In popular narratives of paleoanthropology and human origins, Charles Darwin is customarily cited as the first person to propose in 1871 that the African continent was the original home of the human species—a proposition subsequently supported in 1925 by Raymond Dart’s announcement of the discovery of Australopithecus africanus. While correct in its details, this mythological reading of the discovery of African origins elides critical points of debate and disjuncture and quietly obscures the formative roles of race science and racist science in the development of the evolutionary sciences. This chapter explores whether Darwin’s original hypothesis was as unusual as customarily claimed; when and how Dart’s Australopithecus came to be accepted as valid evolutionary evidence; and traces the mid-twentieth century origins of the myth itself.

This chapter presents new, annotated translations of testimonia and fragments of Hekataios of Miletos (late 6th–early 5th century BC), selected with a focus on geographical material and arranged as 111 extracts. The chapter introduction situates him within the context of the ‘Ionian Renaissance’, and identifies a determination to systematize the world and its place in the cosmos, as well as to rectify the mistakes of one’s predecessors. Characteristic of his two books is an interest in inland areas, not just coasts, and in a wide span of Europe and Asia–apparently based on personal observations–as well as a response to Homeric geography. His depth of coverage, as well as the choice of a clockwise ‘tour’ beginning in the western Mediterranean, were influential upon his successors.

This chapter presents a new, annotated translation of an unusual treatise, commonly known by the Latin name De fluviis, preserved among the works of Plutarch and probably written between AD 100 and 250. The chapter introduction discusses the work’s date and authorship; notes the author’s preference for stories about Greece and places to the east as far afield as India, as well as his tendency to misidentify his literary sources when he does not actually invent them; and explains the repetitive organization of its 25 sections. These offer mythological explanations (often erotic, homicidal, or suicidal) for changes of names in rivers and mountains, as shaped by the recurrent themes of retribution and vindication of those who suffer injustice. On a factual level, the geography is lamentable, but the author’s examples of stones and plants with miraculous properties—often related to the fates of the individuals in the stories, though sometimes to the intrinsic properties of the rivers they feature—are sometimes confirmed by other sources. Presumably ‘the author knew his audience’.

Chapter Two addresses the first example of a metaphorical use of blindness: the idea that blindness is a kind of punishment (and results from immoral behaviour). In particular, the chapter focuses on a particularly dangerous category of this trope that persists into the present day – the idea that blind people (and blind characters) are immoral because they are pretending to be blind. Ancient examples in this chapter are Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides’ Hecuba and Cyclops (these ancient texts recur in almost every chapter). Modern texts under examination here include Shakespeare’s Henry VI part 2, and King Lear, French medieval drama (especially farce) and the anonymous Historie of Jacob and Esau. As well as introducing this metaphorical use of blindness, this chapter also delves further into the question of temporality and origin-positioning.

The nature of the cosmos and its maintenance are central issues in Mesoamerican philosophy. The correlative metaphysical systems of Mesoamerica, with their focus on interdependence, transformation, and continual creation, rely on particular views about the nature of the world and its operation that are covered in this chapter. The chapter covers the development of key concepts connected to creation and change, as well as the particular ways these are developed in creation stories across Mesoamerica. Creation stories serve an important purpose in Mesoamerican thought. They should not be thought of as only myth grounding the overall tradition and system, but also as discussions of the nature of being, change, and continual creation.

A rich and varied corpus of written material has survived from medieval Ireland, much of it concerned with providing an extended account of Ireland’s past. Through the technology of writing, a constructed history was created in which the art of writing itself functioned as process and as theme. Inscriptions and manuscripts bear witness to the mechanics of writing, while the development of letters and language is explored in origin-stories in significant ways. The power of the word was important, but so was control of the landscape, ordering society, taming space. Land-clearing, building settlements, and refining tools form a prominent strand in the account of Ireland’s beginnings, particularly in medieval Irish narratives of place; how fire was mastered; when and why were mills introduced. In explaining the past and so shaping the present, the technology of writing presented a story of technologies of other kinds, a selection of which is presented in this chapter on technology, writing, and place in medieval Irish literature.

Birth (1689) Childhood of Montesquieu at La Brède; his education by the Oratorians in Juilly, when he went by the name of La Brède or Labrède; and what the documents show about his life there through 1705, his developing interests and literary inclinations.

Giambattista Vico’s maxim – ‘Doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matters of which they treat’ – offers sound advice for studying emerging literatures. Unfortunately, medieval studies did not choose to heed this counsel during the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries. Vainly seeking literary origins, medievalists focused on theories rather than on artefacts themselves – their material nature and sociohistorical context. They erred in not recognizing the indissoluble bond between emergent vernacular languages, historical context, and the literary expressions that gave them shape and identity. The DNA of literary artefacts reveals temporally sensitive components – language, narrative form, and consciousness of social, linguistic, and cultural heritage – in evolutionary flux. Unsurprisingly, then, European medieval literatures evolved under widely varied conditions. For example, northwest Europe was the seat of Charlemagne’s Empire from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. Early on, the Empire divided linguistically between Old Gallo-Romance on the left bank of the Rhine, and Old Franconian on the right. Soon thereafter, we find political and literary documents written in those vernaculars. Two examples offer enlightenment: the ‘Strasbourg Oaths’ (842 CE), and Valenciennes 150, a ninth-century manuscript containing among the earliest literary works in Old Gallo-Romance and Old Franconian.

Chapter 5 illuminates systematically – in a European, transatlantic and global context – not only the prehistory of the July crisis of 1914 but also the decisive longer-term changes in the international system and ground-rules and assumptions of international politics that led to the outbreak of the Great War. Challenging long-standing interpretations as well as the recently influential notion that European leaders acted like “sleepwalkers”, it underscores that what really proved decisive were two crucial developments: on one level, the final demise of the European concert as a key mechanism for peaceful conflict-resolution and the emergence of two antagonistic alliance blocs; and, on a more fundamental level, processes that led those who made the key decisions in and before 1914 to “unlearn” what was required, not merely to defuse continual crises at the eleventh hour but actually to manage the core systemic challenges of the age of imperialism and preserve peace more effectively. It thus seeks to show in a new way why by 1914 the escalation of a general conflict, which then widened into the First World War, had become all but unavoidable.

Chapter 11 offers historical reflections on the role that translation has played in comparative literature as a discipline in Europe and in East Asia. It examines current scholarship to cast light on the relationship between translation and comparative literature and the polemics that this relationship has sparked. It argues for a diversified view of translation and comparative literature that acknowledges not one but many conceptualizations of their interrelations.

Ideology is a central concept in political psychology. Here, we synthesise the scholarly debate's major themes. We first examine the ways in which ideology has been operationalised and discuss its prevalence (or lack thereof) in the mass public. This is followed by a discussion of the top-down and bottom-up forces that shape citizens' ideology. Top-down processes include political elites and socialisation. Bottom-up processes range from political values, basic human values, and personality to biology and genetics. Finally, we outline steps that we would welcome in the next generation of research on political ideology. These include fundamental questions about the causal relationship between different bottom-up factors and a call for more attention to measurement of key constructs and of open science practices in the study of political ideology. We hope this chapter inspires others and sets the stage for the next generation of research on political ideology.

In the future, advances in genetic modification techniques will make it possible for us to change ourselves dramatically. Should we apply these techniques to ourselves? Should we apply them to our children? In answering these questions, we are hampered by the fact that the interests of an organism are determined by its design, at least in part. Having interests is a matter of possessing features, such as the ability to feel pain and pleasure, by which an organism can be concerned about itself. So choosing our design based on our interests seems circular. Still, we can take it for granted that we will wish to change our welfare apparatus, and that of our children, only in peripheral ways, and give preference to options that make our lifetime welfare level higher than other options. Several sorts of enhancement would benefit us. For example, if we can avoid senescence, we should extend our life span.

This chapter is divided into two sections. The first probes the origins of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and its Court of Arbitration, from the Atlantic City Conference (1919) to the foundation of the ICC (1920) and its Court of Arbitration (1923). The creation of the Court, a body set up to administer arbitration cases, was a clear sign that international commercial arbitration was becoming more institutionalized. The second section explores the tension between renewal and anxiety in the Age of Institutionalization. It presents the Geneva Protocol on Arbitration Clauses (1923) and the Geneva Convention on the Execution of Foreign Awards (1927) as expressions of that anxiety and the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (1958) as signaling the swing toward renewal. Along the way, this chapter hopes to demonstrate that the key “builders” of the current regime of international commercial arbitration were not the “grand old men” described by Dezalay and Garth in their seminal book Dealing in Virtue, but predominantly private business leaders and members of arbitral institutions.

Chapter 1 examines war’s place in a universal paradigm of order and chaos, balance and imbalance; explores war’s origins and relationship to human nature; and concludes by formally defining war. After relating Aristotle’s “four causes” model (material, formal, efficient, and final) to war as an organizing concept, the chapter articulates war’s alignment within a universal theme of balance and characterizes war as an amalgam of twenty “dialectics,” including order-chaos and creation-destruction. It highlights how political imbalances can spark war and how dialectical disparities undermine war theory and strategy. Next, the chapter marshals multidisciplinary evidence to argue that evolutionary processes have imbued humanity with warlike and peaceful attributes and that war ultimately reflects human choices arising from various motives including Thucydides’s fear, honor, and interest. Finally, the chapter concludes by defining war as the nexus of a new trinity – humanity, politics, and combat – evaluating the boundaries between war and peace, and taking a first look at the question of war’s inevitability as a human activity.

This introductory chapter presents the topic of money’s emergence in the eastern Mediterranean centuries prior to the invention of coinage, an important development with far-reaching effects, placing the study of money in early antiquity in the framework of thinking about the origins of money in human societies. The study of early money in the eastern Mediterranean Iron Age contributes to a better understanding of the interregional processes that shaped the eastern Mediterranean world from the end of the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age, while at the same time providing valuable insights into the important question of how money came into being. It would, however, be a mistake to assume that money has a single historical origin. Rather than being the result of a linear evolution, it is argued that money’s importance in the politics of value in any given society can rise, transform, and subside depending on the circumstances.

Chapter 1, “Order and Origin,” begins by asking what we mean when we speak of the “modern novel.” Frequently its origins are traced to Gustave Flaubert, but this assumption deserves more scrutiny than it receives. What was preoccupying Flaubert in the months (indeed the very minutes) when he was formulating his beliefs about the novel, the pronouncements that would go on to become articles of faith for Joyce and other modern novelists? He was terrified that he had fathered a child, and he wrote in great detail about his aversion to the idea of creating new life. This chapter argues that this was not an idle distaste. It was, in fact, evidence of a sensibility (astringent, subtractive, devoted to an ideal of order) that undergirds the very idea of the modern novel that Flaubert inaugurated. This chapter provides close study of the procreative morality of Madame Bovary, L’Éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet to demonstrate how such books, and such attitudes toward the problem of giving life, determined the course of the modern novel.