The Giant Gold-Digging Ants of India
February 19th 2007 07:39
Excerpts from The Book of Fabulous Beasts by Joesph Nigg, reviewed below, about a certain animal that plagued the imagination of the ancients: the gold-digging ants of India.
Herodotus:
For it is in this part of India that the sandy desrt lies. Here, in this desert, there live amind the sand great ants; in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes. The Persian king has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters in the land whereof we are speaking. These ants make their dwelling underground, and like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps as they burrow. Now the sand which they throw up is full of gold.........
When the Indians reach the place where the gold is, they fill their bags with the sand, and ride away at their best speed: th ants, however, scenting them, as the Persians say, rush forth in pursuit. Now these animals are so swift, they declare, that there is nothing in the world like them; if it were not, therefore, that the Indians get a start while the ants are mustering, not a single gold-gatherer could escape.
Strabo:
Nearchus says that the skins of gold-mining ants are like those of leopards. But Megasthenes speaks of these ants as follows: that among the Derdae, a large tribe of Indians living towards the east and in the mountains, there is a plateau approximately three thousand stadia in circuit, and that below it are gold mines, of which the miners are ants, animals that are no smaller than foxes, are surpassingly swift, and live on the prey they catch. They dig holes in winterwinter and heap up earthat the mouth of the holes, like moles; and the gold-dust requires but little smelting. The neighbouring peoples go after it on beasts of burden by stealth, for if they go openly the ants fight it out with them and pursue them when they flee, and then, having overtaken them exterminate both them and their bests; but to escape being seen by the ants, the people lay out pieces of flesh of wild beasts at different places, and wwhen the ants are drawn away from around the holes, the poeple take up the gold-dust and, not knowing how to smelt it, dispose of it unwrought to traders at any rpice it will fetch.
Pomponius Mela:
There are ants as large as mastiffs which, like Griffons, are reported to keep gold dug out of the innermost parts of the earth, and to endanger the lives of anyone who dares to touch it.
Jospeh Nigg:
A nineteenth-century view was that the so-called ants were actually Tibetan miners. In the alte twentieth-century, French ethnologist Michel Piessel discovered in the Himalayas tribal people who sift gold from earth dug up by marmots and learned that the Persian word for marmot is equivalent to "mountain ant."
If Michel Piessel is true, then this is the animal which may have given rise to such fantastic speculation.
Herodotus:
For it is in this part of India that the sandy desrt lies. Here, in this desert, there live amind the sand great ants; in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes. The Persian king has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters in the land whereof we are speaking. These ants make their dwelling underground, and like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps as they burrow. Now the sand which they throw up is full of gold.........
When the Indians reach the place where the gold is, they fill their bags with the sand, and ride away at their best speed: th ants, however, scenting them, as the Persians say, rush forth in pursuit. Now these animals are so swift, they declare, that there is nothing in the world like them; if it were not, therefore, that the Indians get a start while the ants are mustering, not a single gold-gatherer could escape.
Strabo:
Nearchus says that the skins of gold-mining ants are like those of leopards. But Megasthenes speaks of these ants as follows: that among the Derdae, a large tribe of Indians living towards the east and in the mountains, there is a plateau approximately three thousand stadia in circuit, and that below it are gold mines, of which the miners are ants, animals that are no smaller than foxes, are surpassingly swift, and live on the prey they catch. They dig holes in winterwinter and heap up earthat the mouth of the holes, like moles; and the gold-dust requires but little smelting. The neighbouring peoples go after it on beasts of burden by stealth, for if they go openly the ants fight it out with them and pursue them when they flee, and then, having overtaken them exterminate both them and their bests; but to escape being seen by the ants, the people lay out pieces of flesh of wild beasts at different places, and wwhen the ants are drawn away from around the holes, the poeple take up the gold-dust and, not knowing how to smelt it, dispose of it unwrought to traders at any rpice it will fetch.
Pomponius Mela:
There are ants as large as mastiffs which, like Griffons, are reported to keep gold dug out of the innermost parts of the earth, and to endanger the lives of anyone who dares to touch it.
Jospeh Nigg:
A nineteenth-century view was that the so-called ants were actually Tibetan miners. In the alte twentieth-century, French ethnologist Michel Piessel discovered in the Himalayas tribal people who sift gold from earth dug up by marmots and learned that the Persian word for marmot is equivalent to "mountain ant."
If Michel Piessel is true, then this is the animal which may have given rise to such fantastic speculation.
HImalayan MarmotsSource: milosphotos
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