Cabeza De Vaca Analysis

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The concept of culture has altered over time, but the contemporary concept comprises the laws, rituals, values, beliefs, and artistic. Culture used to be compared with the idea of civilization. For Sara Miller the concept of culture can be defined as, “a concept that grew from the Latin term cultura, meaning cultivation, and was applied to human society to show how the main stays of civilization—that is, education, laws, language, and the arts—could lift human beings to a new level of enlightenment.” By the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century culture started to combine social, ideological, political, and economic forces. These forces defined a certain group. For clues of individual and collective human identities, many …show more content…

One of the first historians Herodotus studied the cultures of Egypt and Greece when writing his work History. In a biography Herodotus was remembered as, “Regarded as the "Father of History," Herodotus wrote the first surviving work of history, a sprawling work essentially on the conflicts between the Greeks and Persians, but containing a great deal of discursive material as well.” In a similar fashion, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca studied multiple cultures. His story was a more disturbing one, but Cabeza de Vaca is known for From La Relacion and was respected in an article by the Encyclopedia of World Biogrphy with the comment of, “Denounced by his subordinates, Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain in 1544 as a prisoner, but later most of the charges against him were rescinded. He spent his remaining years writing and publishing the story of his remarkable exploits in the New World, Los naufragios (The Shipwrecked).” Both Herodotus and Cabeza de Vaca use a different tone when describing their discoveries of certain cultures, knowing about Herodotus’s History is possible, but the various topics Cabeza de Vaca describes would have approved by Herodotus, and although they are similar works, Cabeza de Vaca makes the reader more aware of his

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