Dragons' Teeth and Thunderstones: The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781789142907)

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 behavior 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 us on a journey through prehistory with these curious stones, and he explores humankind's unending quest for the meaning of fossils.

Author: Ken McNamara
ISBN-10: 1789142903
ISBN-13: 9781789142907
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Language: English
Published: 10/29/2020
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 8.70h x 5.60w x 1.10d