Download or read book Choice written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Sumerians written by Samuel Noah Kramer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-09-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A readable and up-to-date introduction to a most fascinating culture” from a world-renowned Sumerian scholar (American Journal of Archaeology). The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilization in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums B.C. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them. Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literature, education, scientific achievements, social structure, and psychology. Finally, he considers the legacy of Sumer to the ancient and modern world. “An uncontested authority on the civilization of Sumer, Professor Kramer writes with grace and urbanity.” —Library Journal

Download or read book Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology written by Society of Biblical Archæology (London, England) and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Primitive Civilizations written by Edith Jemima Simcox and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Roots of Tantra written by Katherine Anne Harper and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the many spiritual traditions born and developed in India, Tantra has been the most difficult to define. Almost everything about it—its major characteristics, its sources, its relationships to other religions, even its practices—are debated among scholars. In addition, Tantrism is not confined to any particular religion, but is a set of beliefs and practices that appears in a variety of religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. This book explores one of the most controversial aspects of Tantra, its sources or roots, specifically in regard to Hinduism. The essays focus on the history and development of Tantra, the art history and archaeology of Tantra, the Vedas and Tantra, and texts and Tantra. Using various disciplinary and methodological approaches, from history to art history and religious studies to textual studies, scholars provide both broad overviews of the beginnings of Tantra and detailed analyses of specific texts, authors, art works, and rituals.

Download or read book Nonzero written by Robert Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2001-01-09 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied the principles of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind. Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next. In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.

Download or read book The Mathematics of Egypt Mesopotamia China India and Islam written by Victor J. Katz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-05 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades it has become obvious that mathematics has always been a worldwide activity. But this is the first book to provide a substantial collection of English translations of key mathematical texts from the five most important ancient and medieval non-Western mathematical cultures, and to put them into full historical and mathematical context. The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam gives English readers a firsthand understanding and appreciation of these cultures' important contributions to world mathematics. The five section authors--Annette Imhausen (Egypt), Eleanor Robson (Mesopotamia), Joseph Dauben (China), Kim Plofker (India), and J. Lennart Berggren (Islam)--are experts in their fields. Each author has selected key texts and in many cases provided new translations. The authors have also written substantial section introductions that give an overview of each mathematical culture and explanatory notes that put each selection into context. This authoritative commentary allows readers to understand the sometimes unfamiliar mathematics of these civilizations and the purpose and significance of each text. Addressing a critical gap in the mathematics literature in English, this book is an essential resource for anyone with at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics who wants to learn about non-Western mathematical developments and how they helped shape and enrich world mathematics. The book is also an indispensable guide for mathematics teachers who want to use non-Western mathematical ideas in the classroom.

Download or read book The China Race written by Fei-Ling Wang and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following its two prequels, The China Order (2017) and The China Record (2023), this book analyzes the China Race, the global competition for power and leadership between the US-led West and the People's Republic of China. Considering the organizational options and optimality with respect to human civilization, Fei-Ling Wang discusses two alternative world orders: the Westphalian System of international relations and a centralized world political unification. Both are feasible and existed before, but with drastically different desirability. The rising power of the PRC state has consistently and methodically sought to recenter and reorganize the world to safeguard and promote its autocracy and, ultimately, build a world empire. Examining the nature, aims, means, accomplishments, pitfalls and failures of Beijing's foreign policy and the state of and developments in Sinology and the West's China policy, Wang focuses on the existential PRC-USA rivalry and proposes a holistic strategic framework, discussing three ranked objectives, for the West and the world, including the Chinese people, to manage, benefit from, and prevail in the China Race.

Download or read book The Silk Road Encyclopedia written by Su-il Jeong and published by Seoul Selection . This book was released on 2016-07-18 with total page 1645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Religion Literature and Scholarship written by Niek Veldhuis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses insights from religious studies, literary theory, and the history of science for understanding the Sumerian composition "Nanse and the Birds" in the context of the Old Babylonian scribal school. The discussions of Babylonian religion, literature, and scholarship focus on the usefulness and relevance of these modern concepts for categorizing the ancient text. The volume presents the first critical edition of "Nanse and the Birds," as well as editions of the hymn Nanse B and all third millennium and Old Babylonian lexical lists of birds. It includes 37 plates with photographs and line drawings, including many previously unpublished tablets. The final chapter discusses the identity and orthography of all Sumerian bird names in literary, administrative and lexical texts.

Download or read book A World Atlas of Translation written by Yves Gambier and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do people think of translation in the different historical, cultural and linguistic traditions of the world? How many uses has translation been put to? How distant from one another are the concepts of translation found in the different traditions? These are some of the questions A World Atlas of Translation addresses. Its twenty-one reports give us pictures taken from the inside, both from traditions that are well represented in the literature and from the many that (for now) are not. But the Atlas is not content with documenting – no map is this innocent. In fact, the wealth of information collected and made accessible by its reporters can be useful to gauge the dispersion of translation concepts across traditions. As you read its reports, the Atlas will keep asking “How far apart do these concepts look to you?” Finally and more ambitiously, the reports can help us test the hypothesis that a cross-cultural notion of translation exists. In this respect, the Atlas is mostly a proof of concept. It hopes to encourage further fact-based research in quest of a robust and compelling unifying notion of translation.

Download or read book Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China written by Cécile Michel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fakes and forgeries are objects of fascination. This volume contains a series of thirteen articles devoted to fakes and forgeries of written artefacts from the beginnings of writing in Mesopotamia to modern China. The studies emphasise the subtle distinctions conveyed by an established vocabulary relating to the reproduction of ancient artefacts and production of artefacts claiming to be ancient: from copies, replicas and imitations to fakes and forgeries. Fakes are often a response to a demand from the public or scholarly milieu, or even both. The motives behind their production may be economic, political, religious or personal – aspiring to fame or simply playing a joke. Fakes may be revealed by combining the study of their contents, codicological, epigraphic and palaeographic analyses, and scientific investigations. However, certain famous unsolved cases still continue to defy technology today, no matter how advanced it is. Nowadays, one can find fakes in museums and private collections alike; they abound on the antique market, mixed with real artefacts that have often been looted. The scientific community’s attitude to such objects calls for ethical reflection.

Download or read book Writing Systems and Their Use written by Dimitrios Meletis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grapholinguistics, the multifaceted study of writing systems, is growing increasingly popular, yet to date no coherent account covering and connecting its major branches exists. This book now gives an overview of the core theoretical and empirical questions of this field. A treatment of the structure of writing systems—their relation to speech and language, their material features, linguistic functions, and norms, as well as the different types in which they come—is complemented by perspectives centring on the use of writing, incorporating psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic issues such as reading processes or orthographic variation as social action. Examples stem from a variety of diverse systems such as Chinese, English, Japanese, Arabic, Thai, German, and Korean, which allows defining concepts in a broadly applicable way and thereby constructing a comparative grapholinguistic framework that provides readers with important tools for studying any writing system. The book emphasizes that grapholinguistics is a discipline in its own right, inviting discussion and further research in this up-and-coming field as well as an overdue integration of writing into general linguistic discussion.

Download or read book Asian and African Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Space Time Myth and Morals A Selection of Jao Tsung i s Studies on Cosmological Thought in Early China and Beyond written by Tsung-i Jao and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-09-12 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles assembled in this volume present an important selection of Professor Jao Tsung-i’s research in the field of the early Chinese intellectual tradition, especially as it concerns the human condition. Whether his focus is on myth, religion, philosophy or morals, Jao consistently aims to describe how the series of developments broadly associated with the Axial Age unfolded in China. He is particularly interested in showing how early China had developed its own notion of transcendence as well as a system of prediction and morals that enabled man to act autonomously, without recourse to divine providence.

Download or read book World Christian Trends Ad30 ad2200 hb written by and published by William Carey Library. This book was released on 2001 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Spatial Questions written by Rob Shields and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rob Shields provides here an immensely sophisticated and detailed examination of the topological turn. He has been examining these issues for some decades and this book will surely become the standard work on cultural and spatial topology" - John Urry, Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University Our understanding of space is crucial to the way in which we understand major social problems and issues and the way we develop and maintain our worldviews. Building from a history of philosophical and geographical theories of space, Shields presents the importance of spatialisation and cultural topology in social theory and the possibilities that lie within these theoretical tools. Innovative and thought-provoking, this book goes beyond traditional ideas of spatiality and temporality to understand the multiplicity of spatialisations and relates them to everyday life.