Dragons Teeth and Thunderstones by Ken Mcnamara
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.
"McNamara opens window after window on the use and interpretation of fossils by different cultures from Ireland to Australia over the millennia and up to the presentThrough the strange medieval mythologies of dragons' teeth, stone swallows, toadstones, thunderstones, snakestones, and devil's toenails, an even more ancient tradition is uncovered."--Douglas Palmer, author of A History of Earth in 100 Groundbreaking Discoveries
Ken McNamara is an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of many books on palaeontology and evolution, including Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones: The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils (Reaktion, 2020).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781789142907 |
| ISBN 10 | 1789142903 |
| Title | Dragons Teeth and Thunderstones |
| Author | Kenneth J Mcnamara |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Reaktion Books |
| Year published | 2020-10-12 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |