From Lucy to Columbus
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2016
Pages: 464
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$89.95 USD
From Lucy to Columbus introduces students to some of the most important ideas and philosophies that have shaped our understanding of what it means to be human. Readers will travel through time from the prehistoric era to the great maritime revolution that united the Eastern and Western hemispheres for the first time in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Readers will discover stunning works of art, such as the cave paintings in Spain, Australia, and Southern France; the Egyptian Book of the Dead; the great Gothic cathedrals of France; the paintings of the Italian and Northern Renaissance; the astonishing mud mosques of Black Africa; and the miniatures of Ottoman Turkey. Students will live the lives of nomadic herders in the Eurasian steppes, travel by sea, and discover new worlds shaped by different ethical and legal codes.
After reading the publication, readers will understand the role that ecology, geography, and biology played, and still play, in human history and appreciate the importance of religion and philosophy in individual and collective life. Most important, readers will understand the historical contexts behind many of today’s current events and issues (e.g., the impact of religion and migration, the origins of our democratic values, and the history of various technologies that we take for granted today).
From Lucy to Columbus is divided into eighteen chapters that include PowerPoint outlines, maps, crosswords, matching games, in-class exercises, questions on documentary films, and newspaper articles.
Enjoy this trip around the world!
CHAPTER 1
FROM HUMAN ORIGINS TO AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION
CHAPTER 2
EARLY AGRICULTURAL CENTERS AND URBANIZATION
CHAPTER 3
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE: MOVEMENT BY LAND (PASTORALISM)
CHAPTER 4
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE: MOVEMENT BY SEA
CHAPTER 5
EARLY SOCIETIES IN THE AMERICAS
CHAPTER 6
INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF EMPIRES
CHAPTER 7
HINDUISM
CHAPTER 8
JAINISM AND BUDDHISM
CHAPTER 9
DAOISM
CHAPTER 10
CONFUCIANISM
CHAPTER 11
THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN: PERSIA, GREECE, AND ROME
CHAPTER 12
THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER 13
ISLAM
CHAPTER 14
THE TWO WORLDS OF CHRISTENDOM
CHAPTER 15
THE MONGOL EMPIRE
CHAPTER 16
AFTER THE MONGOLS IN THE CHRISTIAN WEST
CHAPTER 17
AFTER THE MONGOLS IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD
CHAPTER 18
THE MARITIME REVOLUTION AND GLOBAL EXPLORATION
SELECTED REFERENCES
Agnes Kefeli is Clinical Full Professor of Religious Studies and teaches at Arizona State University. She is the author of Becoming Muslim in Imperial Russia, a book which received the 2015 Reginald Zelnik Book Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. She is especially interested in conversion, production of religious knowledge, collective memory, and women’s activities in the religious sphere, in the past as well as in the present. Her latest articles include “Varieties of Tatar Esotericism in Post-Soviet Russia,” published by Russian Review, and “In the Land of Giants: Eco-Mythology and Islamic Authority in the Post-Soviet Tatar Imagination,“ published by Slavic Review. Her Kendall Hunt workbooks aim to support and facilitate her students’ learning in two large and intensive survey courses, Religions of the World and Global History.