This is about the most salient differences between Old World (Eurasian) cosmologies and New World (or Amerindian) cosmologies, as seen by three Americanists, Franz Boas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Karl Anton Nowotny. Three possible (and correlated) distinctions are discussed: 1) the etiquette of ritual obligations for a metamorphic (primeval) sphere of beings, utilized as a major focus of political organisation; 2) ‘iconocratic’ instead of iconoclastic modes of government and social integration; and 3) substantial elements constituting the body and the cosmos alike (in the Old World).
- Eszter Spät I first started my field research among the Yezidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority of Northern Iraq, in 2002-03. At the time, it did not even occur to me to...
