Word: babylonia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Humans, true, have tried to evade or minimize risk ever since man first ducked into a cave to elude the sabertooth. Ancient Babylonia invented marine insurance, but notoriously litigious Americans have always wanted more than mere insurance. As soon as the automobile became popular, the motoring public began to develop what San Francisco Liability Lawyer Scott Conley calls the belief that "there must be a pot of gold at the end of every whiplash." Now the old litigious spirit has become almost a reflex. Malpractice suits against doctors are epidemic. The volume of damage suits, doubling in some jurisdictions...
...Combine Babylonia and the Bicentennial with a Baptist church interior and you may have something approximating this...
...responses. The world's oldest art works, the primitive animal paintings in the cave at Lascaux in southwestern France, for example, were Stone Age man's magical invocation of success in the hunt. The astrology so many millions follow today is a direct legacy from the astronomer priests of Babylonia. Even when Christianity spread through Europe, many in the countryside kept their rustic rites along with the new religion. ("Pagan" stems from the Latin paganus meaning "country dweller" and "heathen" from "dweller on the heath.") For centuries, magical arts and Christianity lived in uneasy coexistence, as they still...
...Women did better under some of the earlier non-European civilizations. In Babylonia, where Hammurabi's code was promulgated around 1700 B.C., women had certain rights to financial support and could engage in business. The Egyptians allowed women considerable control over property...