Mayor, Adrienne (Author)
Griffins, Cyclopes, Monsters, 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.
...MoreReview Castellani, Victor (2014) Review of "The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times". European Legacy (pp. 263-266).
Article
Solounias, Nikos;
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2004)
Ancient References to the Fossils from the Land of Pythagoras
(/isis/citation/CBB000502325/)
Book
Sliggers, Bert;
(2006)
Dino's en Draken: Fossielen in Mythen en Volksgeloof
(/isis/citation/CBB001031845/)
Book
Rudwick, Martin J. S.;
(2014)
Earth's Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters
(/isis/citation/CBB001422030/)
Book
Rogers, Brett M.;
Stevens, Benjamin Eldon;
(2015)
Classical Traditions in Science Fiction
(/isis/citation/CBB001422703/)
Article
Callataÿ, Godefroid de;
(2002)
La Grande Ourse et le Taureau Apis
(/isis/citation/CBB000640317/)
Article
Luccioni, Pascal;
(2012)
L'herbe au serpent
(/isis/citation/CBB001201456/)
Thesis
Bertoni, Daniel Bertoni;
(2014)
The Cultivation and Conceptualization of Exotic Plants in the Greek and Roman Worlds
(/isis/citation/CBB001567598/)
Article
Catamo, Mario;
Lanciano, Nicoletta;
Locher, Kurt;
Lombardero, Manuel;
Valdés, Manuel;
(2000)
Fifteen Further Greco-Roman Sundials from the Mediterranean Area and Sudan
(/isis/citation/CBB000671365/)
Chapter
E. Linan;
M. Linan;
J. Carrasco;
(2013)
Cryptopalaeontology
(/isis/citation/CBB434353506/)
Book
Wiplinger, Gilbert;
(2006)
Cura Aquarum in Ephesus: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress on the History of Water Management and Hydraulic Engineering in the Mediterranean Region, Ephesus/Selçuk, Turkey, October 2--10, 2004
(/isis/citation/CBB000831321/)
Book
Jansen, Gemma C. M.;
(2001)
Cura aquarum in Sicilia: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress on the History of Water Management and Hydraulic Engineering in the Mediterranean Region, Syracuse, May 16-22, 1998
(/isis/citation/CBB000101584/)
Book
John J. McKay;
(2017)
Discovering the Mammoth: A Tale of Giants, Unicorns, Ivory, and the Birth of a New Science
(/isis/citation/CBB724071120/)
Book
Hedeen, Stanley;
(2008)
Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology
(/isis/citation/CBB000831278/)
Article
Michalopoulos, Andreas N.;
(2004)
Fighting Against a Witch: The Importance of Magic in Hypsipyle's Letter to Jason (Ov., Her. 6)
(/isis/citation/CBB000640281/)
Article
Theodossiou, Efstratios;
Manimanis, Vassilios N.;
Dimitrijevi, Milan S.;
Mantarakis, Peter Z.;
(2011)
Sirius in Ancient Greek and Roman Literature: From the Orphic Argonautics to the Astronomical Tables of Georgios Chrysococca
(/isis/citation/CBB001221518/)
Book
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2000)
The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times
(/isis/citation/CBB000358485/)
Article
Elizabeth D. Jones;
(2019)
Assumptions of Authority: The Story of Sue the T-Rex and Controversy Over Access to Fossils
(/isis/citation/CBB334696047/)
Book
Ina Heumann;
Holger Stoecker;
Marco Tamborini;
Mareike Vennen;
(2018)
Dinosaurierfragmente: Zur Geschichte der Tendaguru-Expedition und ihrer Objekte, 1906-2018
(/isis/citation/CBB168836588/)
Thesis
Marlena Briane Cameron;
(2017)
Fossil Excavation, Museums, and Wyoming: American Paleontology, 1870-1915
(/isis/citation/CBB144188127/)
Book
Donald R. Prothero;
(2018)
The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB293277728/)
Be the first to comment!