Herodotus wrote that in India gold was dug up by ants bigger than foxes.
Explorer Michel Peissel offered an answer: on Pakistan's Deosai Plateau marmots bring gold dust up from their burrows, and 'ant' may be a mistranslation from Persian.
More amazing facts
- 480 BC · 479 BC Confucius died in 479 BC — one year after the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis.
- 479 BC More than 100,000 of Confucius's descendants lie in his family cemetery at Qufu.
- 471 BC A well by the Acropolis held 190 potsherds bearing Themistocles' name, written in just 14 hands.
- 458 BC · 1788 Cincinnati, Ohio, is named after a Roman who lived about 2,200 years before it was founded.
- 450 BC When a cat died in an Egyptian house, everyone in it shaved off their eyebrows, Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC. Diodorus claimed that killing a cat, even by accident, could get you lynched.
- 447 BC Gleaming white Greek statues and temples were originally painted in bright colours.