Fossil Legends of the First Americans

Fossil Legends of the First Americans
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 489
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781400849314
ISBN-13 : 1400849314
Rating : 4/5 (314 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Fossil Legends of the First Americans by : Adrienne Mayor

Download or read book Fossil Legends of the First Americans written by Adrienne Mayor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils? Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries. Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees. Fossil Legends of the First Americans represents a major step forward in our understanding of how humans made sense of fossils before evolutionary theory developed.


Fossil Legends of the First Americans Related Books

Fossil Legends of the First Americans
Language: en
Pages: 489
Authors: Adrienne Mayor
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-10-24 - Publisher: Princeton University Press

GET EBOOK

The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, a
The Very First Americans
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Cara Ashrose
Categories: Juvenile Nonfiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 1993-09-15 - Publisher: Penguin

GET EBOOK

Long before Columbus landed in America, hundreds of groups of people had already made their homes here. You may have heard of some of them—like the Sioux, Hop
Across Atlantic Ice
Language: en
Pages: 337
Authors: Dennis J. Stanford
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-02-28 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

GET EBOOK

Who were the first humans to inhabit North America? According to the now familiar story, mammal hunters entered the continent some 12,000 years ago via a land b
First Americans: A History of Native Peoples, Combined Volume
Language: en
Pages: 1053
Authors: Kenneth W. Townsend
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-12-07 - Publisher: Routledge

GET EBOOK

First Americans provides a comprehensive history of Native Americans from their earliest appearance in North America to the present, highlighting the complexity
Americans First
Language: en
Pages: 269
Authors: K. Scott Wong
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-07-01 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

GET EBOOK

World War II was a watershed event for many of America's minorities, but its impact on Chinese Americans has been largely ignored. Utilizing extensive archival