Instead of sidetracking the Qin Pike Square vs Macedonian Phalanx any further with my musings on the origins of mythical creatures and beings, I'm making a separate thread.
Basically, the idea is to use philosophical razors to come up with likelier, more common sense explanations regarding mythical creatures and beings, that have been passed down to us from our forebears through myth and legend.
Werewolves
Satyrs
Centaurs
Zombies and Vampires
Unicorns
Griffins
Dragons
Basically, the idea is to use philosophical razors to come up with likelier, more common sense explanations regarding mythical creatures and beings, that have been passed down to us from our forebears through myth and legend.
Werewolves
- people who had never seen a man/person wearing a wolf pelt before, saw a person wearing one
- their mind simply couldn't understand what they were seeing, they had no concept of the idea that men could wear wolf pelts, so their fertile imagination led them to believe they saw a man/wolf hybrid. Dogs used to much more closely resemble wolves for most of the 20-30,000 years they've been domesticated, so dog can be swapped for wolf in this scenario.
- this applies to other types of "were"-animals, such as werebears
- could, in addition, be a case of forced perspective/nearsightedness, where, from a distance, forced perspective merges a man and wolf in the eyes of the "witness", thus leading to belief in a being, henceforth known as a "werewolf"
Satyrs
- either a nearsighted person, and/or a person who has a fertile imagination, is the "witness"
- this person has possibly never seen a goat before, perhaps at the time of the earliest domestication (e.g. Europeans seeing Middle Eastern origin farmers with goats for the first time)
- forced perspective merges man and goat, in their view, or they see something as simple as a goat shepherd standing behind a goat
- man and goat appear to be a single animal, henceforth known as "satyrs" in many nations
Centaurs
- sedentary agriculturists of south Asia and the Middle East, thousands of years ago, are the "witnesses"
- the result of first contact between sedentary agriculturists, who had never seen horsemen, encountering horsemen from the Eurasian Steppe for the first time
- they couldn't conceive of the idea of a man riding a horse, so instead of correctly perceiving one animal (a man) riding and controlling another animal (a horse), they honestly, but mistakenly perceived this combination to be an entirely different type of animal that they had never seen before, henceforth known as a 'centaur', a strange hybrid of man and horse
- future sightings of horsemen in the fog, or at night, mistakenly perceived to be the centaurs of myth and legend, reinforced the mistaken belief in centaurs for millennia to come
Zombies and Vampires
- a person gets infected with the rabies virus, which prior to the invention of modern medicine, was incurable and a death sentence to anyone who became infected
- infected person goes insane, and they are no longer in possession of their higher human faculties
- the symptoms of the rabies virus makes the infected person appear to be "undead"
- infected person, much like a rabid animal, goes around biting people, thus infecting them and "turning" them, and these henceforth came to be known as "vampires" and "zombies"
Unicorns
- simply a warhorse that was fitted with a spear on its face, for use in stabbing enemy soldiers with
- in addition to this, misconceptions about rhinoceroses by people who had never seen one, a misconception inadvertently created by a several thousand mile game of telephone (aka Chinese whispers), across the centuries
- beliefs created by 2) only served to reinforce and undergird legends that arose from 1), and this new creature henceforth came to be known as a "unicorn"
Griffins
- either a nearsighted person, and/or a person who has a fertile imagination, is the "witness"
- this person saw an eagle perched on a lion
- and/or forced perspective merges lion and eagle, and instead of seeing two separate animals, from their honest yet mistaken perceptions and understandings, they are seeing an entirely new creature, henceforth referred to in many nations as a "griffin"
Dragons
- people find dinosaur fossils, and having no concept of the vastness of time, assume whatever creature they came from must exist contemporaneously with them
- these people have naturally seen the skeletons of animals that had recently died/been slaughtered for meat, which reinforces the idea that if there's a skeleton, it must be a contemporaneous creature
- dinosaur fossils become the bones of a recently deceased dragon, perhaps slain by some hero, and people come up with rich legends and myths regarding the nature of dragons, such as where they live (caves, where the fossils were found), what they eat (their large skulls/jaws mean they must eat men in one single bite), their personalities (sharp teeth and resemblance to reptiles/crocodiles must mean dragons are naturally carnivorous, dangerous, and possibly evil beings)
- because the fossils were found in proximity to precious and other metals, in places such as caves, legends are created regarding the greed and avarice of dragons
- the fact that no one has ever seen a living dragon, or cannot prove it, means that dragons are extraordinarily intelligent, tricky, and crafty beings, and are masters of keeping themselves hidden
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