There has never been a single way that social life has been organized by sex.The ancient Greeks saw men and women as expressing varying degrees of a single sexual potential; many Native American societies considered sexual identity as something that...

The clash of faith and science in Napoleonic FranceThe Dendera zodiac—an ancient bas-relief temple ceiling adorned with mysterious symbols of the stars and planets—was first discovered by the French during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, and quickly...

When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that...

When the Spanish arrived in Peru in 1532, men of the Inca Umpireworshipped the Sun as Father and their dead kings as ancestor heroes,while women venerated the Moon and her daughters, the Incaqueens, as founders of female dynasties. In the pre-Inca period...

This book tells the story of the Christian religious movement led by Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita in the Kingdom of Kongo from 1704 until her death, by burning at the stake, in 1706. Beatriz, a young woman, claimed to be possessed by St Anthony, argued that...

This book is an attempt to see the development of domestic institutions, the family, marriage, conjugal roles, in relation to changes in the mode of productive activity, and specifically with the change from hoe to plough agriculture. These differences...

This unique book carries out a comprehensive reconstruction of the evolutionary history of living and fossil primates. The text takes a comparative approach and covers the broadest possible spectrum of evidence. Although emphasis is placed on reviews of...

A mind-expanding exploration of the ethical bonds we share with the nonhumanMoral relationships saturate the living world, and the line between the human and nonhuman is blurrier than we might think. Animals, Robots, Gods provides a bold new vision of...

An accessible historical exploration of the methods and motivations behind using magic in ancient Greece and Rome.In the ancient world, magic was everywhere. The supernatural abounded, turning flowers into fruit and caterpillars into butterflies. In a...

Exploring the close relationship between the real and the symbolic and imaginaryWhat you imagined is not always imaginary, but everything that is imaginary is imagined. It is by imagining that people make the impossible become possible. In mythology or...

Breaking the Maya Code tells the story of the last great decipherment of an ancient script. Twenty years ago the ruined monuments of Maya civilization were mute, the hieroglyphic inscriptions on magnificent stelae, temples and palaces largely unread...