You know what, Iām tired of getting notifications for this post and not saying anything about it. I know that last time I complained about this sort of thinking, I got called out by revretch, who called me a gatekeeper and then blocked me. But I donāt have anything left to live for anymore so Iām going to let my science and education background take over for a moment and discuss this in depth.
Okay, not in depth, Iāll try to be brief.
Yes, I know tumblr likes to believe scientists are silly old fools for refusing to accept the truth that is right in front of them. Fine. Believe in what you want. But the problem is that a lot of the information in the above post is either long discredited, not taken seriously by archaeologists/folklorists for good reason, or
Animals have inspired a lot of mythical creatures. That is true.
Fossils have inspired a few mythical creatures. That is also true.
Fossils have not inspired the creatures in the above post. Not provably, at any rate, and certainly not enough for any self-respecting archaeologist to take them seriously.
Thereās a popular misconception about how fossils are formed. People tend to think they look something like in Jurassic Park 3, where a Velociraptor is being excavated in Montana (that already makes it impossible, but bear with me).
Look how nice that fossil is. It looks exactly like an animal. You can see the head, the shape of the body, the arms and legs and tail. You easily picture what it looked like alive.
This is NOT what fossils look like.
Real fossils tend to be disarticulated. Broken up. Spread over a large area. Believe me, I know! Iām a paleontology washout whoās volunteered on at least 3 digs in 3 different countries! The only information an average person could get out of most real fossils is āthis was an animalā, and āthis was a BIG animalā. Nobody would have deduced frills and wings and stuff like that.
The griffon hypothesis up there? We owe it to Adrienne Mayor, and itās popular among paleontologists but not archaeologists. It makes sense on a very superficial level ā It Stands To Reason, after all ā but once you start looking at it in detail it breaks down. Even if, somehow, someone saw a Protoceratops skeleton in enough detail to see wings and beaks and stuff, why would they leave out the teeth? The stubby-toed feet? The ridiculous tail? Mark Witton, a person actually connected to paleontology, has done a great article on the subject.
Griffons were inspired by a number of things, including Mesopotamian royal art, and thereās at least one real animal behind the griffon (and itās not a fossil). But thatās another story.
What about elephant-skull cyclopes? Again, it sounds like it makes sense! Certainly more so than the griffon-Protoceratops. But here we run into another problemā¦ complete lack of proof. It sounds reasonable, but it canāt be proven. And āone-eyed giantā isnāt exactly a colossal feat of imagination - giants are one of the standard baddies in legend, and making them one-eyed makes them just more monstrous. You can just as easily argue that cyclopes originated in solar wheel imagery associated with the gods, which is why their name means āwheel-eyeā and not āone-eyeā, and that also ties nicely into their association with metallurgy. Again, Mark Witton has more on that.
Creatures LEGITIMATELY based on fossils typically look nothing like their progenitors, and tend to incorporate features based on their fossil location.
Mammoth remains, for instance! Those are found sticking out of eroded riverbanks, so there must have been a big animal underground! In China they are the yin shu, an enormous mouse or mole that digs underground but dies as soon as the sun touches it. (My interpretation below. Note that I couldnāt resist making it mammothy anyway)
In Siberia the witkes is a horned lake monster that demands offerings of the people who cross its water. Note that the ātusksā are seen as horns, and because the fossils are found near water, it becomes a water animal. See how the facts of the fossils become part of the legend? (Again, my interpretation below, and same comment as before)
The lindwurm of Klagenfurt was based on the discovery of a cave rhinoceros skull. Again, you can see how little the creature has to do with the fossil! People already have dragons on the brain, so finding a skull reinforces that, instead of altering it. Youāve got crocodile skulls in castles in Hungary displayed as dragon remains. Same story. Everythingās a dragon if you want it to be.
Brontotheres (thunder beasts) are named so because of the legends of the Great Plains people! Their remains were seen as the casualties of great battles, and the name honors that legend. Again, they arenāt described as being big rhino-like horned animals, just asā¦ big animals that are now dead.
As for the others, again, those are incredible speculations that require, once again, to dismiss far more obvious things that would have inspired them. And thereās a whole lot of cultural evolution that goes on that isnāt taken into account.
The unicorn in particular. Thereās no reason to think that it was anything other than the one-horned Indian rhinoceros. Elasmotherium tends to get dragged into the discussion, but all the original unicorn stories tell of a one-horned Indian monster. Not something that lives underground.
The Piasa? The above post compares it to pterosaurs, but the original did not have wings! It was a version of the āunderwater pantherā, a mythical underwater lynx of the Northeast Woodlands and Great Lakes regions. Thereās a long story behind that but thatās, again, beyond the scope of what I wanted to say.
Of course, if you want to consider the underwater panther a dinosaur as well, be my guest.
Regarding the sauropods (and Titanoboa, and whales) inspiring giant snakes thing.
If only there was some terrifyingly large, reptilian, legless, snake-like creature in South Americaā¦
Or Asia to fire peopleās imagination and cause them to think of giant snakes?
And itās not like rainbows arenāt associated worldwide with snakes because of their, well, long and thin and curvy nature.
Now if you think Iām a big horrible gatekeeping meanie for saying all this, thatās fine! Thereās still a lot we donāt know, and thereās still a lot of things that could very well be based on fossils, so you can keep your hopes up!
Like the ketos of Troy, for instance!
Thatā¦ looks awfully like it could be a skull! Adrienne Mayor thinks itās a fossil Samotherium, which sounds like a stretch. It looks more like a pterosaur to me. But still, thatās something that could indeed be a fossil!
The other thing about all this is the āscientists didnāt listen to native people who told them about monsters theyād encounteredā. And yes, this is true and a noble thing to believe in. But also consider that one of the reasons dinosaurs were believed to exist in ādarkest Africaā (all the scare quotes) is that it was held that native people couldnāt possibly be creative enough to imagine them. Europeans talk about giant reptiles? Myths, legends, folklore. Non-Europeans talk about giant reptiles? OMG LIVING DINOSAURS. It goes both ways, sadly.
Mythical creatures are the product of culture, literature, and biology. Reducing their creation to āsees weird fossil => invents monsterā is, to me, just sad, and cuts out a lot of the process and wonder and translation errors and sheer mistakes that intervene.
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