Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going āwhat the fuckā¦ what the fuckā¦ā
Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelersā tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).
So unicorns are real
beholdā¦ a unicorn
I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASEDĀ to find out this is, in fact, the case.
Questing Beast
- Neck of a snake
- body of a leopard
- haunches of a lion
- feet off a hart (deer)
So is it
Orā¦.
donāt forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other peopleās mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?
these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, yāknow, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.
In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giantĀ whoās knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?
And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangsā¦ so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and arenāt hairy, you canāt fool us, pranksters!
Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, Iām pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or anotherĀ
It canāt explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if thereās a lot of interesting informations in it.
And itās not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!
By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?
Hereās a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, itās called
Ų“ŪŲ±ŲÆŲ§Łā (shirdal, ālion eagleā). Now, itās been the subject of some debate and itās not confirmed, but thereās a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as āa lion with an eagleās headā:
This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and wentĀ āoh fuck whatās that? some bigā¦. lizardy thing?ā and then created dragons.
Also many deagon legends are simply exaggerations of well-known living reptiles like snakes and crocodilians.a
It also explains why dragons can look so different in the myths of the various regions.
In asia, Dragons tend to look very long and snake like:
One of the most common dinosaurs that used to like in the asia region, so would have been the most common fossils found by people:
The Mamenchisaurus, this thing is just all neck and tail! You find just half a fossilised skeleton of this monster, you can easily end up thinking of a long snake-like beast.
South America also has legends snake-like dragons among some of its peoples:
What fossils from pre-historic south America could be found?
The Titanoboa, which can easily grow to be 40 feet long.
What fossils could have been found in that region:
Pterosaur, and Triceratops. Features of both sets of skeletons could have been merged into one legendary creature.
Then we get our European style dragon:
One of the most common fossils that could have been found was a
CetiosaurusĀ
which, despite being a herbivore, looked to have a mouth of sharp looking teeth, consistant with a dragons.
Dragons amongst the peoples of Africa are even more varied, but most revolve around some kind of giant snake-like creature. As a quick example, weāll take Dan Ayido Hwedo commonly found in West African mythology.
Fossils in that area could have been included the Aegyptosaurus:
A quick google search tells me that most Sauropods: well known for being long necked and long tailed, are found in Africa.
If you found only a half complete skeleton of this thing; which is likely, because itās rare to find a complete dinosaur skeleton, you could easily think of a giant snake monster.
No matter how you feel about the joker movie as a movie, you still have to admit that the way it chaotically threw off disney’s plans for endgame this year is so fucking funny? Like? The mouse schemed to end their last avengers movie on a cliffhanger so that endgame could make bank. They poured $365 million into the budget, and an additional $200 million+ into marketing to secure its spot as the most talked about comic book film of the year. And the way they peddled that film to get maximum discourse was astounding? The gay joe russo character, everyone speculating over who was going to die, the “best picture” and “oscar nom for Robert Downey Jr” campaigns. The way a board room of writers fumed in a room for a year deciding strategically what the least offensive story was for maximum appeal, and it was pg so that every living human being on earth could go see it. they released endgame in the theatres TWICE.
And then just.
this fuckign clown mcgee movie that NO ONE asked for or even wanted comes along - and from the director of the hangover movies too???? and everyone’s in a panic that this film is going to make people do crime?? like, everyone’s either talking about how great it is, or it’s trash - but even if you hated it, you’re still talking about it? And it was rated r, so it cut the audience who could go see the movie in half, and yet because it cost around $60 million to make and earned $1 billion+ at the box office, it still technically became the most profitable comic book movie to date lmao?? It’s not even connected to a batman movie and it somehow got that record. And now the oscar noms are out, and joker has 11 oscar noms meanwhile endgame got 1 nom for visual effects… lmao this movie really is the real life version of how it feels to get pranked by the joker’s trick
john boyega, oscar isaac, and kelly marie tran endured years of racist abuse and harassment (mostly) from r*ylos. they were sidelined from a film series in which they were originally promised much larger roles. finn was advertised as part of the new generation of jedi in the marketing for tfa, a film with also set up finn, rey, and poe as the new trio. kelly marie tran had to delete all of her social media, and oscar has repeatedly stated that, knowing what he knows now, he would have asked for poe to be killed off rather than have himself and the character treated the way he was. so if john wants to “lash out~” or whatever, he has every right. disney doesn’t own him, oscar, or kelly, and if any or all of them want to say “fuck disney and fuck the people who harassed us”, more power to them.
grow up and realize that not everything revolves around your fictional ship and your white faves.
