This elegantly carved jade face from Liangzhu in southeastern China provides an intriguing glimpse into the beliefs of the people who lived there from 3400 B.C.E. to 2250 B.C.E. As described in a special News Focus section beginning on page 930, discoveries at Liangzhu and other regions far from the traditional heartland of Chinese civilization are revealing surprisingly complex ancient culture...

This elegantly carved jade face from Liangzhu in southeastern China provides an intriguing glimpse into the beliefs of the people who lived there from 3400 B.C.E. to 2250 B.C.E. As described in a special News Focus section beginning on page 930, discoveries at Liangzhu and other regions far from the traditional heartland of Chinese civilization are revealing surprisingly complex ancient culture...

A OCCIDENTALS, we are the heirs of Ancient Greek civilization. Given that the practice of anesthesia is considered less than 200 yr old, it seems hard to believe that the unusual idea of putting someone to sleep during a painful medical procedure was actively discussed and intricately imagined more than 25 centuries ago. Yet the Greek myths tell us of a Homeric warrior named Philoctetes who was...

This paper introduces studies on Japanese Landscape and environmental design work by author. Japanese people have venerated nature from the far ancient times and led life in unison with nature. This paper describes about the characteristics of Japanese architecture, the characteristics of Japanese civilization, and influence on "Japonism" from the viewpoint of the author as a design researcher ...

Since the dawn of settled agriculture and the birth of the first cities, such as Ur and Jericho, there has been a yearning to improve the lot of civilization. Enhancing the well-being of people and place is a timeless and perennial quest. Whether examining ancient mosaics that depict the good life in the cradle of civilization or modern community visions drawn with markers on mural paper by res...

Insulin resistance and hypertension are considered as prototypical "diseases of civilization" that are manifested in the modern environment as plentiful food and sedentary life. The human propensity for insulin resistance and hypertension is a product, at least in part, of our evolutionary history. Adaptation to ancient lifestyle characterized by a low sodium, low-calorie food supply and physic...

The success of many activities of modern civilization crucially depends on careful planning. Some activities should be carried out during a certain period of the year. For example: When is the right time of the year to sow, when is the right time to plow? It is thus no surprise that calendars are found in literally every ancient civilization. The earth revolves around the sun in about 365.2422 ...

Obviously, the human diet has become progressively more divergent from those of our ancestors. This maladaptive change became apparent with the Industrial Revolution and has been accelerating in recent decades. In conjunction with this discordance between our ancient, genetically determined biology and the nutritional pattern, in contemporary Western populations, many of the so-called diseases ...

Islamic medicine, Arabic medicine, Arab-Islamic medicine, or Greco-Arab and Islamic medicine refers to medicine developed in the Golden Age of the Arab-Islamic civilization, which extended from Spain in the west to Central Asia and India in the east. In temporal terms it covered a period of roughly nine centuries, from the middle of the seventh to the end of the fifteenth century. Medicine was ...