The First Fossil Hunters:

Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times

By Adrienne Mayor. 2000. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 361 pages.
Reviewed by Todd A. Hanson, University of New Mexico
[Review length: 538 words • Review posted in 2002]

Classical Greek and Roman mythology has given the modern world a menagerie of
fantastic beings. For generations, scholars and students of the classical world have
regarded the graphic accounts of the Titans, Cyclopes, griffins and giants as little
more than the mythos of an imaginative culture. But what if these monsters were
more than products of fantasy? In The First Fossil Hunters, Adrienne Mayor presents
an innovative and compelling argument for a substantive relationship between
classical Greek and Roman folktales, myths, and legends and the zoological, paleon-
tological, and geological record of Asia Minor andthe Mediterranean.

Drawing on her training as a classical folklorist and her keen interest in paleontology, Mayor recovers an abundance of
long-forgotten literary, artistic, and paleontological evidence supporting her thesis that at least some of the fantastic
monsters of Greco-Roman myths were based on paleontological realities. The work effectively documents this potential
relationship between science and ancient myth; at the same time, it debunks various myths of modern geologic science,
including the attribution of the first serious paleontological studies to Georges Cuvier and what Mayor calls the “insti-
tutional myth of modern paleontology that no serious consideration of vertebrate fossils could occur in classical antiq-
uity because the scientific theories of evolution and extinction had not yet been invented.”

In the first chapter, Mayor breathes life into stories of the gold-guarding griffin as a prime example of a paleontological
legend. Bringing the images and legends of the griffin together with the geology of griffin territory, Mayor shows how
ancient Scythian gold-miners may have constructed the griffin as a creature of folklore that was solidly rooted in
naturalistic details derived from their encounters with the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs littering the
landscape of the Gobi Desert around the foothills of the Altai Mountains. In the second chapter, Mayor links the com-
plex geology of the Greco-Roman world to various fossil discoveries in order to show how significant paleozoological
and geological truths may have been embedded in ancient legends. In subsequent chapters, the author looks at how
ancient discoveries of giant human-like bones are likely to have fueled the legends of Greek heroes. She also reviews
some of the most persuasive artistic and archaeological evidence for ancient fossil discoveries.

In the final two chapters, Mayor examines the tension that exists between the contributions of popular traditions and
natural philosophy, particularly in light of the ways in which ancient paleontological thought has not been fully appreci-
ated by modern theorists and how a prevailing ancient belief in the degeneration of the human race since heroic times
was reinforced by the extraordinary size of the unearthed fossil bones. Of particular note for specialists are two appen-
dices that contain 1) a list of the large vertebrate fossil species in the ancient world and 2) ancient testimonia—a 20+
page compendium of text passages drawn from ancient Greek and Latin sources that seem to allude to encounters with
prehistoric fossils in antiquity.

Mayor’s work is valuable as a contribution to both classical folklore and the history of science. Because of its profusion
of maps, photographs, and drawings the work is likely to appeal to the general reader, but it also has the potential to
engage specialists on a serious level given its comprehensive documentation.