Month: October 2018

While not as popular as other mythological creatures, the myth of the mermaid or siren is nonetheless well known. The idea of a woman (or, occasionally, a man) that lives underwater is fairly widespread. The origin of the myth can most likely be traced back to Assyria through their legends of Atargatis, the goddess of fertility. Throughout history mermaids have been connected to disasters such as floods, shipwrecks and storms in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Recent adaptations of the mermaid story have conditioned us to think of them as beautiful, kind women, and this is an accurate representations of mermaids in some cultures. In the Scandinavian countries there was mythical creature known as a selkie, half-human and half-seal. While on land a selkie would be in completely human form, and they were known for being excellent wives and mothers. However, some myths are significantly more sinister. Perhaps the most common of these darker myths is that of the siren, a Greek creature known for luring hapless sailors to their deaths with enchanting singing. Less well known is the African folklore of Mami Wata, a water spirit who steals men and kills those whose offerings do not please her. In fact, even Disney’s The Little Mermaid was based on a far darker story by Hans Christian Andersen which could charitably be described as a tragedy.

The most widely accepted reason for the mermaid myth are the aptly named sirenians such as manatees and dugongs. From a distance, these strange creatures could seem somewhat humanoid but with a fish-tail. Sadly, the most impressive sirenian of them all – Steller’s Sea Cow, has been driven to extinction. At an incredible 33 feet long and 24,000 pounds, it was so large that it never need fear predation until humans came along and wiped it out by the turn of the 19th century.

There is also another, more interesting in my opinion, possible origin for mermaid lore. An extremely rare condition known as sirenomelia manifests itself through the fusion of both lower legs upon birth. In many cases, this gives the appearance of a tail not unlike that of a fish. While it is a rare condition, a few isolated incidences thousands of years ago could easily have been blown out of proportion by the Assyrians before being appropriated by other cultures.

Sadly, it seems that the myth of the mermaid will have to remain just that: a myth. And it seems that even those creatures that are not mythical may pass into legends in the near future if we keep driving them instinct. Who knows, maybe in a century someone will be blogging about mythical creatures and write about animals like “tigers” or “wolves” as if they never existed at all.

Simon, Matt. “Fantastically Wrong: The Murderous, Sometimes Sexy History of the Mermaid.” Wired, Conde Nast, 19 July 2018, www.wired.com/2014/10/fantastically-wrong-strange-murderous-sometimes-sexy-history-mermaid/.

“The Lore of Murderous Mermaids.” F Yeah History, 6 Oct. 2017, fyeahhistory.com/2017/10/07/the-lore-of-murderous-mermaids/.

Winters, Riley. “Legends of the Selkies, Hidden Gems of Sea Mythology.” Ancient Origins, Ancient Origins, 8 Aug. 2016, www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/legends-selkies-hidden-germs-sea-mythology-006409.

This post is about a mythological creature that most of the readers (if not all) will be unfamiliar with: the vanara. In Hindu mythology vanaras were half-man half-ape creatures who played a pivotal role in the Ramayana, a Hindu epic. The basic premise of the Ramayana goes like this: Rama was the prince of Ayodhya, but was exiled for fourteen years due to the plotting of his stepmother Kaikeyi. He traveled through forests with his wife Sita and younger brother Lakshmana, but eventually Sita was kidnapped by the demon king of Lanka – Ravana. The majority of the epic consists of Rama trying to rescue Sita from Ravana, and in the course of traveling to Lanka he meets the vanaras who end up agreeing to help him rescue Sita.

Throughout the Ramayana the vanaras are described as being similar to humans in their intetwlligence and other characteristics, but simultaneously ape-like in appearance with fur and tails. In addition, they were said to have strength and agility beyond that of a normal man which is one of the reasons they were able to stand against the demonic armies of Lanka. Some of the vanaras were said to be direct descendants of the gods. For example, the most famous and powerful of the vanaras, Lord Hanuman, was the son of the wind-god Vayu and was known display god-like powers himself. In fact, he shows up in another Indian epic, the Mahabharata which occurs thousands of years later, implying that he is immortal. 

There are a few different theories about the origin of the myth of the vanaras. Obviously there is the possibility that they were purely mythological. This is the simplest answer, and therefore probably the correct one. But, ignoring this for the sake of argument, there are a few feasible alternatives. The word vanara itself is derived from two Sanskrit words: vana (“forest”) and nara (“man”), therefore meaning forest-man or forest-dweller. This leads us to the conclusion that the vanaras were simply a race of men who lived in the forest. Perhaps the part about them being monkeys and having superhuman traits was simply a form of extreme artistic license. To further support this conclusion, the word used for “tail” in the original Ramayana could be translated to have actually meant “penis.” Notably, none of the female vanaras (of which there were few in the epic) were described as having tails.

Another possibility is that there was some other species of hominid living on the Indian peninsula thousands of years ago. It is possible that our ancestors encountered, for instance, the Neanderthal species. Neanderthals had similar skeletal structure as humans which makes them look alike, but there were some differences such as the widened brow and flattened nose. Interestingly enough, these are also features that chimpanzees have. Perhaps we encountered another hominid species thousands of years ago and preserved our experience with oral retellings, which have a tendency to get less and less accurate over time.

As I said earlier, in all likelihood the vanaras were but a myth. But there is some evidence to say that they did exist; either as a tribe of humans or some other species of hominid.

While perhaps not as iconic as some of the other myths that I have written about previously, the Amazons are nonetheless fairly well-known. Although today the name “Amazon” is more likely to bring to mind online shopping, it meant something completely different to the ancient Greeks. To them, the Amazons were fearsome female warriors. Now, pop culture would tell you that the Greeks believed that the Amazons cut off and cauterized their breasts so they didn’t get in the way of shooting arrows. But this idea is false, Amazones was not even a Greek word. The idea that it meant “lacking breasts” was invented by the Greek philosopher Hellenikos when he tried to combine a foreign word a that meant without and the word mazos that sounded somewhat similar for the Greek word for breast. However, this idea was rejected by his contemporaries at the time and was only taken up again relatively recently. Many of their queens were prominent characters in the stories of heroes such as Heracles, Theseus, Achilles and Odysseus. Even the misogynistic Greeks respected their capabilities, to the point where in the Iliad Odysseus’s men would boast about having killed them in battle, seeing it as a feat of arms.

In fact, over time the Amazons became more and more important to the Greeks, specifically the Athenians. They believed that the defeat of the Amazons was one of the major catalysts for the foundation of Athens itself. The only problem was…they had no proof. Eventually the historian Herodotus postulated that the Amazons eventually intermarried with the Scythians, and their descendants became nomadic warriors known as the Sauromatians. After this there was no more real evidence to support this idea until a U.S-Russian archaeology team discovered nearly 150 Sauromatian graves near the Russia-Kazakhstan border. The female corpses showed signs of being warriors; bow legged from riding on horseback and often buried with their weapons. In addition, they were nearly 5 feet 6 inches which was extremely tall for that time period.

In all likelihood the Amazons did exist in some capacity, most likely as the Scythians and their descendants. The Scythians were a nomadic people who ranged from the Black Sea to Mongolia, and about one-third of their women seemed to have fought beside their men. They had a tribal society in which everyone was expected to pull their own weight, which explains why both men and women were taught how to fight. So, while the idea of an all-female society that mutilated themselves to increase efficiency in battle may not have been true, the Amazons were a very real group of people. They were fearsome enough warriors that the Greeks respected them, and even told legends about them.