This fascinating volume brings together leading specialists who have analyzed the thoughts and records documenting the worldviews of a wide range of pre-modern societies. The book presents evidence from across the ages; from antiquity through to the Age of Discovery.

List of Figures vii

Notes on Contributors xi

Series Editor's Preface xvii

1 Introduction 1
Richard J. A. Talbert and Kurt A. Raaflaub

2 Where the Black Antelope Roam: Dharma and Human Geography in India 9
Christopher Minkowski

3 Humans, Demons, Gods and Their Worlds: The Sacred and Scientific Cosmologies of India 32
Kim Plofker

4 Structured Perceptions of Real and Imagined Landscapes in Early China 43
Hsin-Mei Agnes Hsu

5 Nonary Cosmography in Ancient China 64
John B. Henderson

6 Knowledge of Other Cultures in China’s Early Empires 74
Michael Loewe

7 The Mississippian Peoples’ Worldview 89
Kathleen DuVal

8 Aztec Geography and Spatial Imagination 108
Barbara E. Mundy

9 Inca Worldview 128
Catherine Julien

10 Masters of the Four Corners of the Heavens: Views of the Universe in Early Mesopotamian Writings 147
Piotr Michalowski

11 The World and the Geography of Otherness in Pharaonic Egypt 169
Gerald Moers

12 On Earth as in Heaven: The Apocalyptic Vision of World Geography from Urzeit to Endzeit according to the Book of Jubilees 182
James M. Scott

13 'I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea': Geography and Difference in the Early Greek World 197
Susan Guettel Cole

14 Continents, Climates, and Cultures: Greek Theories of Global Structure 215
James Romm

15 The Geographical Narrative of Strabo of Amasia 236
Daniela Dueck

16 The Roman Worldview: Beyond Recovery? 252
Richard J. A. Talbert

17 The Medieval Islamic Worldview: Arabic Geography in Its Historical Context 273
Adam J. Silverstein

18 The Book of Curiosities: An Eleventh-Century Egyptian View of the Lands of the Infidels 291
Emilie Savage-Smith

19 Geography and Ethnography in Medieval Europe: Classical Traditions and Contemporary Concerns 311
Natalia Lozovsky

20 Europeans Plot the Wider World, 1500–1750 330
David Buisseret

Index 344

Societies have typically reflected upon their place in the world in relation to the space in which they live, those who surround them, the universe, and divine forces that they believe determine their fate. In this fascinating volume, the editors bring together leading specialists who have analyzed the thoughts and records of a wide range of pre-modern societies from around the globe and across the ages. Some societies, like the Chinese, Greeks, and Arabs, have left extensive written cultural and scientific documentation. Others, as in India and Mesopotamia, used myth and epic for memory and understanding. Still others, such as the Incas and Aztecs, did not write, but their ideas and beliefs can be recovered from later narratives, as well as from their artwork, monuments, and shaping of the landscape.

A wide range of common questions are examined, from evidence, interpretations, and methodology, to the way geographic and ethnographic concepts and views of the cosmos were developed and expressed. The resulting cross-cultural comparisons clearly describe the specific characteristics of these societies, how they differ and overlap. What emerges is a rich and astonishing variety of responses developed to meet universal challenges.

“Inspirational in conception, seamless in execution, and exemplary in cohesion, this book of twenty well-written essays on the diversity of world views from antiquity to the sixteenth century has an important message for modern ‘one world’ globalism.”
Catherine Delano-Smith, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Introduction (Kurt Raaflaub, Brown University, and Richard Talbert, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Early Imperial China and Its Knowledge of the Outside World (Michael Loewe, Cambridge University) Nonary Cosmography in Ancient China (John Henderson, Louisiana State University)? Perceptions of Real Space and Imagined Landscape in Early Western Han (Hsin-Mei Agnes Hsu, Stanford University) Isolation Does Not Preclude Cosmopolitanism: Paradoxes in Classical (and later) Japanese History (Mary Elizabeth Berry, University of California, Berkeley) Populating the Terrain: Indian Anthropologies and Their Spatial Dimension (Christopher Minkowski, Oxford University) Humans, Ancestors, Gods, and Their Worlds: The Sacred and Scientific Cosmologies of India (Kim Plofker, Union College) Masters of the Four Corners of the Heavens: Views of the Universe in Early Mesopotamian Writings (Piotr Michalowski, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) The World and the Geography of Otherness in Ancient Egyptian Culture (Gerald Moers, University of Göttingen) On Earth As in Heaven: The Apocalyptic Vision of World Geography from Urzeit to Endzeit according to the Book of Jubilees (James M. Scott, Trinity Western University, Canada) 'I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea?: Geography and Difference in Early Classical Greece (Susan G. Cole, State University New York, Buffalo) When Worlds Collide: The Europe-Asia Antithesis in Classical and Early Medieval Thought (James Romm, Bard College) The Roman World View: Beyond Recovery? (Richard Talbert, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Strabo and the Geographical Narrative (Daniela Dueck, Bar Ilan University) The Book of Curiosities: An Eleventh-Century Egyptian View of the World (Emilie Savage-Smith, Oxford University) The Medieval Islamic Worldview: Arabic Geography in Its Historical Context (A.J. Silverstein, University of Oxford) New World Renaissance: Imperial and Local Geography in Mesoamerica before the Conquest (Barbara Mundy, Fordham University) Geography, Ethnography, and the World of the Sixteenth-Century Andes (Catherine Julien, Western Michigan University) The Mississippian Worldview (Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Geography and Ethnography in Medieval Europe: Classical Traditions and Contemporary Concerns (Natalia Lozovsky) Europeans plot the wider world, 1500-1750 (David Buisseret, Newbury Library)