Pragian and lower Emsian (Lower Devonian) conodonts from Liujing,Guangxi, South China

LU, J.-F., QIE, W.-Q. & CHEN, X.-Q., July 2016. Pragian and lower Emsian (Lower Devonian) conodonts from Liujing, Guangxi, South China. Alcheringa 40, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518.

Lower Devonian (Pragian and Emsian) conodonts are described from the Liujing section in Guangxi, South China, highlighting the phylogeny of early polygnathids and establishing the basis for faunal correlations with deposits throughout the world. Records of Eognathodus kuangi sp. nov. and E. nagaolingensis Xiong increase the biodiversity of the Pragian eognathodids in South China and represent intermediate stages and probably the latest eognathodids in the evolutionary succession from Eognathodus to Polygnathus. During this evolutionary succession, the degeneration of the sulcus (or the flattening of the upper platform surface) is the most important morphological change, especially in the eognathodid lineage. Polygnathus trilinearis, P. pireneae and P. sokolovi are recognized together for the first time in South China. The contemporaneous occurrences of the kitabiformis and sokoloviformis morphs of P. pireneae with P. sokolovi and their respective similarities to P. kitabicus and P. sokolovi suggest that the latter two species are phylogenetically linked with P. pireneae. Evidence from the Liujing section also favours Polygnathus probably having evolved from Eognathodus in a tropical or subtropical area.

Jian-feng Lu* [lujfivan@sina.cn] and Xiu-qin Chen [xqchen@nigpas.ac.cn], Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 39 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, PR China; Wen-Kun Qie [wkqie@nigpas.ac.cn], Key Laboratory of Economic Stratigraphy and Palaeogeography, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, 39 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, PR China. *Also affiliated with University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China.     

How diverse were early animal communities? An example from Ediacara Conservation Park,Flinders Ranges,South Australia

Coutts, F.J., Gehling, J.G. & García-Bellido, D.C., August 2016. How diverse were early animal communities? An example from Ediacara Conservation Park, Flinders Ranges, South Australia. Alcheringa 40, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

Fossils of the Ediacara biota record the earliest evidence of animal communities and, as such, provide an invaluable glimpse into the abiotic and biotic processes that helped shape the evolution of complex life on Earth. A diverse community of Ediacaran macro-organisms is preserved with high resolution in a fossil bed recently excavated from north Ediacara Conservation Park (NECP) in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. Many of the commonly described Ediacaran taxa from the Flinders Ranges are represented on the bed surface and include: Parvancorina, Rugoconites, Spriggina, Dickinsonia, Tribrachidium, Kimberella, Charniodiscus and Yorgia, including two new taxa. Numerous additional fossil-bed fragments from the same locality were analysed that preserve a similar suite of taxa and shared sedimentology. On all surfaces, preserved microbial mat appeared complex, both in topography and in texture, and the unique combination of fine grainsize, high diversity and trace fossils provide insights into the palaeoecology of the ancient organisms that lived during the Ediacaran Period some 550 Ma. Several trace fossils are overlapped by body fossils, indicative of successive events, and complex organismal behaviour. The complexity of this fossil surface suggests that the primordial community was relatively mature and possibly at late-stage succession.

Felicity J Coutts [felicity.coutts@adelaide.edu.au], School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5000, South Australia, Australia. James G Gehling [jim.gehling@samuseum.sa.gov.au], South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia. Diego C. García-Bellido [diego.garcia-bellido@adelaide.edu.au], South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia.     

‘Good order and the police’

The emergence of police ordinances and police authorities in the early modern period has traditionally been seen as a way to discipline society in order to increase the power of the absolutist state. However, recent investigations of early modern policing in German and French regions show that ‘good order and police’ was in demand by the subjects and also adapted to local needs. Inspired by this research this article investigates the enforcement of police ordinances in the Danish market towns of Aalborg and Sæby and the country district of Børglum-Jerslev. The results show that policing remained focused on local needs even after the creation of a royal police office in 1682. Policing mainly concerned the welfare and privileges of burghers in market towns until the introduction of a country police in 1791, when agrarian reforms began to erode the patriarchal order in the countryside. As a new way of governing, ‘police’ was a way both to govern free burghers and preserve traditional order.     

Imitation in European herring fisheries,C. 1550–1860

For no less than 300 years, c. 1550–1860 the Dutch way of fishing was the envy of neighbours in the North Sea area and looked upon as the undisputed best practice. However, it turned out that the perception of the Dutch Golden Age of fishing outlived the reality by at least 150 years. This paper explores the consequences of the image of Dutch dominance, as seen through 41 different attempts to build a fleet and run fishing operations similar to the Dutch. Most of them were short-lived, and some never made it to the fishing grounds before going bankrupt. When reviewed one by one, they all have unique reasons for lacklustre performances. Privateering, warfare, bankruptcy, and bad fishing luck are all valid explanations at the level of politics and short-term events. However, when looked upon in connection to each other, some recurrent features of more-or-less sound policies appear, as well as structural, social, and natural conditions for varying degrees of success and failure. Two waves of imitation emerge from this comparison. In the mid-1600s and then again during the 1760s–1770s there was a particularly strong Europe-wide interest in emulating Dutch fisheries.     

由“周孔”而“孔孟”:儒家话语体系建构中的“圣人之道”

在中国学术思想史上,"孔孟"取"周孔"而代之,"周孔之道"演化为"孔孟之道",是儒家基于特定历史语境建构话语体系的产物。随着周、孔形象渐趋圣化,汉唐时人多以周、孔并举,包含政治教化与人伦道德两方面内涵的"周孔之道"得以生成。继韩愈"道统论"之后,宋儒建构"性与天道"理论和道统谱系,"孔孟之道"逐渐成为儒学的代名词。统治者藉由教育、祭祀等参与此过程,也彰显出道统与治统的复杂关联。     

民国前期的立宪主义及其实践

北洋集团掌握中央政权的民国前期,政局比较混乱,社会思想也比较复杂,但立宪主义思潮意外呈现出活跃态势,开国会、制宪法成为一些当权者以及广大宪政主义者的重要诉求,在此背景下开展的一系列制宪活动,也取得了值得称道的宪法性成果和制度性成果。时人对宪政的内在价值了解有限,当权者的政治表现也不完美,但这不能抵消立宪的积极意义。民国前期的立宪主义及其实践,构成了近代中国政治进程的重要一环,书写了中国宪政运动史的重要一页。     

Expanding the discursive domain of research on the New Culture Movement: An incomplete review of studies on the New Culture Movement

ABSTRACT

The discussions revolving around the common subject of the New Culture Movement have experienced a complex and convoluted history, with a discursive domain ranging from the differentiation of new and old culture, to appeals for a scientific and democratic enlightenment, to the balancing of the cultural relationship between China and the West. The New Culture tends to be regarded as development in the direction of increasing rationality, liberality, and inclusiveness, in which the pursuit of an understanding between the Chinese and Western cultures is the only path by which Chinese civilization may gain future opportunities and development.     

‘A Great People Struggling for Their Liberties’: Spain and the Mediterranean in the Eyes of the Benthamites

Summary

This article examines the relationship of Jeremy Bentham and some of his disciples within Romantic Liberalism in the Mediterranean in the early 1820s. By studying the content of Bentham's correspondence with his collaborators and some Spanish political leaders, the text sheds light on Bentham's ideas on constitutional rule, the independence of Latin America and religious tolerance.     

A Distorting Mirror: The Sixteenth Century in the Historical Imagination of the First Hispanic Liberals

Summary

Both Iberian and Spanish American liberals in the early decades of the nineteenth century based their political stances upon a particular vision of Spanish history. This vision, nourished by the stereotypes of the so-called ‘black legend’, correspond to an extremely gloomy picture of the main events and processes that had been taking place in the Hispanic monarchy since the late fifteenth century, such as the discovery and conquest of America and the outcome of the Comunidades of Castile war. This essay shows how those first Hispanic liberals, many of whom spent several years in exile, hoping to make sense of that period of uncertainty and revolutionary crisis, sought inspiration in the philosophies of history which were beginning to spread from Northern Europe regarding the decisive role of Protestantism in the origins of modernity. In endorsing such a derogatory vision of the history of their own countries, which included an evaluation of Catholicism as a retrograde factor, those liberal writers and politicians bequeathed to their descendants an interpretative framework that would prove to be very long lasting. In fact, much of the political and intellectual historiography on the Iberian world would be conditioned for a long time by a paradigm which described its past as an anomaly in the Euroamerican context, and assumed the subordinate and peripheral position of the region, portrayed as a kind of ‘interior Orient’—that is, as an aberration of Western civilisation.     

Cultural contacts and ethnic origins in Viking Age Wales and northern Britain: the case of Albanus,Britain's first inhabitant and Scottish ancestor

Albanus, an eponymous ancestor for the kingdom of Alba, provides an example of the extent to which the creation of an ethnic identity was accompanied by new ideas about origins, which replaced previous accounts. Through an analysis of the Historia Brittonum’s textual tradition and Welsh knowledge of early Roman history and medieval ethnic groups, this article establishes that Albanus was added to the Historia Brittonum in the late ninth or early tenth century as an ancestral figure for the new kingdom of Alba in northern Britain. This was potentially a result of shared political situations in Gwynedd, Alba (formerly Pictland) and Strathclyde in relation to Scandinavian power at this time, which encouraged contacts and the spread of Alba-based ideology to Gwynedd. The later development of this idea and its significance in Alba itself, Geoffrey of Monmouth's account and English claims to supremacy over Scotland are also traced.