The Search for Gold Guarding Griffins

Alaska miners take heed---where there be griffins, there may be gold. At least that's what ancient Mediterranean and Asian cultures believed, and some recent evidence may explain why.

In the November/December 1994 issue of Archaeology, folklorist Adrienne Mayor explains how the griffin, a mythological creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, was thought by ancient prospectors to be a guardian of placer gold deposits.

In detailing her research on ancient cultures, Mayor said she was surprised by the many references to griffins. In written anecdotes and in griffin likenesses on pottery and bronze reliefs, she noticed several similarities---all the griffins had four legs and a beak, and their nests often contained gold.

Mayor wrote that what really initiated her griffin quest was the 1940's discovery of Soviet archaeologist Sergei Rudenko. Rudenko found fifth-century BC tombs in the permafrost at Pazyryk, a region where gold had been mined for centuries. The tombs contained gold artifacts decorated with griffins. Rudenko's team also discovered a tantalizing clue indicating that ancient people may have believed griffins were more than fantasy: griffin tattoos found on the skin of a well-preserved corpse.

Much of the griffin folklore originated from the deserts of central Asia, specifically in an area of alluvial gold deposits in a thousand-mile corridor dividing land masses that are now China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Mayor's research led her to consult paleontologists to see what kinds of fossils were common to the area.

The Gobi, Turfan and Dzungarian deserts contain some of the world's richest fossil beds, and many fossils appear on the surface because of the windswept nature of the region. Fossils of the plant-eating Protoceratops are the most commonly found dinosaur fossils in the Gobi desert.

Protoceratops was a creature six or seven feet long, with four legs, claws, and a scary beak that looked like a huge lobster claw. Mayor speculates that ancient people may have dug up skeletons of the Protoceratops, a probable theory considering that American tourists who visited the Gobi Desert in 1992 uncovered a complete, standing dinosaur skeleton trapped in the sand. It would only take a small imaginative step for ancient prospectors, making similar finds, to think that living griffins existed and guarded their nests like protective mother birds in the same standing position. But what about the griffin reputation as a guardian of gold deposits?

Fossilized nests, shallow depressions in the soil complete with petrified dinosaur eggs, often were found near Protoceratops remains. Geophysical Institute geophysics professor and archeology enthusiast Tom Hallinan suggests the nests acted as riffle boxes that caught wind-blown, fine gold or gold carried by streams. If so, early prospectors may have sought out dinosaur nests, thinking they were griffin nests, in search of a bonanza.

However, a recent discovery detailed in the Nov. 4, 1994, issue of the journal Science suggests that a different species of dinosaur may have been the gold miners' fabled griffin. The fossil of an Oviraptor, a name that means "egg seizer" in Latin, was found atop what was thought to be a Protoceratops nest discovered in the Gobi Desert in 1923. It was speculated then that the Oviraptor, a carnivore with a parrot-like beak who stood on two legs, probably died in a sandstorm while sucking Protoceratops eggs.

But a recent analysis of an egg found at an identical nest site nearby revealed that the embryo inside belonged to an Oviraptor; so the aforementioned predator was probably incubating her own eggs rather than eating the eggs of a Protoceratops.

Since the Oviraptor is now seen as a concerned parent hovering over its own gold-laden nest rather than a thief, Hallinan suggests we change its name to "griffinosaur," the name Mayor had jokingly given to the Protoceratops.