Maybe medieval people happened upon a T-Rex fossil and came to a relatively logical conclusion that dragons existed.
I’ve read a couple books on this actually, thats exactly what happened. Also cyclops are from looking at bones from a certain type of baby elephant. The giant note hole and tiny eyes made it look like a single eye.
Yep, can confirm! And what’s even funnier to me is that back in the dark ages, Greek people used to find a lot of prehistoric bear skeletons – and those look exactly like human skeletons, except they’re like eight feet tall or something – so they naturally assumed those were the heroes of legend, and made armour and clothes for them and reburied them with the most splendid and sacred religious ceremonies they could think of? Fast forward five centuries, Athens’ all modern and rational, philosophers and scientists aren’t taking any shit from anyone – but the problem is, people will randomly find graves containing giant-ass warriors, so that’s something that can’t be explained away and yeah, demigods were a thing and yeah, they used to be eight feet tall and sorry I don’t make the rules.
Some scientists suspect that the origin of the cyclops myths came about because of elephant skulls, which are vaguely human in shape but with a honking big hole in the middle for the trunk but easily mistakable for an eye socket without any flesh
These hypotheses are heavily debated so I want to be clear when posting that this is in no way 100% fact.
…but I also want to add that the dinosaur Protoceratops or similar genera are hypothesized by folk scientist Adrienne Mayor to have been partially responsible for the griffin myth.
(via wikipedia commons)
I mean, yeah, I can sorta see how someone could mistake that for some half-bird, half-mammal beast, especially with incomplete remains that fossils almost always have as well as the lack of knowledge of what a dinosaur is.
Whether or not it’s true? Who really knows at this point, but it’s fun to think about.
Adrienne Mayor has a book out called The First Fossil Hunters on this exact topic if anyone is interested. I haven’t read it myself though so I couldn’t tell you how good or bad it is!
I wonder when exactly it was that Star Trek stopped being perceived as light, fluffy, not-really-legitimate sci fi that ~housewives~ liked and started being seen as serious nerd business that girls had to keep their gross cooties off.
Also when did the Beatles start to be remembered as rock legends rather than a silly boy band teenaged girls liked?
When men decided they liked them.
this is seriously exactly how it happened. Women were actually the first rock and roll ‘critics’ because they would write in to women’s papers and magazines to share and discuss what their kids were listening to when men still thought it was trashy teeny bopper music. once it became a lucrative, mainstream genre men shoved women out of the space. Men also tend to be gatekeepers once they move into formerly female spaces – early trek fandom was incredibly open and inclusive; women would set up fan get togethers in their own houses to discuss the show or invite the actors to visit before conventions became a thing, and then were huge in organizing the first conventions – but now the stereotype of a trekkie is a nerdy white dude who scoffs derisively at casual fans and newbies with his encyclopedic and pedantic knowledge of trek
i am so delighted by cats, i love that we have little bendy animals that climb all over everything and break shit and dart around our homes at top speed and we’re totally cool with it like “ah yes, there it goes again”
odin is like “when thor was born the sun shone bright upon his beautiful face. i found loki on the sidewalk outside a taco bell”
Oðinn spake:
Bright the sun shone | at the time of Þor’s birth, And bathed his count’nance fair. Loki, wolf-father, | the trickster, the liar, I found on the cold pavement While returning in glory | from a grand hunt For a 3 AM quesadilla.
Steel Phoenix Studios 