seafaring and navigation; social collapse and aban-
donment; writing.
FURTHER READING
Martin J. Ball and James Fife, eds., Th e Celtic Languages (New York:
Routledge, 1993).
Carl Darling Buck, Th e Greek Dialects: Grammar, Selected Inscrip-
tions, Glossary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).
Robert S. P. Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An
Introduction (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Com-
pany, 1995).
Michael D. Coe and Mark Van Stone, Reading the Maya Glyphs
(London: Th ames and Hudson, 2001).
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, Th e World’s Writing Systems
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Haig Der-Houssikian, A Bibliography of African Linguistics (Ed-
monton, Canada: Linguistic Research, Inc., 1972).
A. M. Devine and Laurence D. Stephens, Th e Prosody of Greek
Speech (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Benjamin W. Fortson, Indo-European Language and Culture: An In-
troduction (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
Joseph H. Greenberg, Th e Languages of Africa (Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press, 1966).
R. G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953).
Vivien Law, Th e History of Linguistics in Europe: From Plato to 1600
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Roy A. Miller, Japanese and Other Altaic Languages (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1971).
Leonard R. Palmer, Th e Greek Language (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1996).
Laurence R. Palmer, Th e Latin Language (London: Faber and Faber,
1954).
Maurice Pope, Th e Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hiero-
glyphic to Linear B (London: Th ames and Hudson, 1975).
S. Robert Ramsey, Th e Languages of China (Princeton, N.J.: Princ-
eton University Press, 1987).
Graham Th urgood and Randy J. LaPolla, eds., Th e Sino-Tibetan
Languages (London: Routledge, 2003).
Vic Webb and Kembo-Sure, eds., African Voices: An Introduction
to the Languages and Linguistics of Africa (Cape Town, South
Africa: Oxford University Press, 2000).
▶ laws and legal codes
introduction
Laws and legal codes among ancient hunter-gatherers were
probably primitive and administered by force. A person
would have looked to a tribal leader for redress if another
member of the tribe had wronged him, and justice would
have been administered swift ly and according to custom and
tradition rather than by reference to any formal legal code. As
people settled into fi xed communities aft er the development
of agriculture, and as those fi xed communities evolved into
more populous towns and cities, legal obligations became
more complex, and more formal legal codes were developed
to defi ne the obligations between private citizens and between
citizens and the state. Th us, ancient legal systems dealt with
many of the same matters that modern-day legal systems do:
criminal matters, such as murder, assault, and robbery, and
civil matters, such as taxes, inheritance, and land ownership.
Many codes and laws were transmitted orally and con-
tinued to be based on custom and tradition, but others were
written down. Ancient Mesopotamia was home to the world’s
fi rst written legal code, the Code of Hammurabi, named aft er
the Babylonian king who formulated it. Historians continue
to take an interest in the Code of Hammurabi not only for its
specifi c laws but also for its philosophical discussion about
justice and how it should be administered. In particular, the
Code of Hammurabi created the legal principle oft en known
as “an eye for an eye.” Th is principle was not a call for re-
venge. It introduced the concept of equivalent retaliation, the
idea that punishment should be proportional to the off ense.
Many ancient legal codes were structured according
to social classes. It was common for these codes to identify
classes of nobles and aristocrats, property owners, free people,
and slaves and peasants. Very oft en, the severity of an off ense
was determined in part by the social class of the victim. For a
free landowner to assault a peasant or steal that peasant’s bull,
for example, was considered a much less severe off ense than if
the victim had been a noble, and the punishment would have
been correspondingly less severe. Physical punishment in the
ancient world was common, and so, too, were fi nes for vari-
ous off enses. Physical punishment, including death, was oft en
administered only if the off ender was unable to pay the fi ne.
With a few exceptions, there were no prisons; people consid-
ered dangerous were oft en simply exiled to other lands.
Just as laws and legal codes evolved to refl ect the increas-
ing complexity of society, so, too, did the administration of
these laws. In early civilizations it was common for the king
to act as judge in all legal disputes, rendering judgments and
determining penalties. Later, civilizations such as the Ro-
man and Chinese empires developed classes of magistrates
and civil servants who were educated and trained in the law.
In some civilizations, including that of ancient India, police
forces existed to enforce the law. In others, the enforcement
of the law was more of a private matter, requiring parties who
believed that they had been wronged to lodge complaints,
fi nd witnesses, and bring cases to court.AFRICA
BY SAHEED ADERINTO
Legal codes such as those we have today did not exist in ancient
Africa. Codifi cation of African customary laws is therefore a
20th-century development—a product of colonial rule. Laws
are part of the custom and tradition of every community. Law
forms an integral part of oral literature, which is transmitted
from one generation to another. By and large, it is oft en dif-
fi cult to diff erentiate between laws and tradition and custom.
Basic aspects of the laws of a society are intertwined with thelaws and legal codes: Africa 621