Some functions of imperial images in Tetrarchic politics

Written sources from the period of tetrarchy contain information on the political use and abuse of imperial images and other media. This information makes it possible to point out methods and techniques for the use of these media, and thereby to demonstrate some of their functions in political and religious disputes in the Tetrarchic period.     

赫章苗族原始宗教论

贵州赫章苗族文化的重要内容--宗教信仰,是一种建立在万物有灵观基础之上的原始宗教,自然崇拜和祖先崇拜是它的两大基本形态,赫章苗族现当代的基督教信仰中,仍有多种崇拜的成分.赫章苗族原始宗教保存完好的根本原因在于其整体的封闭落后和赫章苗族尤为突出的困厄的生存环境.     

Ancestors: Henry Maine and the constitution of primitive society

Maine was the most important English figure in a generation of legal theorists who founded the comparative study of “early”; social institutions. He assumed that all the Indo‐Germanic speaking peoples began their development with the same social forms. Early Roman law and contemporary Hindu custom encapsulated primitive Indo‐European institutions, notably the patriarchal family and the communal organisation of property rights. Maine's arguments were developed in part as a contribution to contemporary political debate, especially with reference to the Indian Empire. His work drew on the models of philology, German legal history, and English constitutional history.     

A primitive amphibian from the Late Devonian of New South Wales

A locality in the Late Devonian Cloghnan Shale (Nangar Subgroup) near Forbes, N.S.W., has yielded a rich vertebrate fauna including the antiarchs Bothriolepis and Remigolepis, the phyllolepid Phyllolepis, the dipnoan Soederberghia, and the jaw of a new ichthyostegaliid amphibian Metaxygnathus denticulus gen. et sp. nov. The amphibian is the oldest known member of the group with the possible exception of Elpistostege Westoll, and it retains characters previously associated with the rhipidistian fishes. The musculatures of rhipidistian and amphibian jaws are analysed and are shown to be functionally related to distinctive morphologies of the articulatory region in each group, Metaxygnathus being of amphibian type. Comparison is made with the Greenland ichthyostegids, and rhipidistians such as Eusthenodon.     

A History of Depressed Skull Fractures from Ancient Times to 1800

The story of managing depressed fractures illustrates how knowledge of proven value does not always get handed down. Celsus was the first to describe sensible management for depressed fractures. As he wrote in Latin this was forgotten. Galen’s Greek writings survived forming the basis of management until the sixteenth century. In 1517, Hans von Gersdorff published a formidable illustrated surgical text. One illustration depicts an instrument for elevating depressed bone fragments. It looked dramatic but could not work and its defects were finally defined in the eighteenth century. Ambroise Paré used a bone punch just as we do today, but no later surgeon mentions this, though the instrument was well known. Elements of chance, fashion, emotionally powerful illustrations, and perhaps stubbornness had a profound effect on management delaying rational treatment for centuries.     

Hegra before the Nabataeans

In 1965 a unique stamp seal was discovered on the surface of Madain Salih in what is now northwestern Saudi Arabia. The rarity of glyptic finds from this part of Arabia adds importance to this piece, even if its style and iconography remain difficult to attribute to a known tradition of seal-using in the Near East.