FOSSIL LEGENDS OF THE FIRST AMERICANS
by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton, 2005)
March 15, 2007
Indians and dinosaurs!
Native American Fossil LegendsNative American discoveries and ideas about fossils, from tiny shells to dinosaur bones, from 1520 to the present, gathered from more than 45 tribes in North and South America, including Aztec, Inca, Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Zuni, Yaqui, Crow, Sioux, Blackfeet, Pawnee, Comanche, Osage, Cheyenne, Iroquois, Delaware, Shawnee, and many more.
FOSSIL LEGENDS OF THE FIRST AMERICANS
by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton, 2005)
FOSSIL LEGENDS OF THE FIRST AMERICANS
by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton, 2005)
I'm delighted to find my book mentioned on bluecorn/ Newspaper Rock! Thank you. There is a neat comix tie-in, as the cover art by Pete Von Sholly indicates: the scene was inspired by the 1950-60s Turok comic series. In my interviews with elders and storytellers and others of a certain age on reservations, I found that a lot of people remembered loving the adventures of Turok and Andar, because it was respectful and relatively accurate about Plains Indian culture for that era. Then when I interviewed paleontologists in the same age groups, they too told me how much they loved Turok's adventures in the lost valley of dinos, because the dinosaurs were drawn and described accurately for that time period. So, Turok comics turned out to be a hidden connection between traditional Native Americans and the most creative dinosaur scientists (this is discussed in my book).
ReplyDeleteI know of Russell Bates from his beautifully written foreword to Nick Sucik's 2004 report on Flying Snakes in Navajo and Hopi traditions. Now I'll be sure to get a copy of Cryptozoology ed by Arment (2006).
Once again, thanks for including my book (out in paperback this month) on Newspaper Rock. It may be bit "dry" --apologies for that!--but it's intended for both scholarly and general audiences and, as you well know, it's hard for independent researchers to get the attention of academics. To do that, I had to document everything "scientifically" since this is a new, emerging field of study! Thanks to the efforts of Russell Bates, Nick Sucik, Rob Schmidt, Ruth Ludwin, Roger Echo-Hawk, Steve Pavlik, the late Vine Deloria, Jr, and many others, geomythology (natural knowledge embedded in traditional language) is becoming an important discipline and scientists are slowly becoming aware of the scientific insights in myths and legends about nature.
Adrienne Mayor
You're welcome, Adrienne. I had a feeling Turok would come up in this discussion. ;-)
ReplyDeleteHonored to make you and Rob's [virtual] acquaintance!
ReplyDeleteAdrienne