The gold digging “ants” [3/98-105]
Herodotus’s account of the gold digging ants is one of his best known stories. It was treated with some disbelief for several thousand years but then newly discovered evidence suggested it might be true. Herodotus writes:
“As for the gold dust that I mentioned being brought to the king, that derives from the huge quantity of gold that the Indians procure. Here is how they come by it:
There are other Indians who live in the northernmost point of India, where the constellation of the Bear shines on the border between the city of Caspatyrus and the land of Pactyice. Their way of life is very like that of the Bactrians. They’re the most warlike of the Indian tribes and it is they who make expeditions to fetch the gold, out into the sands, where it is impossible actually to live.
The sands of this same desert breed ants which are midway between dogs and foxes in size. (There are some that were actually trapped there and brought to the court of the Persian king).
These ants, which in appearance are much like the ants found in Greece, also make their nests underground just as the ants in Greece do, by digging up sand – though in their case the excavated sand is flecked with gold.
It is this same sand that the Indians are after when they go prospecting in the desert. Each one of them harnesses together three camels, two males and one female: the males do the actual pulling, like trace horses and are positioned either side of the female which is placed in the middle by the Indians. Great care is taken to ensure that the harnessed mare is one that is only just given birth and has been torn away from her young. The reason for this is that Indian camels are not a whit slower than horses, and far more capable of carrying loads beside.
As for the appearance of a camel, that needs no description from me, since the Greeks are already familiar with it. What I will mention, however, are some details with which Greeks are not familiar. The camel has two thighs and two knees in each of its hind legs [this is not true] snd its genitals protrude behind its hind legs, orientated towards its tail.
Thus the Indians – with their camels harnessed and themselves equipped in the matter I described – ride out in search of the gold; and because the ants disappear underground whenever the weather gets too scorching, the prospectors deliberately time their sally to ensure that their actual seizure of the gold coincides with the most blistering spell of heat …
Once the Indians, complete with sacks, have arrived at their destination, they fill up their sacks with the sand, and then go careering off home as fast as they possibly can. The reason for this, as reported by the Persians, is that the ants pick up on their scent, and give them chase. Now there is nothing in the world quite as fast as these ants, to the degree that none of the Indians were they to fail in getting a head start while the ants were massing, would make it back to safety.
The male camels, because they’re not as fleet-footed as female ones, start to lag and [may even] end up being cut loose, one after the other; the females, however, with memories of their abandoned young fresh in their mind do not slacken. And that, so the Persians say, is how the Indians obtain the greater part of their gold. The rest, a much smaller amount, comes from the country’s mines. …”
Expeditions made by Michel Peissel, a French ethnologist, in the 1960s suggest that the creatures described by Herodotus were in fact Himalayan Marmots, a type of burrowing squirrel, thick bodied and with a bushy fur.
Gold-diggers on the plateau CGTN