Martin West investigates their traditional mythologies, religions, and poetries, and points to elements of common heritage. In The East Face of Helicon (1997), West showed the extent to which Homeric and other early Greek poetry was influenced by Near Eastern traditions, mainly non-Indo-European. His new book presents a foil to that work by identifying elements of more ancient, Indo-European heritage in the Greek material. Topics covered include the status of poets and poetry in Indo-European societies; metre, style, and diction; gods and other supernatural beings, from Father Sky and Mother Earth to the Sun-god and his beautiful daughter, the Thunder-god and other elemental deities, and earthly orders such as Nymphs and Elves; the forms of hymns, prayers, and incantations; conceptions about the world, its origin, mankind, death, and fate; the ideology of fame and of immortalization through poetry; the typology of the king and the hero; the hero as warrior, and the conventions of battle narrative.

    Their interpretations, informed by recent fossil discoveries, were the first efforts to represent the prehistoric world based on sources other than the Bible. Martin J. S. Rudwick presents more than a hundred rare illustrations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to explore the implications of reconstructing a past no one has ever seen.

    Four Cries, in her search for her spirit guide makes many allies, ultimately uniting three enemy villages and helping her own people avoid starvation--and fulfilling the prophecy!

    Excavated artifacts and new recovered texts now supplement traditional textual materials. Together, these data show how Sichuan matured from peripheral obscurity to attain central importance in the Chinese empire during the first millennium B.C.

    Surveys the civilization, history, and culture of the Incas, including studies of their government, religion, family life, agriculture, and architecture.

    Second edition published 1992, reprinted in 2002 and 2011. In this book Professor Tylecote presents a unique introduction to the history of metallurgy from the earliest times to the present. The development of metallurgy skills and techniques of different civilisations, and the connection between them, are carefully chartered. This volume is concerned with such important topics as the rise of metallurgy in the Near East and the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe."