Second Antwerp edition of one of the most pioneering and influential foundational works of early modern anthropology, first published at Augsburg in 1520. Johann Boemus (1485-1535), often described as the "father of scientific ethnography", here produced the first printed compendium of the religions, laws, and customs of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Europe, a work that would shape European perceptions of cultural differences for more than a century.
Boemus ambition is stated plainly in his preface: to collect, abridge, and organise ethnographic knowledge previously scattered across numerous classical and medieval authorities, so that readers might easily consult in a single volume what had once required laborious searching through many books. Drawing principally on ancient historians such as Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Josephus, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Pomponius Mela, Boemus transmitted the ethnological learning of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, while subjecting it to a new system of classification and comparison. The world is divided according to the traditional tripartite scheme of Africa, Asia, and Europe, with chapters devoted to Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, Russia, Ethiopia, and many other regions.
Particularly noteworthy is the section on India, which incorporates relatively recent information derived from the travels of Ludovico di Varthema (1470-1517), first published in 1510. This combination of classical authority and contemporary travel accounts explains the extraordinary success of the book: it was reprinted almost 50 times over the next hundred years and translated into several European languages. Thinkers such as Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), Jean Bodin (1530-1596), and Giovanni Botero (1544-1617) drew heavily upon Boemus, often without acknowledgement, confirming his central role in the formation of early modern ethnography and anthropology.
The present Antwerp edition is further distinguished by the addition of a treatise on the Northern peoples, derived from the work of Jakob Ziegler (ca. 1470/71-1549), containing early printed descriptions of Greenland and Iceland.
With some repair to the outer margins of the last leaves, and some occasional damp staining. Otherwise in very good condition. Nijhoff-Kronenberg 454; USTC 400617, not in STCV.