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E-book
Author McNamara, Ken, author.

Title Dragons' teeth and thunderstones : the quest for the meaning of fossils / Ken McNamara
Published London : Reaktion Books Ltd, 2020
©2020

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Description 1 online resource (287 pages) : illustrations
illustration
Contents A timeless obsession -- In the myths of time -- The stuff of legends -- Fashioning the stone -- Delighting the mind -- Saving the soul -- Protecting the body -- Curing the body -- The dark side -- A joke of time
Summary For at least half a million years, people have been doing some very strange things with fossils. Long before a few 17th-century minds started to decipher their true, organic nature, fossils had been eaten, dropped in goblets of wine, buried with the dead, adorned on bodies and even used to try and cause harm. What triggered such curious behaviour was the belief, passed down from prehistoric to Medieval times, 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 living hundreds of thousands of years ago, fossils were the very stuff of artistic inspiration. Drawing on archaeology, mythology and folklore, Kenneth McNamara takes you on a journey through prehistory with these strange and curious stones, and explores humankind's unending quest for the meaning of fossils
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 254-274) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Fossils -- Popular works
Fossils -- History
Fossils -- Mythology
Fossils -- Collectors and collecting
Animals, Fossil.
Plants, Fossil.
Nature -- General.
Nature -- Fossils.
Animals, Fossil.
Fossils.
Plants, Fossil.
Genre/Form Popular works.
History.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781789142891
178914289X