Monotype 2019 - The First Fossil Hunters.

Moa Alskog, monoprint, oilbased ink on paper, 32,9x48.3 cm, 2019

“Greeks, Romans, and other ancient people were able to experience “a sense of the immense distance between present and past,” observes ancient historian Sally Humphreys. Relics evoked “a convergence of nostalgia, local history, erudition…and ritual” as people tried to reconcile myth with contemporary life. Humphreys argues that it was through relics that ancient people developed a “historical consciousness” of time, a consciousness that infused popular as well as elite culture, oral tradition as well as written texts.” We have seen how the physical vestiges of extinct giants gave individuals of all walks of life a sense of the earth’s awesome chronology. People compared local bone lore with archaic myths, and went out of their way to view relics and marvels, either in situ or sanctuaries, As a Roman poet of the first century A.D remarked, it is by braving “the dangers of land and sea, greedily seeking the tales of old lore passed from folk to folk” and gazing at old relics in temple treasuries, that “we relive ancient times”. The ancient passion for relics, notes Humphreys, should help historians recognize that “world-views once dismissed as irrational” played “a central role in organizing research” in historiography and natural science. Stressing that modern standards of evidence, truth, and progress should not be imposed on ancient history or legend, Humprey asks, “Why does paradox still seem problematic as an instrument for discovery?” Similar insights are expressed by historian of science Thomas Kuhn and philosopher Philip Fisher. Kuhn maintains that “science” does not flow from a logical progression of objective truths but is strongly influenced by nonrational concepts that attempt to embrace accumulating anomalies. Fisher studies the experience of wonder as the engine of scientific curiosity and creativity since antiquity. The tension between philosophical standards of truth and the folk knowledge expressed in myths was also felt by thoughtful historians in antiquity. “I’m not unaware of the difficulties besetting those who undertake to account for ancient myths” wrote Diodorus of Sicily in about 30 B.C. The very magnitude of time encompassed in folk memories “makes legends seem incredible” and “some readers set up an unfair standard and require myths the same exactness as in the events in out time.”

(The first fossil hunters – dinosaurs, mammoths, and myth in Greek and Roman times, Adrienne Mayor, 2011 edition, Princeton University Press, p. 141)