When They Severed Earth from Sky

When They Severed Earth from Sky

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  • Author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • ISBN: 1400842867
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 311

Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these "myths" did not begin as fiction. This absorbing book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists' interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the local myth of its origin. The Klamath tribe saw it happen and passed down the story--for nearly 8,000 years. We, however, have been literate so long that we've forgotten how myths encode reality. Recent studies of how our brains work, applied to a wide range of data from the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt to modern stories reported in newspapers, have helped the Barbers deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time. Myth is in fact a quite reasonable way to convey important messages orally over many generations--although reasoning back to the original events is possible only under rather specific conditions. Our oldest written records date to 5,200 years ago, but we have been speaking and mythmaking for perhaps 100,000. This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching us about human storytelling.


Echoes of the Ancient Skies

Echoes of the Ancient Skies

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  • Author: E. C. Krupp
  • Publisher: Courier Corporation
  • ISBN: 0486137643
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 416

Popular, authoritative look at the world of archaeoastronomy, the study of ancient peoples' observation of the skies and its role in their cultural evolution. 208 illustrations.


Prehistoric Textiles

Prehistoric Textiles

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  • Author: E. J.W. Barber
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • ISBN: 9780691002248
  • Category : Art
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 512

This monograph attempts to revise present ideas of the origins and early development of textiles in Europe and the Near East. Using linguistic techniques as well as methods from palaeobiology, it demonstrates that spinning and pattern-weaving existed far earlier than has been supposed.


The Severed Tower

The Severed Tower

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  • Author: J. Barton Mitchell
  • Publisher: Macmillan
  • ISBN: 1250009472
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 398

Fleeing Midnight City, Zoey, along with Holt, Mira and Max, must reach the Severed Tower to discover who she is, but the closer she gets to this place where the laws of physics do not apply, the more dangerous things become as her newly unlocked powers start to wane.


Between Earth and Sky

Between Earth and Sky

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  • Author: Amanda Skenandore
  • Publisher: Kensington Books
  • ISBN: 1496713672
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 337

In Amanda Skenandore’s provocative and profoundly moving debut, set in the tragic intersection between white and Native American culture, a young girl learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging. On a quiet Philadelphia morning in 1906, a newspaper headline catapults Alma Mitchell back to her past. A federal agent is dead, and the murder suspect is Alma’s childhood friend, Harry Muskrat. Harry—or Asku, as Alma knew him—was the most promising student at the “savage-taming” boarding school run by her father, where Alma was the only white pupil. Created in the wake of the Indian Wars, the Stover School was intended to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Instead, it robbed them of everything they’d known—language, customs, even their names—and left a heartbreaking legacy in its wake. The bright, courageous boy Alma knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become, cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake. To do so, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone—especially Stewart. Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma’s childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.


The Dance of Time

The Dance of Time

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  • Author: Michael Judge
  • Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
  • ISBN: 1611455111
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 265

Traces the mythology, superstitions, and events that influenced the creation of the modern calendar, discussing such facts as the explanations behind the names of the days of the week and the origins of the Easter Bunny.


The Edge of Memory

The Edge of Memory

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  • Author: Patrick Nunn
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
  • ISBN: 1472943279
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 288

In today's society it is generally the written word that holds the authority. We are more likely to trust the words found in a history textbook over the version of history retold by a friend – after all, human memory is unreliable, and how can you be sure your friend hasn't embellished the facts? But before humans were writing down their knowledge, they were telling it to each other in the form of stories. The Edge of Memory celebrates the predecessor of written information – the spoken word, tales from our ancestors that have been passed down, transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Among the most extensive and best-analysed of these stories are from native Australian cultures. These stories conveyed both practical information and recorded history, describing a lost landscape, often featuring tales of flooding and submergence. These folk traditions are increasingly supported by hard science. Geologists are starting to corroborate the tales through study of climatic data, sediments and land forms; the evidence was there in the stories, but until recently, nobody was listening. In this book, Patrick Nunn unravels the importance of these tales, exploring the science behind folk history from various places – including northwest Europe and India – and what it can tell us about environmental phenomena, from coastal drowning to volcanic eruptions. These stories of real events were passed across the generations, and over thousands of years, and they have broad implications for our understanding of how human societies have developed through the millennia, and ultimately how we respond collectively to changes in climate, our surroundings and the environment we live in.


Mummies Of Urumchi

Mummies Of Urumchi

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  • Author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
  • ISBN: 9780393320190
  • Category : Design
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 262

An absorbing exploration of the mysterious, perfectly preserved Caucasian mummies of western China--an informative unveiling of an ancient and exotic world. 16 pp. of color photos. 50 drawings. Author lectures.


Race Across the Sky

Race Across the Sky

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  • Author: Derek Sherman
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • ISBN: 1101598603
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 296

Who would you run one hundred miles for? Caleb Oberest is an ultramarathon runner, who severed all ties to his family to race brutal 100-mile marathons across mountains. Shane Oberest is a sales rep for a cutting-edge biotechnology firm, creating new cures for the diseases of our time. Shane has spent his life longing to connect with his older brother, but the distance between them was always too vast. Caleb’s running group live by strict rules, but Caleb is breaking one of them. He has fallen in love with a new member and her infant daughter. When Caleb discovers that the baby has a fatal genetic disease, he reaches out to Shane. On the verge of becoming a father himself, Shane devises a plan that could save this baby and bring his lost brother home. But to succeed, both brothers will need to risk everything they have. And so each begins a dangerous race that will push them past their boundaries, and take all of Caleb’s legendry endurance to survive. Derek Sherman’s authentic, compelling story of ultramarathons, biotechnology, and family takes us deep into new worlds and examines how far we will go for the people we love.


We All Looked Up

We All Looked Up

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  • Author: Tommy Wallach
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster
  • ISBN: 1481418777
  • Category : Juvenile Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 384

The lives of four high school seniors intersect weeks before a meteor is set to pass through Earth's orbit, with a 66.6% chance of striking and destroying all life on the planet. Simultaneous eBook.