Myrmex Indikos

Myrmex Indikos, pol. Indian ant - an alleged species of gigantic ants (according to Herodot's description, larger than foxes, but smaller than dogs).

The earliest mention of these creatures is dated to the fifth century BC, and its author is Herodotus. According to her, these ants inhabited the deserts of Persia and India and extracted gold from their sands. Several such creatures were kept in the residence of the King of Persia. Gold was to be obtained by caravans made up of several camels in the heat of the day, when the ants were protected underground. You had to do it quickly, because the ants sensed the smell of people and went on the pursuit, and they were deadly dangerous.

This story is confirmed by the next accounts: Nearchos, one of the army officers of Alexander Macedoński, and Megastenes - a historian and traveler. The fragment of the Megasthenes (IV-III century BC) preserved in fragments can be seen in the underground mines at the foot of the mountains on the eastern border of India; you can see here ants extracting this ore. They have the size of wild foxes and can move surprisingly fast. Gold is mined during the winter season, which can be learned by mounds, similar to moles, appearing on the surface. Their spoil still needs cleaning, what the local inhabitants toil. They must, however, collect it so as not to become the victims of ants that can kill both humans and domestic animals. In another passage, Megastenes wrote that sometimes there are so many golden heaps that one can blind himself with looking at their glow.

Strabo, living around 63 BC - 24th of the century, based on the accounts of Nearchos and Megastenes, he mentioned Myrmex Indikos in the work of Geographica hypomnemata. More extensive fragments of their relationship are also quoted by Flavius ​​Arrian in Indike (describing India).

Pliny the Elder, in addition to repeating the accounts of his predecessors, mentions the depictions of Indian ants in the Temple of Hercules in Erythraj (now Turkey).

He also wrote about gold mining ants in the seventh century AD Izydor of Seville in his Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, giving however as the place of their occurrence Ethiopia.

Somewhere else, because in Sri Lanka, he placed the Indian ants John Mandeville, who lived in the fourteenth century.

The messages about ants extracting gold were known in European culture, including Polish culture. Jan Kochanowski began by referring to this legend of the Song of Jan Kochanowski, the book of two. The first song begins with the words Bibliography

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