Rock Art in Central and South America

Author(s):  
Andrés Troncoso ◽  
Felipe Armstrong ◽  
Mara Basile

Central and South America is a vast region, where a wide range of different societies established, transformed, disappeared, and endured. This kaleidoscope of peoples offers a particularly rich and diverse body of rock art in terms of its historical, technical, visual, and spatial features. The first sections of this chapter briefly introduces the reader to this diversity, as well as to the history of rock art research, presenting and discussing the different theoretical and methodological frameworks used. The authors discuss the role that rock art played—and still plays—for different groups, which they have grouped in terms of their common socioeconomic strategies. The authors argue that rock art research from this region can contribute to the wider understanding of rock art in the world, offering its materialistic and archaeological approaches ranging from the study of social complexity, the domestication of animals, mobility, and memory.

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 204993611983716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glynn W. Webb ◽  
Harry R. Dalton

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is the most common cause of viral hepatitis in the world. It is estimated that millions of people are infected every year, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. However, these estimates do not include industrialized regions and are based on studies which employ assays now known to have inferior sensitivity. As such, this is likely to represent a massive underestimate of the true global burden of disease. In the developing world, HEV causes large outbreaks and presents a significant public-health problem. Until recently HEV was thought to be uncommon in industrialized countries, and of little relevance to clinicians in these settings. We now know that this is incorrect, and that HEV is actually very common in developed regions. HEV has proved difficult to study in vitro, with reliable models only recently becoming available. Our understanding of the lifecycle of HEV is therefore incomplete. Routes of transmission vary by genotype and location: endemic regions experience large waterborne epidemics, while sporadic cases in industrialized regions are zoonotic infections likely spread via the food chain. Both acute and chronic infection has been observed, and a wide range of extrahepatic manifestations have been reported. This includes neurological, haematological and renal conditions. As the complete clinical phenotype of HEV infection is yet to be characterized, a large proportion of cases go unrecognized or misdiagnosed. In many cases HEV infection does not feature in the differential diagnosis due to a lack of knowledge and awareness of the disease amongst clinicians. In combination, these factors have contributed to an underestimation of the threat posed by HEV. Improvements are required in terms of recognition and diagnosis of HEV infection if we are to understand the natural history of the disease, improve management and reduce the burden of disease around the world.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk-Jan Dekker

In an effort to fight climate change, many cities try to boost their cycling levels. They often look towards the Dutch for guidance. However, historians have only begun to uncover how and why the Netherlands became the premier cycling country of the world. Why were Dutch cyclists so successful in their fight for a place on the road? Cycling Pathways: The Politics and Governance of Dutch Cycling Infrastructure, 1920-2020 explores the long political struggle that culminated in today’s high cycling levels. Delving into the archives, it uncovers the important role of social movements and shows in detail how these interacted with national, provincial, and urban engineers and policymakers to govern the distribution of road space and construction of cycling infrastructure. It discusses a wide range of topics, ranging from activists to engineering committees, from urban commuters to recreational cyclists and from the early 1900s to today in order to uncover the long and all-but-forgotten history of Dutch cycling governance.


2008 ◽  
Vol 82 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 237-263
Author(s):  
Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert

It may indeed be “a truth universally acknowledged” that “no man is an island, entire of itself.” Nonetheless, the entirety upon itself that Donne assumes as a given in connection to islands may be true only as far as geography and geometry are concerned – or perhaps, in the case of the poet, as far as the pure idea, the literary conceit, goes. The truth is that given the pernicious history of European colonization around the world, no island has retained its entirety of itself for very long after being “discovered” by Europeans. One may thus wonder if Donne himself was quite unaware of the irony implicit in his verses. In 1596, more than a quarter century before he penned his famous lines, he had had his own brush with conquest and colonization. In that year, he had enlisted in the Earl of Essex’s unsuccessful privateering expedition against Cadiz, and in 1597 he had sailed with Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh in the near-disastrous Islands Expedition, which had sought to intercept Spanish ships bringing gold and silver from South America as they sailed past the Azores.


Iraq ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter V. Bartl

The orthostats from the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) at Nimrud are among the most outstanding works of art from the Ancient Near East. Today they are to be found in museums all over the world and are looked at every day by thousands of visitors. Numerous books and articles have been written about their style, their meaning and their reconstruction. Thus one would think that nothing could have escaped the eye of observers. Nevertheless, some details have been largely overlooked by researchers. Among these is the incised decoration on the edges of the garments of some of the figures depicted, showing a wide range of simple geometric and floral designs as well as complex mythical and narrative scenes. It thus forms a valuable part of the repertoire of Neo-Assyrian artistic motifs and can help us understand the essence and meaning of Neo-Assyrian political art. The evidence of these incised decorations is not only of importance for the history of art but is also fundamental to the understanding of the significance of the clothes and of the figures wearing them, forming an integral and essential part of the mythical symbolic character of the figures.


This book brings together international relations scholars, political theorists, and historians to reflect on the intellectual history of American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century. It offers a nuanced and multifaceted collection of essays covering a wide range of concerns, concepts, presidential doctrines, and rationalities of government thought to have marked America’s engagement with the world during this period: nation-building, exceptionalism, isolationism, modernisation, race, utopia, technology, war, values, the ‘clash of civilisations’ and many more.


Author(s):  
Э.Г. Задорожнюк ◽  
И.Е. Задорожнюк

Рассматриваются некоторые идеи Б.Ф. Поршнева, изложенные в его статье 50-летней давности «Контрсуггестия и история», характеризуется их место в истории идей от-носительно динамики социальных изменений, анализируемой, в частности, в трудах отечественных ученых прошлого. Обосновывается настоятельность введения в глоссарий современных социальных наук концепта «суггестия» и понятия «контрсуггестия», показана их релевантность на широком историческом материале и полях взаимодействия социальных субъектов. Отмечено, что суггестия и противостоящая ей контрсуггестия пронизывают массовые настроения и влияют на все общественные отношения, особенно в кризисные моменты. Обращается внимание на феномен инфодемии, усугубляющей, по заключению Всемирной организации здравоохранения, проявления пандемии коронавируса, а также на его корреляцию с суггестией. The article considers a number of ideas by B.F. Porshnev set forth 50 years ago in his article "Counter-suggestion and History", as well as its role in the history of ideas, especially in connection to the dynamics of social changes analyzed, in particular, in the works by Russian historians. The urgency of introducing the concept of "Suggestion" and the notion of "Сounter- Suggestion" into the glossary of modern social sciences is justified, as well as their relevance is shown in a wide range of historical material and fields of interaction of social subjects. It is noted that Suggestion and opposing Сounter-Suggestion permeate mass moods and affect all social relations, especially in crisis moments. Attention is drawn to the phenomenon of infodemia, which, according to the World Health Organization, exacerbates the manifestations of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as its correlation with suggestion.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis R.A. Mans ◽  
Priscilla Friperson ◽  
Meryll Djotaroeno ◽  
Jennifer Pawirodihardjo

The Republic of Suriname (South America) is among the culturally, ethnically, and religiously most diverse countries in the world. Suriname’s population of about 600,000 consists of peoples from all continents including the Javanese who arrived in the country between 1890 and 1939 as indentured laborers to work on sugar cane plantations. After expiration of their five-year contract, some Javanese returned to Indonesia while others migrated to The Netherlands (the former colonial master of both Suriname and Indonesia), but many settled in Suriname. Today, the Javanese community of about 80,000 has been integrated well in Suriname but has preserved many of their traditions and rituals. This holds true for their language, religion, cultural expressions, and forms of entertainment. The Javanese have also maintained their traditional medical practices that are based on Jamu. Jamu has its origin in the Mataram Kingdom era in ancient Java, some 1300 years ago, and is mostly based on a variety of plant species. The many Jamu products are called jamus. The first part of this chapter presents a brief background of Suriname, addresses the history of the Surinamese Javanese as well as some of the religious and cultural expressions of this group, focuses on Jamu, and comprehensively deals with four medicinal plants that are commonly used by the Javanese. The second part of this chapter continues with an equally extensive narrative of six more such plants and concludes with a few remarks on the contribution of Javanese jamus to Suriname’s traditional medicinal pharmacopeia.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 763
Author(s):  
Bart J. Koet

It is the thesis of this article that a secular form of the biblical Exodus pattern is used by Woody Allen in his Broadway Danny Rose. In the history of the Bible, and its interpretation, the Exodus pattern is again and again used as a model for inspiration: from oppression to deliverance. It was an important source of both argument and symbolism during the American Revolution. It was used by the Boer nationalists fighting the British Empire and it comes to life in the hand of liberation theology in South America. The use of this pattern and its use during the seder meal is to be taken loosely here: Exodus is not a theory, but a story, a “Big Story” that became part of the cultural consciousness of the West and quite a few other parts of the world. Although the Exodus story is in the first place an account of deliverance or liberation in a religious context and framework, in Broadway Danny Rose it is used as a moral device about how to survive in the modern wilderness.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Callaway ◽  
Jessica Hamrick ◽  
Tom Griffiths

In the history of cognitive science, there have been two competing philosophies regarding how people reason about the world. In one, people rely on rich, generative models to make predictions about a wide range of scenarios; while in the other, people have a large “bag of tricks”, idiosyncratic heuristics that tend to work well in practice. In this paper, we suggest that rather than being in opposition to one another, these two ideas complement each other. We argue that people’s capacity for mental simulation may support their ability to learn new cue- based heuristics, and demonstrate this phenomenon in two experiments. However, our results also indicate that participants are far less likely to learn a heuristic when there is no logical or explicitly conveyed relationship between the cue and the relevant outcome. Furthermore, simulation—while a potentially useful tool—is no substitute for real world experience.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 2242-2260
Author(s):  
Jason Puskar

By recovering the history of simple finger counting techniques and their relevance to a wide range of enumerative and calculative technologies, this article argues that human fingers have long shaped the digital, and more importantly, that the digital has long shaped the fingers. The interfaces of calculating machines from the Roman abacus to the touchscreen calculators mathematize the body in very specific and consistent ways, such that the fingers have come to connote human reason just as fluids such as tears have come to connote human feeling. This embodied digitality naturalizes and humanizes the digital in ways that we have too often taken for granted. Digital calculating machines are not just utilitarian instruments under human control, but engines of hominization that, across much of the world today, define what it means to be human.


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