The First Fossil Hunters (eBook)

Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times

Adrienne Mayor (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011
400 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-3844-8 (ISBN)

Infos

The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular creatures of classical mythologyGriffins, 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 fossilized 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.Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.

Autor

Adrienne Mayor is the author of Fossil Legends of the First Americans; Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs; and The Poison King, which was a finalist for a National Book Award in 2009. She is a research scholar in classics and history of science at Stanford University.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.3.2011
• Zusatzinfo: 82 b/w illus. 1 table.
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte / Antike
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Amazons • American Museum of Natural History • Ancient Discoveries • Ancient history • Ancient Rome • Ancient World • Apollonius of Tyana • archaeological evidence • archaeology • Aristotle • Augustus • barnum brown • Boeotia • Bone bed • burial • Cave bear • Centaur • centaurs • Chalicothere • Chalkidiki • Classical Antiquity • Claudian • coffin • Creationism • Cretaceous • curator • Dale Russell • Deinotherium • Dinosaur egg • Dinosaurs • Dionysus • Dugong • Earthquake • Egypt • Elasmotherium • Elephant • Elephas hysudricus • Empedocles • Eocene • Euboea • Femur • fossil discovery • fossils • geologist • geryon • Giants • Giants (Greek mythology) • Gomphothere • Greek art • Greek Myth • Greek Mythology • Greeks and Romans • Griffin • Herodotus • History of paleontology • History of Science • Hoax • Homer • human skeleton • Illustration • Jurassic • legendary creature • Lemnos • Lucretius • Mammal • Mastodon • Mediterranean geology • Mediterranean paleontology • Megafauna • Megalopolis • Messenia • Miocene • Miocene, mammoths • narrative • Natural History • Natural Philosophy • neogene • North Africa • Nummulite • Olympia • Orestes • Orontes River • Palaephatus • paleontological hoaxes • paleontology • Pausanias • Pausanias (geographer) • Peloponnese • pelops • petrified remains • Philosopher • Philostratus • Phlegra (mythology) • Pleistocene • Pliny the Elder • Pliocene • Prehistoric mammal • Proboscidea • Protoceratops • Rhinoceros • Roman Empire • Rome • Samotherium • Satyr • Scientist • Scythia • Scythians • sea monster • Sediment • Skyros • Sparta • Sphinx • Steppe mammoth • Suetonius • Taman Peninsula • taxidermy • Tegea • Theophrastus • The Philosopher • Thessaly • tomb • Triassic • Trojan War • Vertebrate • vertebrate fossils • war elephant • woolly mammoth • Woolly rhinoceros • Writing • Zeus • Zoology
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-3844-4 / 1400838444
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-3844-8 / 9781400838448