Here is Herodotus from the Pengin Classics edition of Snakes with Wings and Gold-digging Ants translated by Aubrey De Selincourt, and revised by John Marinola. Sounds like a description of a dinosaurs' graveyard.
There is a place in Arabia more or less opposite the city of Buto, where I went to try to get information about flying snakes. On my arrival I saw their skeletons in incalculable numbers; they were piled in heaps, some of which were big, others smaller, others smaller still, and there were many piles of them. The place where these bones lie is a narrow mountain pass leading to a broad plain which joins on to the plain of Egypt, and it is said that that when the winged snakes fly to Egypt from Arabia in the spring, the ibises meet them at the entrance to the pass and do not let them get through, but kill them. According to the Arabians, this service is the reason for the great reverence with which the ibis is regarded in Egypt.... The winged snakes resemble watersnakes; their wings are not feathered, but are like a bat's.
No comments:
Post a Comment