Shamanism
Shamanism is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with what they believe to be a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world. A shaman is someone, regarded as having access to, influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who enters into a trance state during a ritual, practices divination and healing; the word "shaman" originates from the Tungusic Evenki language of North Asia. According to ethnolinguist Juha Janhunen, "the word is attested in all of the Tungusic idioms" such as Negidal, Udehe/Orochi, Ilcha, Orok and Ulcha, "nothing seems to contradict the assumption that the meaning'shaman' derives from Proto-Tungusic" and may have roots that extend back in time at least two millennia; the term was introduced to the west after Russian forces conquered the shamanistic Khanate of Kazan in 1552. The term "shamanism" was first applied by Western anthropologists as outside observers of the ancient religion of the Turks and Mongols, as well as those of the neighbouring Tungusic- and Samoyedic-speaking peoples.
Upon observing more religious traditions across the world, some Western anthropologists began to use the term in a broad sense. The term was used to describe unrelated magico-religious practices found within the ethnic religions of other parts of Asia, Africa and completely unrelated parts of the Americas, as they believed these practices to be similar to one another. Mircea Eliade writes, "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, the least hazardous, will be: shamanism ='technique of religious ecstasy'." Shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness; the shaman enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements.
The shaman operates within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment. Beliefs and practices that have been categorized this way as "shamanic" have attracted the interest of scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars and psychologists. Hundreds of books and academic papers on the subject have been produced, with a peer-reviewed academic journal being devoted to the study of shamanism. In the 20th century, many Westerners involved in the counter-cultural movement have created modern magico-religious practices influenced by their ideas of indigenous religions from across the world, creating what has been termed neoshamanism or the neoshamanic movement, it has affected the development of many neopagan practices, as well as faced a backlash and accusations of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation when outside observers have tried to represent cultures to which they do not belong.
The word shamanism derives from the Manchu-Tungus word šaman, meaning'one who knows'. The word "shaman" may have originated from the Evenki word šamán, most from the southwestern dialect spoken by the Sym Evenki peoples; the Tungusic term was subsequently adopted by Russians interacting with the indigenous peoples in Siberia. It is found in the memoirs of the exiled Russian churchman Avvakum; the word was brought to Western Europe in the late 17th century by the Dutch traveler Nicolaes Witsen, who reported his stay and journeys among the Tungusic- and Samoyedic-speaking indigenous peoples of Siberia in his book Noord en Oost Tataryen. Adam Brand, a merchant from Lübeck, published in 1698 his account of a Russian embassy to China; the etymology of the Evenki word is sometimes connected to a Tungus root ša- "to know". This has been questioned on linguistic grounds: "The possibility cannot be rejected, but neither should it be accepted without reservation since the assumed derivational relationship is phonologically irregular."
Other scholars assert that the word comes directly from the Manchu language, as such would be the only used English word, a loan from this language. However, Mircea Eliade noted that the Sanskrit word śramaṇa, designating a wandering monastic or holy figure, has spread to many Central Asian languages along with Buddhism and could be the ultimate origin of the Tungusic word; this proposal has been critiqued since 1917. Ethnolinguist Juha Janhunen regards it as an "anachronism" and an "impossibility", nothing more than a "far-fetched etymology."21st-century anthropologist and archeologist Silvia Tomaskova argues that by the mid-1600s, many Europeans applied the Arabic term shaitan to the non-Christian practices and beliefs of indigenous peoples beyond the Ural Mountains. She suggests that shaman may have entered the various Tungus dialects as a corruption of this term, been told to Christian missionaries, explorers and colonial administrators with whom the people had increasing contact for centuries.
Ethnolinguists did not develop as a discipline nor achieve contact with these communities until the late 19th century, may have mistakenly "read backward" in time for the origin of this word. A shamaness is somet
Argentina
Argentina the Argentine Republic, is a country located in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Drake Passage to the south. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the fourth largest in the Americas, the largest Spanish-speaking nation; the sovereign state is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires, the federal capital of the nation as decided by Congress. The provinces and the capital exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; the earliest recorded human presence in modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The Inca Empire expanded to the northwest of the country in Pre-Columbian times; the country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century.
Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The declaration and fight for independence was followed by an extended civil war that lasted until 1861, culminating in the country's reorganization as a federation of provinces with Buenos Aires as its capital city; the country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with several waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest nation in the world by the early 20th century. Following the Great Depression in the 1930s, Argentina descended into political instability and economic decline that pushed it back into underdevelopment, though it remained among the fifteen richest countries for several decades. Following the death of President Juan Perón in 1974, his widow, Isabel Martínez de Perón, ascended to the presidency, she was overthrown in 1976 by a U.
S.-backed coup which installed a right-wing military dictatorship. The military government persecuted and murdered numerous political critics and leftists in the Dirty War, a period of state terrorism that lasted until the election of Raúl Alfonsín as President in 1983. Several of the junta's leaders were convicted of their crimes and sentenced to imprisonment. Argentina is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America, retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America, membership in the G-15 and G-20 major economies, it is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization, Union of South American Nations, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Organization of Ibero-American States. Despite its history of economic instability, it ranks second highest in the Human Development Index in Latin America; the description of the country by the word Argentina has been found on a Venetian map in 1536.
In English the name "Argentina" comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, but Italian. Argentina means in Italian " of silver, silver coloured" borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine " of silver" > "silver coloured" mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the feminine form of argentin and derives from argent "silver" with the suffix -in; the Italian naming "Argentina" for the country implies Terra Argentina "land of silver" or Costa Argentina "coast of silver". In Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said l'Argentina; the name Argentina was first given by the Venetian and Genoese navigators, such as Giovanni Caboto. In Spanish and Portuguese, the words for "silver" are plata and prata and " of silver" is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin.
The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region. Although "Argentina" was in common usage by the 18th century, the country was formally named "Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata" by the Spanish Empire, "United Provinces of the Río de la Plata" after independence; the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name "Argentine Republic" in legal documents. The name "Argentine Confederation" was commonly used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the country's name as "Argentine Republic", that year's constitutional amendment ruled all the names since 1810 as valid. In the English language the country was traditionally called "the Argentine", mimicking the typical Spanish usage la Argentina and resulting from a mistaken shortening of the fuller name'Argentine Republic'.'The Argentine' fell out of fashion during the mid-to-late 20th century, now the country is referred to as "Argentina".
In the Spanish language "Argentina" is feminine, taking the feminine article "La" as the i
Australo-Melanesian
In physical anthropology, forensic anthropology and archaeogenetics, Australo-Melanesians form a large group of populations indigenous to Maritime Southeast Asia and Oceania. The group includes Papuans, Aboriginal Australians and the populations grouped as "Negrito"; the Vedda people in Sri Lanka and a number of dark-skinned tribal populations in the interior of the Indian subcontinent are suggested to belong to the Australoid group, but there are controversies about this inclusion. A research involving cranial morphology, made by Indian anthropologists, suggests that the South Asian Indian populations have different cranial characteristics from Australoid groups; this difference got strengthened in recent times due to the miscegenation with peoples of different origins. A genetic study in 1985 suggested connections between tribal peoples of Southern India, Sri Lanka and Negrito populations of the Philippines and Malaysia. A more recent study sustains that the Southern Indian populations are not related to the classic Australo-Melanesian groups.
The term "Australioid race" was introduced by Thomas Huxley in 1870 to refer to certain peoples indigenous to South and Southeast Asia and Oceania. Terms associated with outdated notions of racial types, such as those ending in "-oid" have come to be seen as offensive and related to scientific racism. According to a large craniometric study the native populations of South Asia have distinct craniometric and anthropologic ancestry. Both southern and northern groups are most similar to each other and have closer affinities to various "Caucasoid" groups; the study further showed that the native South Asians form a distinct group and are not related to the "Australoid" group. If there were an Australoid “substratum” component to Indians’ ancestry, we would expect some degree of craniometric similarity between Howells’ Southwest Pacific series and Indians, but in fact, the Southwest Pacific and Indian are craniometrically distinct, falsifying any claim for an Australoid substratum in India. The term "Australoid" was coined in ethnology in the mid 19th century, describing tribes or populations "of the type of native Australians".
In physical anthropology, Australoid is used for morphological features characteristic of Aboriginal Australians by Daniel John Cunningham in his Text-book of Anatomy. An Australioid racial group was first proposed by Thomas Huxley in an essay On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind, in which he divided humanity into four principal groups. Huxley's original model included the native inhabitants of South Asia under the Australoid category. Huxley further classified the Melanochroi as a mixture of the Australioids. Huxley described Australioids as dolichocephalic; the term "Proto-Australoid" was used by Roland Burrage Dixon in his Racial History of Man. In a 1962 publication, Australoid was described as one of the five major human races alongside Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Capoid. In The Origin of Races, Carleton Coon attempted to refine such scientific racism by introducing a system of five races with separate origins. Based on such evidence as claiming Australoids had the largest, megadont teeth, this group was assessed by Coon as being the most archaic and therefore the most primitive and backward.
Coon's methods and conclusions were discredited and show either a "poor understanding of human cultural history and evolution or his use of ethnology for a racialist agenda." Bellwood uses the terms "Australoid", "Australomelanesoid" and "Australo-Melanesians" to describe the genetic heritage of "the Southern Mongoloid populations of Indonesia and Malaysia". Since the 1980s, anthropological terms in "-oid" have come to be avoided in some disciplines in the United States, where the term Australo-Melanesian is now preferred. In other areas in anthropological literature in India, the term Australoid continues to be preferred. Besides the Australian Aboriginals and Negritos, the "Australoid" category is taken to include various tribes of India; the inclusion of Indian tribes in the group is not well-defined, is related to the question of the original peopling of India, the possible shared ancestry between Indian and Australian populations of the Upper Paleolithic. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology by American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza in their text, The History and Geography of Human Genes all use the term. Tee suggested Australoid ancestry of the original South Asian populations has long remained an open question, it was embraced by Indian anthropologists as emphasizing the deep antiquity of Indian prehistory. Australoid hunter-gatherer and fisherman tribes of the interior of India were identified with the Nishada Kingdom described in the Mahabharata. Panchanan Mitra following Vincenzo Giuffrida-Ruggeri recognizes a Pre-Dravidian Australo-
Punta Arenas
Punta Arenas is the capital city of Chile's southernmost region and Antartica Chilena. The city was renamed as Magallanes in 1927, but in 1938 it was changed back to "Punta Arenas", it is the largest city south of the 46th parallel south, at the same time the most populous southernmost city in Chile and in the Americas, due its location, the coldest coastal city with more than 100,000 inhabitants in Latin America. It is one of the most populous sites so to the south of the world; as of 1977 Punta Arenas has been one of only two free ports in Chile, the other one being Iquique, in the country's far north. Located on the Brunswick Peninsula north of the Strait of Magellan, Punta Arenas was established by the Chilean government in 1848 as a tiny penal colony to assert sovereignty over the Strait. During the remainder of the 1800s, Punta Arenas grew in size and importance due to the increasing maritime traffic and trade traveling to the west coasts of South and North America; this period of growth resulted from the waves of European immigrants from Croatia and Russia attracted to the gold rush and sheep farming boom in the 1880s and early 1900s.
The largest sheep company, controlling 10,000 square kilometres in Chile and Argentina, was based in Punta Arenas, its owners lived there. Since its founding Chile has used Punta Arenas as a base to defend its sovereignty claims in the southernmost part of South America; this led, among other things, to the Strait of Magellan being recognized as Chilean territory in the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina. The geopolitical importance of Punta Arenas has remained high in the 20th and 21st centuries because of its logistic importance in accessing the Antarctic Peninsula. Since 2017, the city and its region have their own time zone: they use summer time during the whole year; the English 18th-century explorer John Byron is sometimes credited with naming this area, calling it Sandy Point. However, it was not until 1843 that the government tried to establish a fort and settlement at Fuerte Bulnes; the name Punta Arenas was derived from the Spanish term Punta Arenosa, a literal translation of the English name "Sandy Point".
The city has been known as Magallanes. Today that term is used to describe the administrative region which includes the city. Punta Arenas has been nicknamed "the city of the red roofs" for the red-painted metal roofs that characterized the city for many years. Since about 1970, the availability of other colors in protective finishes has resulted in greater variety in the characteristic metal roofs. Located on the Brunswick Peninsula, Punta Arenas is among the largest cities in the entire Patagonian Region. In 2012, it had a population of 127,454, it is 1,418.4 km from the coast of Antarctica. The Magallanes region is considered part of Chilean Patagonia. Magallanes is Spanish for Magellan, was named for Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain. While circumnavigating the earth for Spain, he passed close to the present site of Punta Arenas in 1520. Early English navigational documents referred to this site as "Sandy Point"; the city proper is located on the northeastern shore of Brunswick Peninsula.
Except for the eastern shore, containing the settlements of Guairabo, Rio Amarillo and Punta San Juan, the peninsula is uninhabited. The municipality of Punta Arenas includes all of Brunswick Peninsula, as well as all islands west of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego and north of Cockburn and Magdalena channels; the largest of those are: Santa Inés Island Desolación Island Dawson Island Aracena Island Clarence Island Carlos Island Wickham IslandExcept Dawson Island, which had a population of about 301 in 2002, the islands are uninhabited. Clarence Island had a population of five. Due to its far southern latitude, Punta Arenas has a subpolar oceanic climate bordering on a tundra climate; the seasonal temperature in Punta Arenas is moderated by its proximity to the ocean, with average lows in July near −1 °C and highs in January of 14 °C. It is known for stable constant temperatures, which vary only with the seasons. Rainfall is highest in April and May, the snowy season runs all through the Chilean winter.
As in most of Patagonia, average annual precipitation is quite low, only 380 mm because of a rain shadow created by the Andes. The average temperature does not go below 1 °C; the city is known for its strong winds, which are strongest during the summer. City officials have put up ropes between buildings in the downtown area to assist pedestrians with managing the strong downdrafts. Since 1986, Punta Arenas has been the first populated city in the world to be affected directly by the thinning ozone layer, its residents are considered to be exposed to damaging levels of ultraviolet radiation. Two early Spanish settlements were attempted along this coast; the first was called Nombre de Jesús. It failed due to the harsh weather and difficulty in the settlers' obtaining food and water, the enormous distances from other Spanish ports. A second colony, Cuidad del Rey don Felipe, was attempted about 80 kilometres south of Punta Arenas; this became known as Puerto del Hambre, which translates to Port Famine.
Spain had established these settlements in an attempt to protect its shipping a
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, with an area of 48,100 km2, a group of many islands, including Cape Horn and Diego Ramírez Islands. Tierra del Fuego is divided between Chile and Argentina, with the latter controlling the eastern half of the main island and the former the western half plus the islands south of Beagle Channel; the southernmost extent of the archipelago is at about latitude 55 S. The earliest known human settlement in Tierra del Fuego dates to around 8,000 BCE. Europeans first explored the islands during Ferdinand Magellan's expedition of 1520. Settlement by those of European descent and the great displacement of the native populations did not begin until the second half of the 19th century, at the height of the Patagonian sheep farming boom and of the local gold rush. Today, petroleum extraction dominates economic activity in the north of Tierra del Fuego, while tourism and Antarctic logistics are important in the south.
The earliest human settlement occurred around 8,000 BCE. The Yaghan were some of the earliest known humans to settle in Tierra del Fuego. Archeological sites with characteristics of their culture have been found at locations such as Navarino Island; the name Tierra del Fuego was given by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan while sailing for the Spanish Crown in 1520. He believed he was seeing the many fires of the Yaghan, which were visible from the sea, that the "Indians" were waiting in the forests to ambush his armada. In 1525 Francisco de Hoces was the first to speculate that Tierra del Fuego was one or more islands rather than part of what was called Terra Australis. Francis Drake in 1578 and a Dutch East India Company expedition in 1616 learned more about the geography; the latter expedition named Cape Horn. On his first voyage with HMS Beagle in 1830, Robert FitzRoy picked up four native Fuegians, including "Jemmy Button" and brought them to England; the surviving three were taken to London to meet the King and Queen and were, for a time, celebrities.
They returned to Tierra del Fuego in Beagle with FitzRoy and Charles Darwin, who made extensive notes about his visit to the islands. During the second half of the 19th century, the archipelago began to come under Chilean and Argentine influence. Both countries sought to claim the whole archipelago based on de jure Spanish colonial titles. Salesian Catholic missions were established in Dawson Island. Anglican missions were established by British colonists at Keppel Island in the Falklands in 1855 and in 1870 at Ushuaia on the main island, which continued to operate through the 19th century. Thomas Bridges learned the language and compiled a 30,000-word Yaghan grammar and dictionary while he worked at Ushuaia, it was considered an important ethnological work. An 1879 Chilean expedition led by Ramón Serrano Montaner reported large amounts of placer gold in the streams and river beds of Tierra del Fuego; this prompted massive immigration to the main island between 1883 and 1909. Numerous Argentines and Croatians settled in the main island, leading to increased conflicts with native Selk'nam.
Julius Popper, a Romanian explorer, was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the region. Granted rights by the Argentine government to exploit any gold deposits he found in Tierra del Fuego, Popper has been identified as a central figure in the Selk'nam genocide. Following contact with Europeans, the native Selk'nam and Yaghan populations were reduced by unequal conflict and persecution by settlers, by infectious diseases to which the indigenous people had no immunity, by mass transfer to the Salesian mission of Dawson Island. Despite the missionaries' efforts, many natives died. Today, only a few Selk'nam remain; some of the few remaining Yaghan have settled in Villa Ukika in Navarino Island. Following the signing of the Boundary Treaty of 1881, Tierra del Fuego was divided between Argentina and Chile; the gold rushes of the late 19th century led to the founding of numerous small settlements by immigrants such as the Argentine settlements of Ushuaia and Río Grande and the Chilean settlements of Porvenir and Puerto Toro.
In 1945 a division of Chilean CORFO engaged in oil exploration made a breakthrough discovery of oil in northern Tierra del Fuego. Extraction began in 1949, in 1950 the state created ENAP to deal with oil extraction and prospecting; until 1960, most oil extracted in Chile came from Tierra del Fuego. During the 1940s Chile and Argentina formulated their Antarctic claims; the governments realized the key role of Tierra del Fuego's geographical proximity in backing their claims as well as in supplying their Antarctic bases. In the 1950s, the Chilean military founded Puerto Williams to counter Ushuaia's monopoly as the only settlement in the Beagle Channel, a zone where Argentina disputed the 1881 borders. In the 1960s and 1970s, sovereignty claims by Argentina over Picton and Nueva Islands in Tierra del Fuego led the two countries in December 1978 to the brink of war. In response to the threat of an Argentine invasion, minefields were deployed and bunkers built on the Chilean side in some areas of Tierra del Fuego.
The threat of war caused the Chilean Pin
Myth
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives or stories that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. The main characters in myths are gods, demigods or supernatural humans. Stories of everyday human beings, although of leaders of some type, are contained in legends, as opposed to myths. Myths are endorsed by rulers and priests or priestesses, are linked to religion or spirituality. In fact, many societies group their myths and history together, considering myths and legends to be true accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its form. Other myths explain how a society's customs and taboos were established and sanctified. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and enactment of rituals; the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers.
Today, the study of myth continues in a wide variety of academic fields, including folklore studies and psychology. The term mythology may either refer to the study of myths in general, or a body of myths regarding a particular subject; the academic comparisons of bodies of myth is known as comparative mythology. Since the term myth is used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be political: many adherents of religions view their religion's stories as true and therefore object to the stories being characterised as myths. Scholars now speak of Christian mythology, Jewish mythology, Islamic mythology, Hindu mythology, so forth. Traditionally, Western scholarship, with its Judaeo-Christian heritage, has viewed narratives in the Abrahamic religions as being the province of theology rather than mythology. Labelling all religious narratives as myths can be thought of as treating different traditions with parity. Definitions of myth to some extent vary by scholar.
Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko offers a cited definition: Myth, a story of the gods, a religious account of the beginning of the world, the creation, fundamental events, the exemplary deeds of the gods as a result of which the world and culture were created together with all parts thereof and given their order, which still obtains. A myth expresses and confirms society's religious values and norms, it provides a pattern of behavior to be imitated, testifies to the efficacy of ritual with its practical ends and establishes the sanctity of cult. Scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, popular misconception or imaginary entity. However, while myth and other folklore genres may overlap, myth is thought to differ from genres such as legend and folktale in that neither are considered to be sacred narratives; some kinds of folktales, such as fairy stories, are not considered true by anyone, may be seen as distinct from myths for this reason.
Main characters in myths are gods, demigods or supernatural humans, while legends feature humans as their main characters. However, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Moreover, as stories spread between cultures or as faiths change, myths can come to be considered folktales, their divine characters recast as either as humans or demihumans such as giants and faeries. Conversely and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time. For example, the Matter of Britain and the Matter of France, seem distantly to originate in historical events of the fifth and eighth-centuries and became mythologised over the following centuries. In colloquial use, the word myth can be used of a collectively held belief that has no basis in fact, or any false story; this usage, pejorative, arose from labeling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well. However, as used by folklorists and academics in other relevant fields, such as anthropology, the term myth has no implication whether the narrative may be understood as true or otherwise.
In present use, mythology refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures. Folklorist Alan Dundes defines myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Dundes classified a sacred narrative as "a story that serves to define the fundamental worldview of a culture by explaining aspects of the natural world and delineating the psychological and social practices and ideals of a society". Anthropologist Bruce Lincoln defines myth as "ideology in narrative form." The compilation or description of myths is sometimes known as mythography, a term which can be used of a scholarly anthology of myths. Key mythographers in the Classical tradition include Ovid, whose tellings of myths have been profoundingly influential.
Whale meat
Whale meat, broadly speaking, may include all cetaceans and all parts of the animal: muscle and fat. There is little demand for it, compared to farmed livestock, commercial whaling, which has faced opposition for decades, continues today in few countries, although whale meat used to be eaten across Western Europe and colonial America. However, wherever dolphin drive hunting and aboriginal whaling exist, marine mammals are eaten locally as part of the subsistence economy: in the Faroe Islands. Like horse meat, for some cultures whale meat is taboo, or a food of last resort, e.g. in times of war, whereas in others it is a delicacy and a culinary centrepiece. Indigenous groups contend, its consumption has been denounced by detractors on wildlife conservation and animal rights grounds. Whale meat can be prepared in various ways, including salt-curing, which means that consumption is not restricted to coastal communities. Whales were hunted in European waters throughout the Middle Ages for their oil.
Under Catholicism, aquatic creatures were considered "fish". An alternative explanation is that the Church considered "hot meat" to raise the libido, making it unfit for holy days. Parts submerged in water, such as whale or beaver tails, were considered "cold meat." See Fasting and abstinence in the Catholic Church. Eating whale meat did not end with the Middle Ages in Europe, but rather, whale stock in nearby oceans collapsed due to overexploitation the right whales around the Bay of Biscay, thus European whalers had to seek out the New World to catch whales. The Dutch were active in the whaling commerce during the Middle Ages, a number of records regarding the trafficking of whalemeat and taxation on it occur from historical Flanders. French surgeon Ambroise Paré wrote that "the flesh has no value, but the tongue is soft and delicious and therefore salted; this blubber, known as craspois or lard de carême was food for the poorer strata on the continent. The whaling industry in North America may have supplied rendered fat for consumption in Europe.
In early America, whalemen may have eaten blubber after rendering, which they termed "cracklings" or "fritters", said to be crunchy like toast. Colonial America more consumed the meat and other portions of the "blackfish". However, by the beginning of large-scale commercial whaling, whale meat was not consumed by the general American public, as it was not seen as fit for consumption by so-called civilized peoples. Minke whale is one of the most common species still hunted in substantial numbers. Baleen whales other than the minke are endangered, though they are taken in numbers by indigenous peoples who traditionally hunt them, more the whaling nations have resumed hunting larger baleen whales openly. In 1998-1999, Harvard researchers published their DNA identifications of samples of whalemeat they obtained in the Japanese market, found that mingled among the legal was a sizeable proportion of dolphin and porpoise meats, instances of endangered species such as fin whale and humpback whale. In recent years Japan has resumed taking North Pacific fin whale and sei whales in their "research whaling".
The fin whales are desired because they yield arguably the best quality of tail meat. Japanese research vessels refer to the harvested whale meat as incidental byproducts which have resulted from study. In Japan, the research whale meat was sold at published prices, but since 2011 an auction bid system has been adopted and actual realized prices have not been posted; the channels through which premium cuts such as fin whale tail meat are sold remain opaque. A report by one of the Greenpeace Japan activists who intercepted whale meat package deliveries got no further than the sentiment by one restaurateur that it would take Nagatachō connections to get it. In places such as Norway and Alaska, whale meat may be served without seasoning. However, it can be cured or marinated, or made into jerky. In Norway, whale meat was a common food until the 80s, it could be used in many ways but was cooked in a pot with lid in a little water so that broth was created and served with potatoes and vegetables with flatbrød at the side.
The consumption of whale meat by the Inuit people in Greenland is part of their culture. However, in 2010, tourists have begun to consume the meat. A Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society investigation has documented the practice of commercial wholesalers commissioning subsistence whalers to supply the demand by supermarkets. Whale products in Greenland are sold in 4-star hotels. Whales have been hunted
