ANTH 2300 Chapter 2: Origins and Orientalism
Document Summary
Pre-modern roots: ancient greeks/romans, herodotus - "custom is king over all" through tradition and learning, xenophanes - philosopher - horses have horse gods, oxen have oxen gods, we make gods in our own image. Julius caesar - produced reports on other peoples: school of sophism - explained social institutions as products of human convention, medieval europe. "dark ages" dominated by christianity: diversity discouraged, ethnocentrism and ignorance for other cultures, stone age artifacts = elf-arrows, perception ethnocentric. Early modern experience and thought: civilizational shift, encounter with other major eurasian civilizations, renaissance and reformation. Culture, or specific cultural practices, objects, or institutions, had appeared once or at most a few times and spread out from their original center: egypt as center(?) Immersed in culture being studied: cultural data in description and analysis of institutions, minutiae of everyday life, and narratives/folklore, anthropologists should study present before indulging in speculations of the past, a. r.
