作者:
Adrienne Mayor 出版社: Princeton University Press 副标题: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times 出版年: 2011-3-27 页数: 400 定价: GBP 16.99 装帧: Paperback ISBN: 9780691150130
Griffins, Cyclopes, Monsters, and Giants - these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose...
Griffins, Cyclopes, Monsters, and Giants - these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in "The First Fossil Hunters". Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact - in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans. As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground. Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.
作者简介
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Adrienne Mayor’s books include The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Fossil Legends of the First Americans (both Princeton). She is a research scholar in classics and the history of science at Stanford University.
古今中外，有诸多案例可表。被记录下来的神话代表的是最初的惊艳、震撼、惊恐或巨大的伤害，乃至死亡。这些经历都可能化作口头的故事，其中的一部分得以代代相传。
威廉·莎士比亚在《皆大欢喜》(As You Like It)第2幕第1景中写道：
“患难的益处是很妙的，像是一只虾蟆，丑而有毒，但是头上偏顶着一颗珍珠。”
这里说的就是传说中的蟾蜍石(toadstone)。在中世纪的欧洲，人们认为蟾蜍有毒，而且毒性非常可怕。既然带毒，那么想必它也自带解毒剂。那就是它头上的那块石头！人们认为，只要戴上镶嵌有神奇的蟾蜍石的戒指，就能解毒并得到庇护。关于蟾蜍石的记载有很多，最早可以追溯至古罗马作家、博物学家老普林尼(Pliny the Elder)，当然，还有莎士比亚。
蟾蜍的头上并没有小石子，那么蟾蜍石究竟是什么呢？它们其实仅仅是鳞齿鱼的牙齿呀！鳞齿鱼类在中生代十分常见，体大者身长2米以上，其牙齿为磨状齿，粗大而坚硬，就像一颗颗小豆子，大概是为了吃下甲壳动物而进化出来的。鱼齿与蟾蜍有什么关系吗？压根没有。能解毒吗？压根不能。但这并不妨碍人们把“蟾蜍有毒”与颜色、尺寸都恰好符合想象的鳞齿鱼牙齿化石绑定在一起，从而创作出一个个故事，其根源就是对蟾毒的恐惧与对解毒的渴望。 (查看原文)
形式和内容上都有一些问题： 第一，本书副标题的原名“Dinosauurs，Mammoths and Myth in Greek and Roman Times”，中文翻译则以“古典时代”替代“希腊和罗马时代”（虽然不存在错误），起到了一定的误导作用，一方面，作者选取的时间节点很窄，并未涵盖中古时代，因此文中没...
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0 有用 兔豹宝 2020-05-26 07:21:18
古时候的神话传说会不会是祖先们看到了偶然暴露出的巨大化石？
0 有用 dawn 2024-06-06 21:37:51 北京
Jstor 有英文版。对照了几处；附录中的文献和biblio都值得参考。尽管书中所述的内容很难有确凿定论，古典学和古生物学结合的角度仍带来许多启发。
0 有用 dawn 2024-06-06 21:37:51 北京
Jstor 有英文版。对照了几处；附录中的文献和biblio都值得参考。尽管书中所述的内容很难有确凿定论，古典学和古生物学结合的角度仍带来许多启发。
0 有用 兔豹宝 2020-05-26 07:21:18
古时候的神话传说会不会是祖先们看到了偶然暴露出的巨大化石？