I’m watching history channel, and ancient greeks and romans actually knew of fossils and used them as temple sacrifices, proof of mythilogical animals, and to be buried with heroes. And everyone that had excavated the temples THREW AWAY all the fossils they found and did not consider them to be important finds. How is this possible? Here we have this theory that the ancient greeks and romans didn’t even know that the fossil bones they were looking at were former animals. There was proof, right there that they did SOMETHING with them, and the archeologists threw them away. They didn’t store them in a wharehouse or basement or something, they put them in rubish bins.
Makes me so mad!
As a scientists it frustrates me that all this knowledge is now lost to us, what fossils did they collect? Which ones were deemed worthy for the gods, and which ones were allowed to be kept as a personal collection? Did it matter, was there even a difference between offerings and collections? Which bones did they identify with their mythical animals, did that hold bearing on how they were offered?
So many questions we can’t answer, because elitist assholes threw artifacts-slash-fossils away!
May they be forever shamed!
