drifting and Aliette de Bodard: “Riven with tension... emotional and social... I for one rejoice in its difference.” —Liz Bourke, Reactor.com “SF is lucky to have Aliette de Bodard.” —Alastair Reynolds, The Prefect Dreyfus Emergencies