Re: Sacred Fossils

[Ben Waggoner <bmw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 27 Oct 1996, N. MacLeod wrote:

> This week's Time magazine (in addition to a nice article on Pterosaurs)
> reports on the theft of some Stegosaur tracks from a remote area in
> Australian. In passing the article mentioned that the tracks were taken
> from an area sacred to the Goolarabooloo and Jabirjabir aboriginal tribes,
> though it did not state whether the tracks themselves were considered
> sacred. Nevertheless, it caused me to wonder if there are any other known
> examples of a particular fossil or fossil-bearing locality being considered
> a sacred by an indigenous human population? [Note: museum curators,
> professional paleontologists, and/or local rockhound clubs don't count].
> Does anyone know of any examples?

I recall reading about an Etruscan tomb which had a piece of fossil tree
trunk placed in it -- I think it was _Lepidodendron_ or something similar.
Why it was put in there, I don't know, but maybe it was considered holy.
Aside from that, amber has figured in mythology:  some say that amber is
the tears of the Norse goddess Freyja, and one source (Rice, _Amber: The
Golden Gem of the Ages_) states that hearts carved out of amber were
sacred to Freyja and symbols used by her worshippers. In various cultures
around the world amber has been considered magical and/or sacred, or at
least connected with mythology. There are plenty of cases where fossils
are connected with a sacred myth -- such as the story that ammonites are
snakes that were turned to stone by the prayers of St. Hilda or some other
saint. And there are several cases in which fossils were said to have
magical or medicinal power, but not very many (that I know of) in which
the fossils themselves were held to be sacred.

If anyone wants more information, I'll post sources and more information
when I get back to Berkeley -- I'm currently having a stimulating time
at the GSA meeting in Denver.

Ben Waggoner
Department of Integrative Biology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
bmw@uclink2.berkeley.edu