Ebook Fossil Legends of the First Americans, by Adrienne Mayor

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Fossil Legends of the First Americans, by Adrienne Mayor

Ebook Fossil Legends of the First Americans, by Adrienne Mayor

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From Publishers Weekly

Mayor, a folklorist and historian of science, continues the project of understanding what premodern peoples made of fossils that she started in The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times. Surveying accounts of Native American tradition from the earliest Spanish conquistador and missionary records of Aztec and Inca lore up through present-day Indian oral histories, she correlates Native American myths with the fossils they are known or presumed to have observed. The results are unsurprising: giant fossil mastodon and dinosaur bones engendered myths about giants—giant elk, bear, birds, centipedes, subhumanoids and mysterious "water monsters"—who populated the earth until, in a nearly universal motif, they were killed off with lightning strikes by sky spirits. Indian notions of "deep time," changing landforms and climates, and the descent of contemporary species from fossilized ancestors anticipate the insights of present-day geology and evolutionary theory, she contends, while Inca legends of extinction by "fire from heaven" prefigure modern theories of extinction by asteroid impact. Her research makes for a competent if dry study in comparative folklore, but her claim that these myths "evince the stirrings of scientific inquiry in pre-Darwinian cultures" downplays the elements of animism and supernaturalism that are so radically at odds with the materialist and mechanistic thrust of modern science. Photos. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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From Booklist

Centuries before modern paleontologists began scouring the western badlands for dinosaur skeletons, a dozen Native American tribes had already discovered hundreds of ancient fossils. Through remarkably wide-ranging research, Mayor has recovered the fascinating story of how various tribes encountered and interpreted dinosaur bones and other remains of early life. As she did in her landmark study of Greek and Roman responses to fossils (The First Fossil Hunters, 2001), Mayor illuminates the surprisingly relevant views of early peoples confronting evidence of prehistoric life. But in this investigation, Mayor must also rescue these Native American musings from generations of neglect and derision. By interviewing numerous tribal folklorists and probing neglected chronicles of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century explorers, Mayor has reconstructed the way Native Americans converted fossils into the substrate for powerful myths. Though tribal myths actually anticipate key Darwinian concepts of species change, Native American traditions have too often been dismissed as mere superstition by orthodox scientists. This pioneering work replaces cultural estrangement with belated understanding. Bryce ChristensenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product details

Hardcover: 488 pages

Publisher: Princeton University Press (May 1, 2005)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0691113459

ISBN-13: 978-0691113456

Product Dimensions:

6.4 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 2 pounds

Average Customer Review:

3.9 out of 5 stars

16 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#271,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

"Fossil Legends of the First Americans is a comprehensive study of the intersection of oral history, traditional social and cultural norms, paleontology and science, across the North American continent.Mayor presents a multi-faceted look at many overlapping American- Indian and European-American explanations of fossils, bones, and other mysterious findings. As a former folklorist, I especially liked Mayor's even-handed work in getting out both sides of the story.She points out that Native explanations, expressed in mythic language, were based on repeated, careful observations of geological evidence over generations. Earth's history was visualized as a series of ages marked by different landforms, climates and a succession of different faunas no longer alive today. Not only did many of the insights about Earth's past anticipate modern scientific theories, but some traditional narratives were revised to integrate new scientific knowledge. These activities show the stirrings of scientific inquiry in pre-Darwinian cultures.Mayor also devotes some time to the English botanist, Mark Catesby's 1725 visit to Stono, a large plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, to examine several colossal teeth dug up in a swamp by slaves. Catesby tells us that the slaves immediately recognized the shape of the teeth. In the "concurring opinion of all the negroes, native Africans, that saw them," wrote Catesby, these were the molars of "an elephant," an animal of their homeland.In the Year 2000 conflict arose over the discovery of what may be the largest dinosaur ever found in North America, the hundred-foot-long, thirty-five-foot-tall Alamosaurus in Big Bend National Park in Texas. Some accused the National Park Service's paleontologists of stealing fossils from public land when they allowed the dinosaur to be hauled off to the University of Texas lab in Dallas. Why not build a display over it, like Dinosaur National monument in Utah?The Natives core belief about this "taking" was expressed by the Oglala leader, Johnson Holy Rock, in 2002: "Fossil bones should be left in the ground as they were found. It is not good to take them away and put them in a museum. If we want to understand them, shouldn't we go to see the animals where they lived and died?"Holy Rock singled out the Hot Springs Mammoth Site in South Dakota as a positive model of how traditional Native Americans would like to see fossils treated and preserved. Another outstanding example of the integration of Native culture and paleontology is the state-of-the-art Journey Museum in Rapid City in the Black Hills of South Dakota, dedicated to the region's geological, paleontological and Lakota history. The founders of that museum assembled a Lakota Advisory Board to ensure that a Native perspective helped shape all aspects of the museum.This book deserves better editing, layout and design. The paperback version is especially text-heavy and would benefit from color photographs, distinctive larger format subtitles, and having the related legends laid out in a boxed-text format."Fossil Legends" is a fresh and carefully researched approach to a complex and endlessly fascinating topic.Kim BurdickStanton, Delaware

I am a storyteller and was actually looking more for legends involving fossils. The information here is clearly written and well presented, but it wasn't what I was looking for.

Adrienne Mayor writes beautifully for academics and regular folks. Her discussions are scientific and exhilarating as she analyses the fossil remains as found by ancient peoples .... what did they think they had found? how did they interpret the bones of the dinosaurs that they discovered? what effect did their interpretations have on future generations?

I bought this book because I enjoyed Mayor's previous book and I have become interested in American prehistory. This book is more readable than the First Fossil Hunters (which I also enjoyed and learned from), and makes me aware how very large this continent is and how little I know about it. The author's sympathy with the pre-literate peoples does not diminish her appreciation of modern science. It's an enjoyable read and makes me want to visit regions more fossiliferous than New England.If you happen to be reading it at the same time as When They Separated Earth From Sky (Barber and Barber) it's like being in the middle of an enthusiastic conversation between friends and colleagues.

good reference

Adrienne Mayor offers an interesting point of view, and one that has been neglected, which is why I ordered it and look forward to reading it.

This is really wonderful book! I recommend it to everybody interested in fossils although the book is more about people than about old bones. Tons of fascinating facts and legends. The book is also quite serious study of native american folklore as well.

Mayor is a scholar of the overlooked chapters of history and prehistory, such as historical Amazons and early automata. Here she asks what Native Americans thought of the fossils in fossil-rich North America, and uncovers a treasure trove of anecdotes, myths, and fossils.The Native contributions to fossil lore were long overlooked, and most are lost. Early fossil hunters sometimes paid Indians to lead them to fossils, but few thought the locals had anything to offer as far as scientific understanding or even interest, dismissing them as mere curiosity collectors or primitive object-worshipers. (The great George Gaylord Simpson, writing in 1942 and 1943, was especially harsh on the idea the peoples who'd been on the continent longest had learned anything useful.) Mayor, though, finds interest in fossils existed over the continent. If Native Americans lacked the European-American scientific method to put things into context, many tribes considered fossils very important. They gathered fossils, traded them, incorporated them in sacred and everyday art, and speculated about what kind of beasts had left them behind. It was logical to attribute them to monsters of legend, since there was no other cultural context to put them in, at least after the human conquest of the continent had (according to somewhat disputed orthodoxy) wiped out mammoths and other beasts. They understood these bones came from many types of giants/animals, including the great thunderbirds and both land and water monsters. Storytellers filled in the background with legends about how these creatures killed each other or, rarely, were killed by humans. Fossils are kept even today in medicine bundles and other Native-held artifacts, although many more have been taken to museums (sometimes with the consent of local tribes and sometimes not: Mayor reports some tribes considered them part of the story of the earth, and removing them was disrespectful or would lead to misfortune. An early point of contention was that bones eroding away in the air had to be removed, according to white scientists, for preservation, while some Indians objected this was interfering with a natural cycle. Mayor went to great lengths to talk with paleontologists, tribal historians, old shamans, and others who could shed light on the connections of the past. The controversies continue into the present, with the battles over Tyrannosaurus Sue and other specimens. While it's possible to wonder whether Mayor puts a bit too much stock in Native understanding of the fossils, she takes time to deconstruct such frauds and myths as the cave full of red-haired mummified giants in Nevada that conspiracy-lovers (and some sincere cryptozoologists) think were hidden or destroyed. She notes there are a few claims of unfossilized dinosaur bones, although these may be due more to linguistic / translation difficulties than to real (extraordinarily rare) bones not fully mineralized. My main nitpick in this book is illustrations. While maps of each region Mayor covers are provided, I and ted some of the crucial small areas mapped in more detail. There are many photographs and drawings here, but I found myself wanting more: perhaps a companion volume of art and photography would be an interesting future project.If the book's not quite perfect, it is a (literally) groundbreaking work that shows how much we've overlooked that is still accessible. Mayor knows how to document: the index and Notes take up 100 pages, so there are plenty of additional sources to delve into. Hopefully this book creates more respect for Native Americans and for the fossils of dinosaurs and ancient mammals they saw and gathered. Much has been lost, but much remains to be explored.

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