The First Fossil Hunters by Mayor Adrienne

Author:Mayor, Adrienne [Mayor, Adrienne]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2011-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

Evidence of Giant Populations of the Past

Not all fabulous creatures of myth were inspired by fossils, of course; some were imaginary. And it’s impossible to know which came first, the idea that the youthful earth was populated by giants the likes of which were no longer seen on the aging earth, or early peoples’ speculations about prodigious bones weathering out of the ground where they had obviously lain for ages. But it seems safe to say that abundant prehistoric skeletons of uncommon stature and form influenced the earliest Greek myths that gigantic beings once existed and suffered mass destruction. In turn, those traditions were used to explain each new discovery of big bones throughout Greco-Roman antiquity.

People of antiquity were well acquainted with animal and human anatomy. Hunting and butchering animals, animal sacrifices, and ritual cremation and inhumation of the bones of their dead made skeletons very familiar objects. Evidence from Herodotus shows the ancients’ deep interest in examining any bones they came across for unusual features. For example, in about 440 B.C. Herodotus visited the battlefield in Egypt where the Persians had crushed the Egyptians in 522 B.C. The bleached skeletons of the armies were still scattered over the surface of the ground where they fell. Herodotus spent considerable time comparing and recording the differences between the skulls of the two races. In Boeotia, for years after the battle of Plataea (479 B.C.), people combed the battlefield for valuables and unusual bones. Herodotus reports that among the finds were a seamless skull, a bizarre jawbone, and a 7.5-foot (over-2-m) skeleton. Such accounts reveal the ancient fascination with examining, comparing, and measuring human and/or remarkable bones.11

It was a commonplace in the classical era that all living things were progressively diminishing over generations. The earth’s energy was waning, and it no longer produced life with the same vigor. This idea may have arisen from observations of fossil skeletons whose dimensions exceeded those of living humans and known animals (fig. 5.1). In this view, men of the distant past would have towered over the puny men of the present day. Humans were thought to be the smaller, weaker descendants of this superior race of “heroes,” whose oversize bones were revered as relics. (The Greek word hero was applied to human ancestors of the distant past as well as to mythical superheroes.) As Pausanias put it, the tallest human beings were the “so-called heroes and whatever race of mortals may have existed in the heroic age before the humans of this age.” Quintus Smyrnaeus (third century A.D.) expressed the classical image of heroes’ stature in his description of the great warrior Achilles’ burial at Troy: “His bones were like an ancient Giant’s.”12

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