“Unless, Persians, ye can turn into birds and fly up into the sky. or become mice and burrow under the ground, or make yourselves frogs, and take refuge in the fens, ye will never make escape from this land, but die pierced by our arrows.”
~ ‘The History’ (Book 4) by Herodotus (George Rawlinson transl. GB6 - p. 147)
In one of the dramatic scenes of the book, the Scythians send a gift to Darius of Persia, who is attacking them. The gift includes - a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. Darius, who is at his wits’ end by the non-traditional fighting of the nomadic people, interprets this as the Scythians yielding everything they have - the mouse (earth), the frog (water), the bird (air), and arrows (military). But Gobryas, one of his generals and one of the seven who with Darius had overthrown Smerdis the Magus, says it means the opposite. He says the quote above: unless the Persians can turn into birds and fly into the sky, they will die, pierced by Scythian arrows.
The mention of a bird made me think about dinosaurs, freedom to fly and thought.