Mythical creatures entirely myth, or do you think some may have been based in reality

[Mr Slugger]

Didn't really know where this should go, so I figured religion probably fit this best. Years ago I used to write scifi/fantasy, and one of the subjects I liked is coming up with real ways to explain mythical creatures in a real way, even though some were still not really real. Like for instance Golems were machines that people created because they had a better understanding of tech, but people thought they were magic. Obviously still scifi/fantasy, but sounded better than making a clay statue come to life.

But looking at more realistic things. Do you think that some may have really been things that existed? Whether by being real or by being a freak of nature.

Like for instance Giants I think definitely existed. They probably weren't 9- 10 feet tall, but I think when normal people are under 5 feet and someone is born and ends up growing to be 7-8 feet tall then you're a giant to smaller people. And hobbits, dwarfs existed. I mean they exist today as well, but I'm sure back in medieval times they were thought to be different, and probably ended up having to hang with their own kind. But those are the simple ones. Leviathans were known to attack boats on the open sea. But could they have been giant squids, that were just attacking boats before modern boats with propellers, and people on board that had weapons that could kill a squid? Maybe they were more aggressive in the past? Or unicorns maybe were some sort of weird one horned deer that people saw?

I mean there's some, like say a minotaur if they existed at all they were a group of warriors that ran around with bull's head on their heads or something.

Your thoughts?

[Rapscallion]

The myth of centaurs are generally believed to be the reaction of people to the first cavalry, if memory serves.

Some things, though, such as the pick-n-mix creatures (hippogryph etc) were pretty much an attempt by one storyteller to outdo the creature created by another one, or at least that's my suspicion.;

Rapscallion

[BroomJockey]

Personally, I'd love it if say, dragons had been based on reality. They're one of those creatures that keeps showing up in different cultures, though changed between. They always seem to be large flying lizards, however, despite other differences. That'd point to at least some base creature out there. Maybe a distant cousin of dinosaurs, or some such. However, I think that while many creatures do have some base creature that was probably a genetic freak accident, or was half-glimpsed and then shaped, twisted, and grew through the telling, the physical reality would resemble nothing of the stories.

[lordlundar]

Little of column A little of Column B. Like most legends, mythical creatures have a grain of truth in them, but has been blown out of the original proportions by storytellers. Considering that almost all the stories in that time period came from minstrels and vocal storytellers as opposed to written word, the story is never the same every time, and is often embellished to garner attention.

Take the Dragon for example. originally, they were quadruped, land based giant lizards. Now I'm willing to bet that the size was embellished to make the heroes exploits more fantastic. (a 30 foot lizard being more impressive than a 1 foot lizard) Over time, Size simply was insufficient (of course by this time, they could be compared to small mountains) so the wings and fire breathing were added on, as was a semblance of intelligence (to make them malevolent as opposed to simply bestial) and even those were the grandfather stories to the current representations.

So basically, yes they did exist, though most likely not as fantastical creatures and certainly not what you would expect if you saw one.

[Nyoibo]

And of course if someone found a fossil skull centuries ago what else would they think but monster or dragon.

[joe hx]

when people tell stories, even when they're trying to be truthful, they tend to exaggerate. in each retelling of the story, especially when it goes from person to person to even another person, exaggeration increases.

example: customers who have been waiting "an hour" when in fact it's only been five minutes. sometimes I think they honestly believe it's been an hour

so, in each retelling of a hunting story, the creatures become even larger, more dangerous, and exotic. hell, I guess it's like catching "the big one" when you're fishing

[Lady_Foxfire]

An article in Muse Magazine (a science and arts magazine for kids that I had a subscription to when i was a kid) suggested that the concept of cyclopes could have been a result of someone seeing an elephant skull without knowing what an actual elephant looked like (like if one had been washed across the Mediterranean). They might have mistaken the trunk-hole for a single giant eye socket, and interpreted the actual eye sockets on the side of the skull as ear holes.

[Lace Neil Singer]

There was a story in England (it's in one of my books, so I don't have a link, sorry) where a tale was told of a dragon coming out of a local stream, killing several sheep and then vanishing into a nearby weir. It was described as having a large body, a long mouth filled with sharp teeth, a long tail and four stumpy legs.

Sound familiar? It should; a crocodile that had been given to the King of England at the time had escaped from its pen and this is where it ended up. However, the villagers hadn't ever clapped eyes on a crocodile before so they naturally thought of a dragon.

Mermaids came from sailors who caught sight of manatees rising above the waves with their babies in their flippers. Sailors who must have been at the rum in order to see a fat heavy manatee as a beautiful mermaid with flowing locks. XD So called unicorn horns were sold for a lot of money; they were actually narwhal horns. Ibexes were also mistaken for unicorns. Lycanthropy makes people think they can change into wolves.

There are lots of myth creatures who have very non mythical roots.

[Bloodsoul]

I recall mamoth/mastadon/elephant skulls being mistaken for the skulls of cyclopi, with the hole for the trunk being the single eye-socket?

[AFPheonix]

I don't know about the elephant thing, but it's possible that various women at different times gave birth to babies with cyclopia, giving rise to the myth as the story got told to other villages.

[Mr Slugger]

Yeah while rare I mean if someone gave birth to a baby with that condition, every if it didn't survive I'm sure it would have scared the shit out of medieval people.

And I think that's more where I was trying to go with this thread. I know about the elephant skulls, which is just imagination running while as to what it was. I'm talking more about like say if tree man was born in 1400AD that people might actually think he was a walking tree, and if the condition was say genetic and he passed it on to his tree son and tree daughter eventually you'd have a group of walking trees until the primitives got scared and killed the whole group.

[Nyoibo]

Sailors who must have been at the rum in order to see a fat heavy manatee as a beautiful mermaid with flowing locks.

Or just been at sea way too long.

[bunnyboy]

Oddly when you take a look at how dragons seem to be formed (as one show on one of those educational channels put it) it seems that they always seem to have our biggest fears or the things that awe us into submission in mind... serpent check, talons like birds of prey check, (eastern) a mane like a lion check.
basically they are the mythologized apex predators of the world and (at least in western cultures) the highest concentration of the chaos of the universe...

so real, no, maybe exaggerations, and sometimes, a bit of truth embellished by tale tellers over centuries.

[Flyndaran]

I don't know about the elephant thing, but it's possible that various women at different times gave birth to babies with cyclopia, giving rise to the myth as the story got told to other villages.

That defomity is far too rare to really have caused myth to spring up around it.
Elephant's strange skulls are most likely the reason for cyclopes and other giant myths. Ever seen such a skull? It really does look like a humanoid skull with a centrally located giant eye.

I've heard that unicorns came from rhinos. The earliest myths have them as giant and violent.

Dragons likely came from dinosaur bones and our innate fear of strange mixture animals. Flying lizards are pretty up there for demonic imagery.

The so called gilled deer of Laotion myth turned out to be a real tiny deer with weird nostril slits living within a stone's throw of civilization. Little mythical critters could still be out there.
My father claimed to have seen a sasquatch, but I just can't believe that such a giant primate exists where there is no fossil evidence at all.

[AdminAssistant]

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Yeah. I don't believe in absolutes or that we can ever possibly know all there is to know, especially when it comes to history and especially when it comes to antiquity.