[3.102] Besides these, there are Indians of another tribe, who border on
the city of Caspatyrus, and the country of Pactyica; these people dwell
northward of all the rest of the Indians, and follow nearly the same mode
of life as the Bactrians.
They are more warlike than any of the other tribes, and from them the men
are sent forth who go to procure the gold. For it is in this part of India
that the sandy desert lies. Here, in this desert, there live amid the sand
great ants, in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes. The
Persian king has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters
in the land whereof we are speaking. Those ants make their dwellings under
ground, and like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape,
throw up sand heaps as they burrow. Now the sand which they throw up is
full of gold. The Indians, when they go into the desert to collect this
sand, take three camels
and harness them together, a female in the middle and a male on either
side, in a leading rein. The rider sits on the female, and they are particular
to choose for the purpose one that has but just dropped her young; for
their female camels can run as fast as horses, while they bear burthens
very much better.
[3.104] When the Indians therefore have thus equipped themselves they
set off in quest of the gold, calculating the time so that they may be
engaged in seizing it during the most sultry part of the day, when the
ants hide themselves to escape the heat. The sun in those parts shines
fiercest in the morning, not, as elsewhere, at noonday; the greatest heat
is from the time when he has reached a certain height, until the hour at
which the market closes. During this space he burns much more furiously
than at midday in Greece, so that the men there are said at that time to
drench themselves with water. At noon his heat is much the same in India
as in other countries, after which, as the day declines, the warmth is
only equal to that of the morning sun elsewhere. Towards evening the coolness
increases, till about sunset it becomes very cold.
[3.105] When the Indians reach the place where the gold is, they fill
their bags with the sand, and ride away at their best speed: the ants,
however, scenting them, as the Persians say, rush forth in pursuit. Now
these animals are, they declare, so swift, that there is nothing in the
world like them: if it were not, therefore, that the Indians get a start
while the ants are mustering, not a single gold-gatherer could escape.
During the flight the male camels, which are not so fleet as the females,
grow tired, and begin to drag, first one, and then the other; but the females
recollect the young which they have left behind, and never give way or
flag. Such, according to the Persians, is the manner in which the Indians
get the greater part of their gold; some is dug out of the earth, but of
this the supply is more scanty.
A man from Sindhu, carrying gold. Relief
stairs of the Apadana
at Persepolis (more).
Himalayas offer clue to legend of gold digging 'ants'
by Marlise Simons, The New York Times, 25 November 1996
The fabulous tale of the giant 'ants' that dug up gold in a far-off
El Dorado and enriched the Persian Empire has circulated for some 2,500
years. Historians have variously recorded it as fact, mocked it as extravagant
and passed it along the ancient grapevine.
It was popular in Athens and Rome, and Alexander
the Great, on his way to India, is said to have known about the tale.
Scholars and fortune hunters have tried to explain the enigma for centuries.
Now a team of explorers says it has solved the puzzle.
The explorers believe they have pinpointed the land of the legendary gold
digging ants and the people who profited in one of the most inaccessible
regions of the Himalayas along the upper Indus river.
They say the outsize furry 'ants', first described by
Herodotus in the fifth century BC, are in fact big marmots. These creatures
-Herodotus calls them 'bigger than a fox, though not so big as a dog'-
are still throwing up gold bearing soil from deep underground as they dig
their burrows. Most important, the explorers say they have found indigenous
people on the same high plateau who say that for generations they have
collected gold dust from the marmots' work.
A marmot is a type of burrowing squirrel, thick bodied
and with a bushy fur.
'I think this confirms the legend that has fascinated
so many people,' said Michel Peissel, a French ethnologist, who has returned
from a monthlong journey in the Himalayas of northern Pakistan. 'I think
it vindicates Herodotus, who has often been called a liar.'
Other explorers have suggested that the furry 'ants' of
antiquity were marmots, but until now there were no known reports of the
site where indigenous people actually collected and sifted sand to get
the marmots' gold.
That place, Mr. Peissel said, is the Dansar plain, a high
plateau overlooking the Indus River near the tense cease-fire line between
India and Pakistan. It is an isolated region where the Indus comes roaring
through deep gorges on its way south. On both sides of the river, Mr Peissel
said, are small settlements of Minaro tribal people, an ancient remnant
who have remained so isolated in the high valleys that they still preserve
some stone age customs.
Up in those barren highlands, Mr. Peissel said, he went
first to study the Minaro 14 years ago on the Indian side of the border,
traveling in disguise because the military zone was off-limits to outsiders.
'That's where I first heard the startling news that the
villagers used to collect the earth from the marmot burrows because it
contained much gold dust,' said Mr. Peissel, who speaks Tibetan, like the
But the Dansar plain, where the old people used to get
the gold dust, the locals said, was five miles away on the other side of
the Indus, now the Pakistani side. It took 14 years for Mr. Peissel and
a British photographer, Sebastian Guinness, to get permits to visit the
Minaro on the Pakistani side, also a strategic zone.
In Pakistan, he said, the Minaro villagers told the same
stories. 'We went out to the Dansar plain, overlooking the Indus, at an
altitude of some 10,000 feet,' he said. 'It was astonishing. There were
the marmots and the burrow and the piles of sand they had thrown up.' Moreover,
he said, a landslide had exposed the darker, gold bearing soil that was
three feet below the surface. That was the same soil the marmots brought
up from under the sand.
Specialists have long argued about why Herodotus and other
ancient writers described the furry gold digging creatures as ants. Herodotus
wrote in his Histories that some were even kept at the palace of
the Persian king, who ruled the region at the time.
Mr. Peissel, author of a book called The Ants' Gold,
says his favored explanation is that confusion set in because in Persian
the word for marmot is equivalent to 'mountain ant.'
Stephanie West, a Herodotus scholar at Oxford University
in Britain, said that Herodotus was not known to speak Persian, although
the Persians invaded Halicarnassus, the Greek city where he lived from
around 480 BC.
'He traveled to Egypt but not to India, Ms. West said.
'He could have got it wrong. His information came from talking to travelers
and reading what was there to be read.'
Ms. West disagreed with the view of some scholars that
Herodotus, who wrote the first major prose work of that time, fabricated
tall stories or set out to deceive readers.
'He probably took the liberties a historical novelist
takes, rather than writing strictly as a historian,' she said.
'It's such a marvelous notion, but once you think of them
as marmots, it's less bizarre,' she said. She said she was familiar with
Mr. Peissel's research, adding, `I think he has made a substantial contribution
to understanding that episode.'
The marmots digging on the Dansar plain may or may not
settle the issue, Mr. Peissel said he would prefer to test his findings
with further studies.
'Ideally we should make a full archaeological survey in
the area,' he said. 'But it's right in the line of fire of both sides.
There was gunfire when we were there. The locals tell us that the marmots
are dwindling. The Indian soldiers are constantly taking potshots at them.'