What did our ancestors who were unfamiliar with the origins of the fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures make of them? Did they recognize such things as belemnites, brachiopods, bits of vertebral columns, and other curious, stone objects extracted from the ground as the remains of creatures from long ago? If so, were such creatures factual or fantastic? And in any case, what useful qualities – or even extraordinary, perhaps even magical, powers – did they assume these mysterious objects might posses?
In his new book Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones; the Quest for the Meaning of Fossils from Reaktion Books / University of Chicago Press, Dr. Ken McNamara examines the archeological record, as well as folklore, mythology, and the history of natural philosophy to discover and explain how fossils have the subject of both fear as well as fascination, and as a result have been understood by and incorporated into the societal practices of peoples spanning millennia all around the planet.
