Geological Time Periods | Physical History | Search The Web!
****JavaScript based drop down DHTML menu generated by NavStudio. (OpenCube Inc. - http://www.opencube.com)****
|
| Today, through vigourous study, we understand what fossils are. But this was not the case in ancient times. Living in a supersticious world, they came up with all sorts of crazy beliefs and uses for the fossils they found. |
| Man's fascination with fossils dates all the way back to the stone age. People would use them to decorate the graves of their families with. |
| The ancient Greeks were actually very close to the truth. They had found fossils of shells and other marine life, and concluded that their land must have once been covered by the sea. We now know that this is true. They understood that fossils were the remains of creatures that no longer existed. The famous philosopher Aristotle believed that life came spontaneously from mud, and fossils represented the faillures. Apart from all this, the Greeks believed they had some sort of healing power, and used them as medicines. |
| Later on, the Cristians believed many things about fossils. Some thought they were planted by the devil, to make people not believe in god. Others believed that they were from the great biblical flood. |
| Some people thought the giant fossilized bones that were found to belong to giants, and they were afraid. They also thought that huge, terrible monsters lived on Earth, which wasn't all that far off. |
| Modern paleontology is said to have been founded by Baron Curvier. He was the first to actually start studying fossils from a scientific perspective. |
|
|