Description
Book SynopsisLearn how the deep history of nature became a dominant paradigm of historical thinking, through a study of landscapes of India. Winner of the BSHS Pickstone Prize by the British Society for the History of Science, Shortlisted for the Pfizer Award for an Outstanding Book in the History of Science by the History of Science SocietyIn the nineteenth century, teams of men began digging the earth like never before. Sometimes this diggingoften for sewage, transport, or mineralsrevealed human remains. Other times, archaeological excavation of ancient cities unearthed prehistoric fossils, while excavations for irrigation canals revealed buried cities. Concurrently, geologists, ethnologists, archaeologists, and missionaries were also digging into ancient texts and genealogies and delving into the lives and bodies of indigenous populations, their myths, legends, and pasts. One pursuit was intertwined with another in this encounter with the earth and its inhabitantspast, present, and future. In
Trade ReviewWritten in clear and engaging prose,
Inscriptions of Nature will become mandatory reading for scholars and the broader public interested in how the field sciences shaped notions of race and racism, planetary geography, and deep time that persist in the present day.
—
IsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: Past Unlimited
1. The Canal of Zabita Khan: The Nature of History
2. Ancient Alluviums: Landscapes of Antiquity
3. Mythic Pasts and Naturalized Histories: The Deep History of Sacred Geography
4. Remnants of the Race: Geology and the Naturalization of Human Antiquity
5. The Other Side of Tethys: Gondwana and the Geology of Primitivism
Conclusion: The New Deep History
