Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones

The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils

Inbunden, Engelska, 2020

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For at least half a million years, people have been doing some very strange things with fossils. Long before a few seventeenth-century minds started to decipher their true, organic nature, fossils had been eaten, dropped in goblets of wine, buried with the dead and adorned bodies. What triggered such curious behaviour was the belief that some fossils could cure illness, protect against being poisoned, ease the passage into the afterlife, ward off evil spirits and even kill those who were just plain annoying. But above all, to our early prehistoric ancestors, fossils were the very stuff of artistic inspiration.Drawing on archaeology, mythology and folklore, Ken McNamara takes you on a journey through prehistory with these curious stones, and explores humankind’s unending quest for the meaning of fossils.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2020-10-12
Mått142 x 221 x 28 mm
Vikt636 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor288
FörlagReaktion Books
ISBN9781789142907

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Populärvetenskap inom Naturvetenskap och teknik

This delightfully informative history of fossils ends where most conventional books on the subject begin: with the realization by scholars in the late 1600s that the bone-like and shell-like petrifications frequently found in sedimentary rocks are the remains of animals long dead. Prior to that, according to Cambridge paleontologist McNamara, speculation about the nature of fossils was as rich and varied as the human experience itself . . . There is a story behind every shape in every culture, evidence not only of the plasticity of nature but also the inexhaustibility of the human imagination.