The Last Imaginary Place - Couverture rigide

McGhee, Robert

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0192807307 ISBN 13 : 9780192807304

Editeur : Oxford University Press, 2006

Synopsis

The location of a tropical paradise, the graveyard of ships straying too close to where the polar ocean drains into the earth's hollow interior, the source of unimaginable quantities of gold, the home of a lost 'Aryan' civilization - for those who do not live there, the Arctic has over the course of time been all of these things. It is the last imaginary place on Earth. Now, renowned archaeologist Robert McGhee lifts the veil to reveal the true Arctic. Combining anthropology, history, and personal experience, this book dispels the romanticized notions of the Arctic as a world apart, exotic and isolated, revealing a land far more fascinating than we had imagined. McGhee paints a vivid portrait of the movement of Viking farmers across the North Atlantic islands, and of the long and arduous searches for sea-passages to Asia. We meet the fur-traders who pioneered European expansion across the northern forests of Canada and Siberia, the whalers and ivory-hunters who ravaged northern seas, and patriotic explorers racing to reach the North Pole. Above all, McGhee offers a fascinating insight into the native peoples of the Arctic, societies that other histories usually neglect. We discover how northerners have learned to exploit a rich 'hunter's world' where game is, contrary to our expectations, far easier to find than in more temperate lands. He takes us to a thousand-year-old Tuniit campsite perfectly preserved in the Arctic cold, follows the entrepreneurial Inuit as they cross the Arctic in search of metal, and reveals the dangers that native people face today from industrial pollution and global warming.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Robert McGhee is curator of Arctic Archaeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Canada's national museum of human history. His research has focused on the history of Arctic North America, and has involved studies of the first peoples to occupy the region, the development of the Inuit way of life, and the archaeology of early European exploration. His previous books include Ancient People of the Arctic and The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher: An Elizabethan Adventure.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Oxford University Press
• Date d'édition: 2006
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0192807307
• ISBN 13: 9780192807304
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 304
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; 20090; Italie