An Official Guest Post by multi-genre author Vanessa Finaughty: Welcome to Day 4 of the Wizard of Ends virtual book tour!
Could these fantasy creatures have been real?
It’s easy to imagine some fantasy creatures having once been real, because they look so similar to real animals. For example, the mythical unicorn is merely a horse with a horn. This is not so hard to imagine, because horses are real and there are real animals that have a single horn, such as rhinos and narwhals. The stranger ones, especially hybrids such as the griffon or centaur, are harder to believe. However, many real animals, such as the platypus, giant squid and kangaroo, were once thought too fantastical to be real – that is, until solid evidence was discovered.
Today, we’ll briefly look at whether or not the unicorn, centaur, griffon and cyclops could be real, now-extinct animals/beings.
Unicorn
Unicorns are portrayed as white horses or goat-like animals with a single spiralled horn protruding from the forehead, and are associated with magic, which is usually said to be in the horn. Unicorns are typically depicted as innocent and pure, symbolising courage and strength, although older texts depict them as quite vicious creatures that could take down a lion. The belief in unicorns seems to have originated in Europe and Asia, except the Asian unicorns were said to have a deer’s body, a horse’s legs, a cow’s hooves and tail, and a horn.
Explorers of the 16th and 17th centuries actively looked for evidence of unicorns. While none was actually found, many sailors did come back from their travels with spiralled narwhal horns that they claimed to be unicorn horns (and sold to the unsuspecting public), and this served as ‘evidence’ to the general public for quite some time – until the existence of narwhals became widely known. The descriptions of unicorns might have been based on real animals such as the rhinoceros (which is actually a distant relative of the horse) – e.g. the extinct woolly rhino and the extinct Siberian unicorn (ancient rhino). It could even be from some other horned animal seen from the side (where its two horns might appear as one).
I think that unicorns were real creatures that were not properly described. For example, the Roman writer, Pliny the Elder, described the rhinoceros as having ‘the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a boar ... it has a single black horn which projects from the middle of its forehead’. The Greek physician, Ctesias, described what he called the ‘Indian ass’ as being a ‘four-legged beast’ that had one long horn ‘with healing properties’. The Italian explorer, Marco Polo, described unicorns as: “They have a single large, black horn in the middle of the forehead … They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at.”
Now consider that most modern rhinos are reasonably solitary animals that tend to steer clear of humans, which fits with unicorns being known as elusive. Add the fact that, even today, traditional African and Chinese medicine practitioners believe in rhino horn’s medicinal properties…
Centaur
Centaurs are half-horse, half-human creatures of Greek mythology. Early depictions showed them as humans with a horse’s body and hind legs connected to the back, while later art portrayed them as horses with the torso and head of a man. Regardless, they were said to be rather savage.
There’s no fossil evidence of such a hybrid existing, but we do have some accounts of centaurs, starting in around AD 41–54, when it’s said that officials from Arabia captured one of a herd of centaurs in the remote mountain wilderness of Saune and gifted it to an Egyptian emperor. It’s said that the creature died due to being out of its natural habitat. Accounts then claim that it was embalmed in honey and exhibited in the emperor’s palace for about a century (through the rule of nine other emperors). This creature was described by many in numerous ancient texts. There were even some claims in Ancient Greece that centaurs were born from normal mares – sort of like a genetic anomaly.
We know hybrid animals are indeed possible, such as the liger (lion-tiger hybrid), the zebroid (zebra and another equine) and many others alive in today’s world. However, these real hybrids generally don’t take on the head of one animal and body of another, for example. Rather, they have the body of one and some features of another. For example, the liger looks like a lion and has a tiger’s stripes, and the zebroid has the stripes of a zebra and the body of the equine with which it is crossed.
Unless we discover some evidence of ancient genetic engineering on a super-advanced level, I think centaurs were probably misidentified horsemen – seen from a distance, it’s possible it appeared as if the horses had men’s torsos and heads. Still, even that theory falls a bit flat to me. As for the accounts of them, perhaps they were faked to gain publicity in the ancient world, such as this centaur fossil faked by Bill Willers.
Griffin
The griffon is said to have the head and wings of an eagle, and the body, hind legs and tail of a lion. They are often depicted as guardians of treasure, and symbolise strength and power. Tales of the griffon come from all over the ancient world, including North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Finland, Persia and all over Europe.
Some believe that the belief in griffons stemmed from ancient discoveries of protoceratops fossils. The protoceratops had a beak-like jaw and was smaller than a lion. Although the protoceratops did not have wings, proponents of this theory believe that its bony frill or long shoulder blades might have been mistaken for wings (easy to believe when people of the time thought that anything with a beak must be a bird). It’s theorised that perhaps ancient nomads came across protoceratops fossils while prospecting for gold. However, depending on whom you ask, the timing and location of fossil finds might or might not be off. The main problem I have with this theory is the idea of a bunch of nomads noticing a small part of a fossil sticking out of the soil, recognising it as something interesting and then going to all the effort of excavating the full fossil. Even with modern tools, this type of excavation is a huge task.
Interestingly, although some ancient peoples fobbed off ostrich eggs as griffon eggs, there are no accounts of anyone in the ancient world having seen a living griffon. It’s possible that griffons were the invention of an imaginative mind, with the legend designed to deter would-be thieves from robbing the elite’s coffers.
Cyclops
Described as one-eyed giants, the cyclops first appeared in Ancient Greek mythology. They were described as savage cannibals who lived in caves in a lawless faraway land and survived by herding goats and sheep. The cyclops appeared in many Ancient Greek, Roman and Babylonian texts and art, among others, with the Odysseus story featuring often. The Ancient Greek poet, Homer, also doesn’t refer to all cyclopes as having one eye.
Is it possible that a race of one-eyed giants once existed? There are indeed cases of gigantism – humans born with hormonal disorders that render them ‘giants’. However, this is extremely rare and it’s highly unlikely that so many of them would be born close enough together that they could form an entire community. There is also a condition called cyclopia, which is also an extremely rare disorder in which the two eye cavities form as one cavity or form very close together – but babies born with this disorder don’t usually survive more than a few hours after birth (and are usually stillborn), because the brain also does not develop normally. Thus, I think it’s improbable that either of these disorders are any type of proof of the existence of a race of one-eyed giants.
It could be that ancient peoples found the skull of a Deinotherium giganteum, which is a distant relative of the modern elephant. This huge animal had a large nasal opening in the centre of its skull that some speculate might have been misinterpreted as an eye socket. Personally, I don’t see it, because the skull looks nothing like a human skull.
I think the most likely explanation is that someone in the ancient world saw a person with a genetic disorder and assumed that there were a whole race of people just like that.
What do you think? Could any of these creatures have actually existed once upon a time?
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Just remember that any and all Guest Posts must adhere to the high moral spirit of my mostly humble blog. This does not mean that I have to agree with everything you say; it merely must be well-written and thought-out.
