The chapter discusses empires from a broader historical and anthropological perspective, defining the topic and revealing several false assumptions that led the entire discussion of the United Monarchy astray. The chapter shows that while scholars were often using the Roman or even the British empire as a model when assessing the United Monarchy, most empires had a different form, rising very quickly – often evolving not from “states” but from simpler forms of sociopolitical organization, in what is sometimes referred to a stateless empires – and then dissolving just as quickly, often a generation or two after their foundation. Both the very rapid growth of such empires and their rapid disintegration means that although such empires were common, they did not exist long enough to have material manifestations resembling Assyria or Rome. As examples, the chapter looks at the empires founded by Shaka and Genghis Khan as models of empires that seem to serve as better antecedents to the United Monarchy. The chapter concludes that the reconstruction of the United Monarchy presented in the book is very much in line with what is known historically and anthropologically about empires.

The Sharon Plain suffers from drainage problems and poor soil. For much of history, the region was only sparsely inhabited, suffering severe demographic fluctuations. The Iron Age IIA stands out as a period during which settlement in the Sharon, and especially in the Yarkon basin (the Sharon’s southernmost part), reached a peak before plummeting in the Iron Age IIB. What caused this unusual fluctuation? The only reason to build new settlements in the swampy Sharon was for serving as an inland polity’s outlet to the sea, so the key is to understand who could benefit from investing in this region, and especially in the Yarkon basin. A center in Samaria or the Hebron hill country would have had better port cities – Dor or Ashkelon, respectively. Only a polity with a center in the area around Jerusalem could benefit – and greatly so – from a port in the Yarkon basin. This, along with other lines of evidence (e.g., Excursus 8.1), suggests that the highland polity expanded to this area and controlled it for a few generations. Once the United Monarchy collapsed, there was no incentive to maintain the swampy region and the settlements were gradually abandoned.

The chapter describes the maturation and goals of a Finnish researcher who, from her own childhood years, had an interest in human development. Various events steered her to research this very topic. In the 1960s, she introduced a framework of emotional regulation for a longitudinal study, from middle childhood to middle adulthood, that she has conducted. The results show that individual differences in emotional regulation in childhood tend to lead to different life paths due to their accumulating effects on human development in several spheres of life. The narrative underlines how international contacts are valuable for a researcher from a small country, and how she made such contacts through extensive activities within learned societies. Also, she discusses the great value of both multidisciplinary research and the application of research findings and emphasizes the importance of developmental psychological knowledge being established in various societal contexts.

The term “acute leukemia” actually covers a large number of different diseases. This is mostly related to the lineage involved, yet, even in a single lineage, differences exist according to the differentiation stage where maturation blockade occurred or to the type of chromosomal/molecular anomalies associated with the disease. This chapter provides a guide of how immunophenotypic anomalies, typically identified very early in the diagnosis process, can orient further cytogenetic or molecular investigations, allowing for a faster integrated diagnosis and better focused patient management.

This chapter first discusses how Bitcoin works in functional terms (as opposed to technical aspects), focusing on the structure of a decentralized, pseudonymous payment system. The chapter next discusses possible applications of the underlying blockchain technology, such as stock trading, property records, peer-to-peer sharing services, and smart contracts. Turning to the law, the chapter discusses several matters that the Uniform Commercial Code Amendments in 2022 addressed: A legal definition applicable to blockchain technologies, the negotiability of digital assets, the use of digital assets as collateral, and whether cryptocurrencies are money. The chapter then discusses some remaining issues, such as whether bitcoin transactions be traced and whether smart contracts are subject to contract law, and whether parties could opt out of contract law. Finally, the chapter looks specifically at the application of secured lending law to analogous transactions using smart contracts.

The rules which govern sacrifice and killing, their associated groups and inter-relations on a daily basis in Nepal are an extension of a larger socio-sacrificial cosmogony, one which exposes the causal relationship between blood sacrifice and socio-political organisation, in much the same way as they did in ancient Greece (Vernant 1979).

Two main principles emerge from the ethnography of sacrificial practices in western Nepal: first, that whosoever is entitled to kill is also entitled to sacrifice (with the result that killing and sacrificing are little differentiated in practice) and, second, that only those who are entitled to kill can themselves be killed. The right to kill thus traces lines of partition within society, lines which trace out a social structure which is parallel to that of the castes.

Whosoever can kill can sacrifice

In the region formerly occupied by the Twenty-Four and the Twenty-Two Kingdoms, apart from the Brahmins, who are forbidden to kill any animal whatsoever, any man can be a sacrificator or butcher, in the absence of caste-based specialisation in these roles, as is seen in the Kathmandu Valley. Killing is thus strongly associated with masculinity and takes on an initiatory character. Since childhood, boys aspire to be entrusted with this responsibility and it is not uncommon to see them insisting on the right to kill their first chicken. Permission is granted to them by their parents only once they are old enough not to cause the animal undue harm. Indeed, causing the victim to suffer is a fault, pāp, one which brings harmful consequences to the one who causes it. If a young boy kills a chicken in the wrong way, a member of his family rushes to blow phuphu on the sickle used in order to ‘drop the blame’. Sometimes even in a ritual context, a botched sacrifice must be repaired by another small sacrifice, of a baby chick.

Anyone who is entitled to kill can also sacrifice, at least for themselves. There are some Nepalis who have never killed an animal nor consumed meat outside of a sacrificial framework, like a Sārkī family I met in Dullu in 2012, for instance.