Adrienne Mayor - The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times

THE FIRST FOSSIL HUNTERS

DINOSAURS, MAMMOTHS, AND MYTH
IN GREEK AND ROMAN TIMES

With a new introduction by the author

Adrienne Mayor

Copyright 2000 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu

Cover design by C. Alvarez-Gaffin, based on illustrations
by Ed Heck (copyright Ed Heck, edheck.com)

All Rights Reserved

First printing, 2000
Seventh printing, and first paperback printing, 2001
Paperback reissue, with a new introduction by the author, 2011
Paperback ISBN 978-0-691-15013-0

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows

Mayor, Adrienne, 1946
The first fossil hunters : paleontology in Greek and Roman times /
Adrienne Mayor,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-05863-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. PaleontologyGreeceHistory. 2. PaleontologyRomeHistory.
3. Science, Ancient. I. Title.
QE705.G8M39 2000
560.938dc21 99-43073

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Galliard Typeface

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For my parents

BARBARA AND JOHN MAYOR

CHAPTER 1 .
The Gold-Guarding Griffin: A Paleontological Legend

CHAPTER 2 .
Earthquakes and Elephants: Prehistoric Remains in Mediterranean Lands

CHAPTER 3 .
Ancient Discoveries of Giant Bones

CHAPTER 4 .
Artistic and Archaeological Evidence for Fossil Discoveries

CHAPTER 5 .
Mythology, Natural Philosophy, and Fossils

CHAPTER 6 .
Centaur Bones: Paleontological Fictions

APPENDIX 1.
Large Vertebrate Fossil Species in the Ancient World

APPENDIX 2.
Ancient Testimonia

Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in the Greek
and Roman World: Tracing the History of
Human Curiosity about Fossils

THIS BOOK was researched and written in the late twentieth century, based on a radical idea: that the prehistoric fossil record and Greek and Roman mythology were somehow related. When The First Fossil Hunters was first published, in 2000, geomythologythe science of recovering ancient folk traditions about complex natural processes or extraordinary eventswas an emerging discipline. That ancient people observed, collected, measured, and displayed the fossils of immense, extinct species, and that they had, moreover, recognized them as the traces of remarkable creatures that had flourished and then perished in a distant era, were alien concepts. Scholars had generally regarded ancient Greek and Latin descriptions of the bones of giants and monsters as nothing more than tall tales or superstition. Classicists were unaware that the fossils of dinosaurs, mastodons, mammoths, and other extinct animals were conspicuous features of the natural landscape in antiquity. Scientists, for their part, did not realize that fossils were part of the Greek and Roman cultural landscape.

As the first comprehensive study of ancient observations and interpretations of fossils, from huge dinosaurs to tiny shells, this book documents a vast and long-neglected body of literary and archaeological evidence, from Homer to Saint Augustine, to show how fossils captured the attention of Greeks, Romans, and their neighbors. Myths, legends, and historical accounts reveal how ordinary folks struggled to understand puzzling petrified remains of unfamiliar creatures buried in their own backyards. Prescientific fossil descriptions, often expressed in mythical language, contain perceptive insights about the deep past. Those ancient understandings were lost during the Middle Ages and only rediscovered in modern times.

In the decade after the original publication of The First Fossil Hunters, the evidence for fossil encounters in antiquity has been embraced by classical scholars, ancient historians, archaeologists, art historians, philosophers, geologists, paleontologists, geomythologists, and historians of science. Today, this book serves as a text for college courses in both classical mythology and the earth sciences, and its results are used in educational programs in art, archaeology, myth, biology, anthropology, paleontology, and natural history. The First Fossil Hunters has even inspired some novelists (examples include H. N. Turteltaub, The Gryphons Skull: A Seafaring Novel of the Ancient Greeks; and Jack DuBruls Havoc).

American and European television shows about dragons, monsters, giants, and other mythic creatures have featured some of the fossil stories gathered here. One popular example is Ancient Monster Hunters, the History Channel documentary about my research, filmed at the American Museum of Natural History in 2004. Each time this and similar shows appear on TV, every time a museum exhibition presents fossil legends, and after each illustrated lecture or interview, I receive letters, emails, and artwork from another generation of children, students, scientists, academics, and independent scholars excited by the links between fossils and fabulous creatures. Many standard reference books on paleontology and dinosaurs now include my theory (presented in