By James L. Hevia (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) Until well into the twentieth century, pack animals were the primary mode of transport for supplying armies in the field. The British Indian Army was no exception. In the late nineteenth century, for example, it forcibly pressed into service thousands of camels of the Indus River basin to … Continued
By Richard M. Dorson (NHC Fellow, 1978–79)
Edited by Thomas A. Sebeok (NHC Fellow, 1980–81) and Robert Rosenthal Ever since the Byzantine Empire was ruled by Justinian there have been reports of clever animals. But no animal intelligence so captured the imagination of laymen and scholar alike as that attributed to Clever Hans, the horse of Mr. von Osten. Hans gave every … Continued
By Harriet Ritvo (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1989–90; 2002–03) “Cats is ‘dogs,’ and rabbits is ‘dogs,’ and so’s parrots; but this ’ere ‘tortis’ is a insect,” a porter explains to an astonished traveler in a nineteenth-century Punch cartoon. Railways were not the only British institution to schematize the world. This enormously entertaining book captures the fervor of the … Continued
By Marcel Gutwirth (NHC Fellow, 1985–86) La Fontaine's victory is both striking and discreet. Everyone knows his fables, but often knows only that. By restoring to this work all its force, by respecting all its voices, Marcel Gutwirth shows us its singular coherence.
The Paleoindians almost surely came to the New World on foot, walking across land exposed when sea levels were much lower. In Alaska, new arrivals had two options to move south, one eastward along rivers and through passes to the east flanks of the Rocky Mountains, the other southward along the coast. Both led through … Continued
Prior to the arrival of Europeans and their powerful, transforming products, desires, and structures, American Indians possessed extensive knowledge about the environments in which they lived and made sense of living beings in myriad culturally appropriate ways. The buffalo was first and foremost of utmost significance to people of the plains and prairies. In a … Continued
For tens of millions of years the dominant pattern of biological evolution on this planet has been one of geographical divergence dictated by the simple fact of the separateness of the continents. However, in the last few thousand years there has been a countervailing force. Homo sapiens have gone everywhere, taking with us, intentionally, our … Continued
When Europeans first arrived in the new world, their horses were coming home. Horses had evolved on the American Great Plains, but as they migrated into Siberia and spread across much of the old world, they became extinct in their American cradle until, ten thousand years later, the Spanish returned them to their birthplace. Now, … Continued