1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

138 5. Medicine and Other Empirical Sciences
the difficulty. The passage was well known to modern scientists 58 and its
influence has probably been underestimated by historians of science.
Strabo (who on this subject reports also fragments of Posidonius 59 ) says
that Eratosthenes studied the transformations of the earth’s crust and that
he offered as proof that coastlines had moved in the deep past the existence
of marine fossil deposits on land. 60 The argument actually goes back
to Xenophanes (sixth century B.C.), who noticed the presence of shells and
indications of fishing in areas that lay inland in his time. 60a Among the
marine fossils known in ancient Egypt were the ammonites, so named in
Antiquity because of their spiral form, similar to the ram-horns sported
by the Theban god Ammon. Historians of paleontology have long maintained
that the Ancients, though occasionally stumbling on large vertebrate
fossils, ignored them because of a prejudice rooted in the belief in
the fixity of species. But in a recent work, Adrienne Mayor has shown
that it is rather a matter of historiographical prejudice preventing modern
scholars from taking seriously the ample available textual evidence
on ancient fossil finds. 61 She used the sources to demonstrate that:
– From the archaic period on there was a lot of interest in the frequent
finds of fossils of large vertebrates, which were often kept in temples as
precious relics because they were interpreted as remainders of giants
or heroes. Several authors of classical or late Antiquity associated the
buried finds of enormous bones with the events of the gigantomachia:
a myth toward which the fossils themselves probably contributed.
– Starting from at least the fifth century B.C. some fossils were identified
as belonging to animal species no longer extant.
– George Cuvier, the founder of modern paleontology, unlike some of
his successors, knew the ancient prodromes of his discipline: he collected
testimonia on ancient discoveries and descriptions of fossils dating
from the fifth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. 61a
Unfortunately, as usual, we have not a single Hellenistic work about the
subject. But Theophrastus wrote two books On petrification (
), which very likely dealt with fossilization. 61b The same interest
58 For example, Darwin cites it in the preface to The origin of species, adding: “We here see the
principle of natural selection shadowed forth. . . ” ([Darwin], preface, footnote 1).
59 Strabo, Geography, II, iii, 6.
60 Strabo, Geography, I, iii, 4.
60a Hippolytus, Refutatio contra omnes haereses, I, 14, 5 = [DG], 566.
61 [Mayor]. There is no lack of texts espousing the point of view Mayor contradicts; having the
luxury of the choice, she mentions [Rudwick] and [Horner, Dobb], among others.
61a [Cuvier].
61b We know the title of the work from Diogenes Laertius (V, 42). That it dealt with fossilization
is suggested by Theophrastus’ mention of “fossil ivory” ( ; De lapidibus, 37) and
Revision: 1.9 Date: 2002/09/14 19:12:01