Slow Tourism in the Sustainability of Local Culture

The essence of slow tourism is the sustainability of the locals. Slow tourism includes tourism activities by visiting slow cities, tasting slow food, and enjoying the moment, avoiding the worry of uploading photos to social media accounts while experiencing all these. Slow tourism is based on the need to experience travel within the framework of sustainability and to prioritize the locals during these travels. What is important in this tourism activity is not how long a destination is spent or how many destinations are visited, but how productive time is spent at the destination and the emotions that emerge afterward. In addition to these, many practices are carried out to ensure the sustainability of local culture, especially in slow cities, within the scope of slow tourism. Practices such as the continuation of local handicrafts, ensuring the continuity of local life under the influence of ancient civilizations, and sustainability of the local architectural style are included in slow city destinations. The essence of all this is to ensure the continuity of the local culture.

Early Mesoamerican Cities

Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus a range of topics of broad interest to scholars. It is one of the central, enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. Because urbanization is a transformational process, it changes the relationships between social and cultural variables such as demography, economy, politics, and ideology. As one of a handful of cases in the ancient world where cities developed independently, Mesoamerica should play a major role in the global, comparative analysis of first-generation cities and urbanism in general. Yet most research focuses on later manifestations of urbanism in Mesoamerica, thereby perpetuating the fallacy that Mesoamerican cities developed relatively late in comparison to urban centers in the rest of the world. This volume presents new data, case studies, and models for approaching the subject of early Mesoamerican cities. It demonstrates how the study of urbanism in Mesoamerica, and all ancient civilizations, is entering a new and dynamic phase of scholarship.

Reflection of India-China Relations in Indian Media: Problems and Perspectives

China and India interactions are dominated by strategic and business concerns. Despite the massive growth of bilateral trade between China and India, tensions over territorial and political issues have also grown, particularly in the last years. These effects are mediated and often inflamed by media depictions and perceptions of these tensions. India and China are both aware that peace and cooperation are essential. But it seems some media are more intent on fanning the flames than focusing on the ties that bind the two ancient civilizations. The media can play a constructive role in promoting mutual understanding. This paper deals with different areas of bilateral competition and convergence covered by the media as well as discusses the key differences between the Indian medias coverage of China and the Chinese medias reporting on India of the last years and especially in 2020. The article proposes to discover the problems and perspectives of the Indian media in India-China relations today.

واقع الحرية في الحضارات القديمة ومنطلقات ممارستها في المجتمعات الإسلامية المعاصرة (The Reality of Freedom in Past Civilizations and Its Practices in Contemporary Islamic Societies)

Historical reading of the actual picture of freedom in ancient civilizations and today’s realities indicates that the values of freedom and human rights have been violated. It also indicates that people have been subjugated by authoritarian regimes. The purpose of this research is to reflect on the actual reality of freedom in contemporary Islamic societies. To this effect, the study adopted a descriptive and historical approach using a survey to review the opinions of academics about freedom in contemporary Islamic societies. The study suggests that freedom is not granted easily but is rather obtained by force. It also indicates that freedom is inherent in human nature and it is often enhanced by persistence, enriched by satisfaction, and prescribed by good legislations. The opinions obtained by the survey also suggest that there exists an utterly insignificant and limited space of freedom in Islamic societies. To yield fruitful results in our contemporary life, freedom must be originated from the servitude to the Almighty Allah by adhering to the Islamic constants in the Quran and Prophetic traditions and referring to Islamic legislation in which all rights are protected without favor nor exception.

Survey of Antagonistic Action and the Mechanism of these Actions that Terpens, Phenols and their Derivatives Possess Against Different Pathogenic Agents

Folk medicine or herbal treatment has been used for centuries by different ancient civilizations against various ailment agents, herbal medicine has been dragged attention by researchers in different medical branches focusing on therapeutically characteristic features of each plant against different pathogenic agents responsible for most devastating and terrifying diseases, in addition to thorough investigation for the phytochemical compounds in each plant responsible for its potent against pathogens. Thus, this study highlights on two major groups of secondary metabolic compounds: terpens, phenols and their derivatives as antimicrobial agents against different bacterial and fungal strains especially drug resistant bacteria which responsible for the infectivity of treatments of most infectious diseases. Furthermore, mechanisms of actions of these secondary metabolites are reviewed as the causative factors responsible for the antimicrobial activity of plants and the promising results which have been achieved in multiply these activities by making combination between these natural products and chemical drugs.

Archeofinds. A Geodatabase for the Archiving, Management, and Analysis of Ancient World Artifacts

The reconstruction of ancient civilizations requires the analysis of the material manifestations that have come down to us. This complex process involves the collection, comparison, and joint analysis of multiple types of data that can benefit from the availability, accessibility, and implementation through the collective contribution of digital datasets structured and homologated, according to shared standards. Archeofinds is a geodatabase specifically designed to provide support for the processes of information generation and sharing, produced through the collection, management, and contextualized analysis of multiple types of data, relating to multiple classes of ancient world artifacts.

The Ancient Civilizations

This chapter provides an interpretive synthesis of the current state of knowledge of the pre-Columbian civilizations of Central America from the time of earliest human habitation until European contact. In terms of cultural affinities, the northern portion of the area formed the southeastern periphery of the culture area of Mesoamerica, and the southern regions pertained to the Isthmo-Colombian area (or Intermediate Area). With its relatively high population density, the area is highly susceptible to volcanic, seismic, and climatic natural disasters such as droughts, tropical storms, flooding, and landslides, and the same was true in the past. A recurrent theme in the study of ancient Central American civilizations is the impact of natural disasters and societal responses to cataclysmic events.