Read e-book online Back to the Garden: Nature and the Mediterranean World from PDF

By James H. S. McGregor

ISBN-10: 0300197462

ISBN-13: 9780300197464

The backyard was once the cultural starting place of the early Mediterranean peoples; they stated their reliance on and kinship to the land, and so they understood nature throughout the lens in their diversely cultivated panorama. Their photograph of the backyard underwrote the biblical publication of Genesis and the region’s 3 significant religions.

In this significant melding of cultural and ecological histories, James H. S. McGregor means that the environmental predicament the area faces this day is because of the Western society’s abandonment of the “First Nature” principle--of the harmonious interrelationship of human groups and the wildlife. the writer demonstrates how this dating, which endured for millennia, successfully got here to an result in the past due eighteenth century, while “nature” got here to be equated with untamed panorama with out human intervention. McGregor’s crucial paintings deals a brand new realizing of environmental responsibility whereas providing that improving the unique imaginative and prescient of ourselves, no longer as antagonists of nature yet as cultivators of a organic global to which we innately belong, is feasible via confirmed thoughts of the prior.

Show description

Read or Download Back to the Garden: Nature and the Mediterranean World from Prehistory to the Present PDF

Similar nature books

Read e-book online Mushrooms: A Falcon Field Guide (Falcon Field Guide Series) PDF

Mushrooms highlights eighty of the commonest and sought-after mushroom species in North the USA. specific illustrations and outlines of every mushroom’s actual attributes make it effortless to spot mushrooms, together with the toxic ones, on your yard and past. this can be the basic source whilst you’re out within the box.

Get Poems PDF

Of all of the lasting ideas that William Wordsworth (1770-1850) delivered to our literature, it really is his discovery of nature and his clean imaginative and prescient of human lives within the context of nature that experience most affected our cultural weather. right here, accrued during this quantity, are Wordsworth’s best works, probably the most attractive poems ever written: from the well-known lyrical ballads, together with “The Tables Turned” and “Lines Composed a couple of Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” to the sonnets and narrative poems, to excerpts from his magnum opus, The Preludes.

Download e-book for kindle: Sand: The Never-Ending Story by Michael Welland

From person grains to abandon dunes, from the ground of the ocean to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years long ago to the longer term, this can be the intense tale of 1 of nature's humblest, strongest, and such a lot ubiquitous fabrics. informed by means of a geologist with a novelist's experience of language and narrative, Sand examines the science—sand forensics, the physics of granular fabrics, sedimentology, paleontology and archaeology, planetary exploration—and whilst explores the wealthy human context of sand.

Additional resources for Back to the Garden: Nature and the Mediterranean World from Prehistory to the Present

Sample text

Nor is there any doubt that the particular grains, pottery, and domestic animals that suddenly show up in the Franchthi subsoil are just like the ones found to the east. The Neolithic Revolution was undoubtedly an easy sell at Franchthi. Unfortunately it is still hard to tell exactly how the change came about. 24 For other spe- 40 Forging First Nature cialists, the sudden appearance of the full Neolithic package strongly suggests, if not colonization, at least an undeniable influence from the east.

Franchthi Cave is at a crossroads on a major cultural highway. From this exceptionally well-documented and thoroughly published site, it is possible to get a sense of the revolution that passed through in Neolithic times. There is no question that the transition from foraging to cultivation was relatively swift. Nor is there any doubt that the particular grains, pottery, and domestic animals that suddenly show up in the Franchthi subsoil are just like the ones found to the east. The Neolithic Revolution was undoubtedly an easy sell at Franchthi.

At first herders must have maintained an uneasy distance between themselves and the dangerous and excitable cattle that they managed to impound. Herding then played the role of modern canning or refrigeration: it kept the meat fresh until it could be used. As the tradition of herding continued, animals became smaller and more docile. Herders became more adept. Eventually it was possible to work more closely with the animals. The ox-powered plow can be heavier and dig deeper than any plow that humans can pull.

Download PDF sample

Back to the Garden: Nature and the Mediterranean World from Prehistory to the Present by James H. S. McGregor


by John
4.1

Rated 4.99 of 5 – based on 38 votes