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"History, Ancient"
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Ancient civilizations
Introduces young readers to some of the most fascinating ancient civilizations in the world's history and the legacies they left behind, from the intriguing world of pharaohs in Ancient Egypt, to the arts of Greece and Rome, to the amazing culture of the Mayans.
Book
Medicine & health care in early Christianity
Drawing on New Testament studies and recent scholarship on the expansion of the Christian church, Gary B. Ferngren presents a comprehensive historical account of medicine and medical philanthropy in the first five centuries of the Christian era.
Ferngren first describes how early Christians understood disease. He examines the relationship of early Christian medicine to the natural and supernatural modes of healing found in the Bible. Despite biblical accounts of demonic possession and miraculous healing, Ferngren argues that early Christians generally accepted naturalistic assumptions about disease and cared for the sick with medical knowledge gleaned from the Greeks and Romans.
Ferngren also explores the origins of medical philanthropy in the early Christian church. Rather than viewing illness as punishment for sins, early Christians believed that the sick deserved both medical assistance and compassion. Even as they were being persecuted, Christians cared for the sick within and outside of their community. Their long experience in medical charity led to the creation of the first hospitals, a singular Christian contribution to health care.
eBook
Semiramis' Legacy
There are only a few detailed histories of Persia from Ancient Greek historiography that have survived time. Diodorus of Sicily, a first century BC author, is the only one to have written a comprehensive history in which more than cursory attention is paid to Persia.
eBook
Early Pleistocene enamel proteome from Dmanisi resolves Stephanorhinus phylogeny
The sequencing of ancient DNA has enabled the reconstruction of speciation, migration and admixture events for extinct taxa
1
. However, the irreversible post-mortem degradation
2
of ancient DNA has so far limited its recovery—outside permafrost areas—to specimens that are not older than approximately 0.5 million years (Myr)
3
. By contrast, tandem mass spectrometry has enabled the sequencing of approximately 1.5-Myr-old collagen type I
4
, and suggested the presence of protein residues in fossils of the Cretaceous period
5
—although with limited phylogenetic use
6
. In the absence of molecular evidence, the speciation of several extinct species of the Early and Middle Pleistocene epoch remains contentious. Here we address the phylogenetic relationships of the Eurasian Rhinocerotidae of the Pleistocene epoch
7
–
9
, using the proteome of dental enamel from a
Stephanorhinus
tooth that is approximately 1.77-Myr old, recovered from the archaeological site of Dmanisi (South Caucasus, Georgia)
10
. Molecular phylogenetic analyses place this
Stephanorhinus
as a sister group to the clade formed by the woolly rhinoceros (
Coelodonta antiquitatis
) and Merck’s rhinoceros (
Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis
). We show that
Coelodonta
evolved from an early
Stephanorhinus
lineage, and that this latter genus includes at least two distinct evolutionary lines. The genus
Stephanorhinus
is therefore currently paraphyletic, and its systematic revision is needed. We demonstrate that sequencing the proteome of Early Pleistocene dental enamel overcomes the limitations of phylogenetic inference based on ancient collagen or DNA. Our approach also provides additional information about the sex and taxonomic assignment of other specimens from Dmanisi. Our findings reveal that proteomic investigation of ancient dental enamel—which is the hardest tissue in vertebrates
11
, and is highly abundant in the fossil record—can push the reconstruction of molecular evolution further back into the Early Pleistocene epoch, beyond the currently known limits of ancient DNA preservation.
Palaeoproteomic analysis of dental enamel from an Early Pleistocene
Stephanorhinus
resolves the phylogeny of Eurasian Rhinocerotidae, by enabling the reconstruction of molecular evolution beyond the limits of ancient DNA preservation.
Journal Article
Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World
The ancient Mysteries have long attracted the interest of scholars, an interest that goes back at least to the time of the Reformation. After a period of interest around the turn of the twentieth century, recent decades have seen an important study of Walter Burkert (1987). Yet his thematic approach makes it hard to see how the actual initiation into the Mysteries took place. To do precisely that is the aim of this book. It gives a ‘thick description’ of the major Mysteries, not only of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries, but also those located at the interface of Greece and Anatolia: the Mysteries of Samothrace, Imbros and Lemnos as well as those of the Corybants. It then proceeds to look at the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries, which have become increasingly better understood due to the many discoveries of new texts in the recent times. Having looked at classical Greece we move on to the Roman Empire, where we study not only the lesser Mysteries, which we know especially from Pausanias, but also the new ones of Isis and Mithras. We conclude our book with a discussion of the possible influence of the Mysteries on emerging Christianity. Its detailed references and up-to-date bibliography will make this book indispensable for any scholar interested in the Mysteries and ancient religion, but also for those scholars who work on initiation or esoteric rituals, which were often inspired by the ancient Mysteries.
eBook
Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens
In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and \"the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians.\" This view of the Athenians' misplaced priorities became orthodoxy with the publication of August Böckh's 1817 book Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener [The Public Economy of Athens], which criticized the classical Athenian dēmos for spending more on festivals than on wars and for levying unjust taxes to pay for their bloated government. But were the Athenians' priorities really as misplaced as ancient and modern historians believed?Drawing on lines of evidence not available in Böckh's time, Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens calculates the real costs of religion, politics, and war to settle the long-standing debate about what the ancient Athenians valued most highly. David M. Pritchard explains that, in Athenian democracy, voters had full control over public spending. When they voted for a bill, they always knew its cost and how much they normally spent on such bills. Therefore, the sums they chose to spend on festivals, politics, and the armed forces reflected the order of the priorities that they had set for their state. By calculating these sums, Pritchard convincingly demonstrates that it was not religion or politics but war that was the overriding priority of the Athenian people.
eBook