Alfred Street (University of Auckland Store)
Are you sure you want to delete this address?
The First Fossil Hunters
Paperback Edition: 1
DINOSAURS, MAMMOTHS, AND MYTH IN GREEK AND ROMAN TIMES
Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans.
As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilised bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground.
Pages : 400
Publisher : Hachette NZ
Publication date : 2023-08-01
Subjects: Non-fiction, Humanities, History, Ancient History: To C 500 Ce, History Of Science