Gold-digging ant

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The Indian Gold Hunters, illustration of giant ants chasing Indian gold-hunters, based on the description by Herodotus in Book Three of his Histories
Mien
.

The gold-digging ant is a mythical insect described in classical and medieval bestiaries. They were dog- or fox-sized ants that dug up gold in sandy areas. Some versions of the Physiologus said they came from Ethiopia, while Herodotus claimed they were located in India.[1]

Herodotus

In

ants" lives in one of the far eastern, Indian provinces of the Persian Empire. This region, he reports, is a sandy desert, and the sand there contains a wealth of fine gold dust. These giant ants, according to Herodotus, would often unearth the gold dust when digging their mounds and tunnels, and the people living in this province would then collect the precious dust.

Himalayan marmot
in central Asia.

French ethnologist

Naturalis Historia
.

In his book The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the Himalayas, Peissel says that Herodotus may have confused the old Persian word for "marmot" with that for "mountain ant" because he probably did not know any Persian and thus relied on local translators when travelling in the Persian Empire. Herodotus did not claim to have seen the gold-digging "ant" creatures; he stated that he was simply reporting what other travellers told him.[2][3]

Gold-digging insects

A 2011 study by Australian scientists found that termites have been found to excrete trace deposits of gold. According to the CSIRO, the termites burrow beneath eroded subterranean material which typically masks human attempts to find gold, and ingest and bring the new deposits to the surface. They believe that studying termite nests may lead to less invasive methods of finding gold deposits.[4][5]

See also

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References

  1. ^ "Ant". The Medieval Bestiary. Archived from the original on 2008-12-05. Retrieved 2008-12-28.
  2. ^ Simons, Marlise (25 November 1996). "Himalayas Offer Clue to Legend of Gold-Digging 'Ants'". New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 December 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2021..
  3. ISBN 978-0-00-272514-9
    .
  4. ^ Wright, Andrew (10 December 2012). "Ant and termite colonies unearth gold". CSIROpedia. Archived from the original on 26 November 2020. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  5. PMID 22087339
    .
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