Can we have a historical monster/cryptid thread?
I can't imagine being an uneducated Slavic peasant and genuinely believing a bus-sized lizard could come down from the sky, light everything I own and love on fire, and move along with me being completely powerless to stop it.
If anything dragons are proof of ttraditional intelligence, as dinosaurs confirm the dragon theory has been at least 90% accurate with little evidence.
Not exactly a monster but what the heck.
en.wikipedia.org
>Black Volga (Polish: czarna wołga) refers to an urban legend widespread in Poland, Russia,[1] Belarus, Ukraine, and Mongolia,[2] mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. It was about a black (or in some versions red) Volga limousine that was allegedly used to abduct people, especially children. According to different versions, it was driven by priests, nuns, Jews, vampires, satanists or Satan himself. The car is described as having white wheel rims, white curtains or other white elements.
>Children were kidnapped to use their blood as a cure for rich Westerners or Arabs[2] suffering from leukemia; other variants used organ theft as the motive, combining it with another famous legend about kidney theft by the KGB. The legend surfaced again in the late 20th century, with a BMW or Mercedes car taking the Volga's place, sometimes depicted with horns instead of wing mirrors. In this version, the driver would ask passers-by for the time and kill them when they approached the car to answer. In another version of the legend, the victim would die at the same time a day later.
>bus-sized lizard could come down from the sky, light everything I own and love on fire, and move along with me being completely powerless to stop it.
Are you talking about dragons? Because dragons were not isolated to Slavic mythology.
Some people think trolls from Scandinavian folklore are the folk memory of neanderthals
Didn't say they were
Please explain further. I hope you have sources other than that crazy dude who thinks they had serpent eyes
Japan has the Tsuchinkono for a more comfy cryptid: it's just a fat/flat snake that can jump really far (and in some versions of the myth can travel by biting the end of its tail and rolling like a child's hoop). It's name means "The child of the hammer" (probably because it looks like a snake that got smashed by a hammer).
I want one
So does Japan. It's kind of their Bigfoot, in that a lot of fringe types comb the mountains every year looking for it in the hopes of furthering science/making bank. The closest you can get in real life is the Ōsanshōuo (lit. "Great pepper fish"), or Japanese Giant Salamander: the second-largest amphibian in the world, at 5 feet long on average. They live in rivers, where they hunt by burying themselves in the silt on the bottom and eating any fish stupid enough to swim by. I bring them up as I have a sneaking suspicion that the physical appearance of the Tsuchinkono in legend may have been based on an attempt to explain what an Ōsanshōuo looks like to someone who's never seen a salamander.
>5 feet long on average
>the second-largest amphibian in the world
Jesus Christ, what's the largest then?
At SIX feet long on average, that would be the CHINESE Giant Salamander, believed to be a "living fossil" from the Salamander family (in the same way the Coelacanth is a living fossil fish). Much like their island cousin, the Chinese Giant Salamander lives in rivers and eats fish, although it's known to be more aggressive. Unfortunately, a mixture of pollution, overfishing of Chinese rivers, and the fact that Chinese businessmen will eat/snort ANYTHING if someone says it'll give them a boner mean that it's an endangered species now. Pic related: it's of "Karlo", one of the first members of his species discovered! At 200 years old, he holds the record of Oldest Known Amphibian. You can see him at the Swiss National Zoo, if you're a curious eurofriend.
How many fucking animals are endangered because of Chinese folk medicine bullshit? Those manlets are a blight on the planet.
Interesting.
Adding on to the dragon discussion, there's at least one area (near the Postojna cave in modern Slovenia), where people would find olms that were brought out from the cave by a river and thought they were baby dragons.
>pic related
There's also a legend of a city that centuries ago supposedly sat in a different location but was destroyed. At least in Slovene legends, dragons are born when a rooster lays an egg. The one time this happened in this city in question, the dragon destroyed the city by bringing an avalanche upon it. There is some proof that the settlement in the approximate location being destroyed by an avalanche is true so the dragon legend is a way medieval people explained the avalanche. Perhaps there was a storm at the time.
One must understand that many natural occurences were not yet explained back in the day.
nigga wat
i thought some said they are stray cats as they jumps
>driven by priests, nuns, Jews, vampires, satanists or Satan himself
Interesting spectrum
The Aztecs had the Ahuizotl, a black slippery furred creature similar to an otter, lives in the waters and eats fingernails, ash and hair. Has a hand at the end of it's tail.
And totally NOT BASED AROUND communist secret police who used to take people away in curatined cars.
The idea of trolls being based on half-remembered encounters with neanderthalers isn't really that far fetched when you remember that the Australian aborginals have been able to preserve memories of Australia's ancient coastline for thousands of years.
sci-news.com
I googled this expecting to see something like that monkey from Pokemon, but JESUS CHRIST!
en.wikipedia.org
>According to the folklore of that region, the Penanggalan is a detached female head capable of flying about on its own. As it flies, the stomach and entrails dangle below it, and these organs twinkle like fireflies as the Penanggalan moves through the night.
>landslides caused by dragons
Nice, never heard of that. Found two examples with a simple google search.
Also IIRC it was the Ljubljana dragon that was the inspiration behind most of the more famous, early dragon lore and thus the reason why the most popular dragon depiction is 4 legs + wings and this kind of body.
I have a similar theory that the three years of winter before Ragnorok are based on the last Ice age, or at least a crazy cold winter that whiped out most of Scandanavia/nothern Europe's population
I also have heard that Andaman Islanders have legends that detail the phases of Tsunamis, and that this saved a lot of them during the last tsunami in the Bay of Bengal because they knew it was coming hours before it actually hit
I wouldn't know about that. All I know is that it's said the dragon represents the one killed by Jason from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts when they passed through.
I don't know where you're from and if you're aware of this but as a fun fact, some call the bridge from the pic the mother in law bridge. But I guess that's only semi-related to the topic of monsters and cryptids.
More softcore version of it would be the flip Manananggal.
>The manananggal is said to favor preying on sleeping, pregnant women, using an elongated proboscis-like tongue to suck the hearts of fetuses, or the blood of someone who is sleeping.
>The severed lower torso is left standing, and is the more vulnerable of the two halves. Sprinkling salt, smearing crushed garlic or ash on top of the standing torso is fatal to the creature. The upper torso then would not be able to rejoin itself and would perish by sunrise.
well now thats unsettling.
>dragon theory has been at least 90% accurate with little evidence