PYGMY RELIGIONS. African Pygmies comprise a variety of ethnic groups who dwell as hunter-gatherers in the rain forest of central Africa. Because they live as nomads in a demanding and inaccessible environment, few serious studies have been...

The village of Ban Chiang, located in Udon Thani Province in northeastern Thailand, is the site of important archaeological excavations. Discovered in 1966, the site has revealed evidence of a prehistoric society dating back to around 3600...

In much of Asia, a shortage of natural lowland areas suitable for food cultivation has led to extensive terracing along the edges of the uplands. This was done in order to increase the acreage of flooded fields, which are required for wet ...

Over 200,000 square nautical miles, the Banda is Indonesia's largest and deepest sea. It is located in eastern Indonesia and bounded on the south by a series of small islands and archipelagoes that curve east and north toward the ea...

(2002 pop. 321,000). Located on the Persian side of the Strait of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas is the major port in southeastern Iran. Its population is mainly a mixture of Arabs and Persians. The fortunes of the early town, known as Jarrun, were ...

(1899–1959), Sri Lankan political figure. In British times (since 1776), the Bandaranaikes and the Obeyesekeres were the two richest plantation families in Sri Lanka. Since Portuguese times (c. 1540–1656), this family of ori...

(2002 est. pop. 2.9 million). Bandung is the capital of West Java and Indonesia's third-largest city. The Sundanese language as spoken in and around Bandung has the highest social status. Bandung was developed by the Dutch after 181...

Banfi, Antonio(1886 and Fulvio Papi, Il pensiero di Antonio Banfi (Florence, 1961)....

(2000 est. pop. 10 million). Bangkok is situated on the Chao Phraya River. It is both the capital and hub of the country; Bangkok's residents establish standards, outlook, dress, and physical comforts that are imitated, in varying ...

The Awami League (AL) is the oldest of the major parties in Bangladesh. It was founded in 1949 by Husain Shahid Suhrawardy (1893–1963), who later became prime minister of Pakistan. It was strong only in East Pakistan (present-day Ba...

Bangladesh, which means the "Land of the Bengalis" in the Bengali language, is a republic located in Southeast Asia. Almost entirely surrounded by India, of which it was a part until 1947, Bangladesh is bounded to the east, ...

After three decades of economic development—which included phases of import substitution, export expansion, and industrial upgrading—Taiwan fostered a special economic environment, characterized by small- and medium-sized ent...

THABO MBEKI. (. Reproduced by permission.) In the aftermath of the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933 and eventual domination of Europe during World War II, thousands of Jewish Europeans opened bank accounts in Switz...

Bankruptcy law was created initially to enable persons inundated with debt to have a new beginning. It is also designed to permit individuals and business entities to have additional time to pay and compromise existing debts without liquid...

INTERLACUSTRINE BANTU RELIGIONS. The term interlacustrine Bantu, as used here, encompasses a variety of peoples who live between the Great Lakes of east-central Africa and speak closely related Bantu languages. Their territory includes som...

Christianity: Baptist Tradition FOUNDED: 1609 C.E. RELIGION AS A PERCENTAGE OF WORLD POPULATION: 1.8 percent Overview Baptists, who effectively were founded in 1609 by John Smyth, an English dissenting pastor, have become one of the world&...

Singles bars flourished in the 1970s, reflecting the sweeping changes that followed the Sexual Revolution and the attempted passage of the Equal Rights Movement. Commonly referred to as "meat markets," singles bars acted as a...

Baraka is an important Islamic concept that describes the magical blessing that flows from a holy man or a holy place. Baraka (barakat) does not vanish with the death of the holy man but rather continues. Therefore, shrines of saints are v...

One of the best places I visited was Barbados. Last Thanksgiving, our family took a seven day Southern Caribbean Cruise on Royal Caribbean's Serenade of the Seas. During those seven days, we stopped at six different Islands, Puerto Rico, St...

Long active on the New York art scene (she helped edit Art News from 1951 to 1954), Barbara Guest is "commonly considered the finest fruit of the New York school of poets," according to critic Alicia Ostriker, although one of its supposed ...

From her modest beginnings as a Broadway chorus girl named Ruby Stevens, Barbara Stanwyck forged a long and versatile career as one of Hollywood's strongest female stars. Her breakthrough performance occurred in 1930's Ladies...

From the mid-eighteenth century until the early nineteenth century, pirate ships from the so-called Barbary States on the North African coast terrorized foreign shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. What are now the seaport cities of Tangiers...

A key weapon in the struggle to settle America's plains, barbed wire was patented in 1873. Years of armed range fights and lawsuits ensued as ranchers and farmers separated livestock and grain crops, ending open grazing and encouraging sma...

Barbershop quartets, a type of music group fashionable in early twentieth-century America, had a dramatic influence on American popular music styles. The sweet, close harmony of the quartets, the arrangement of voice parts, and their impro...

Barbiturates refer to a class of general central nervous system depressants that are derived from barbituric acid, a chemical discovered in 1863 by the Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (1905) Adolf von Baeyer (1835-1917). Barbituric acid it...