Are most "monsters" based on history?

yeah in west africa...

yeah in west africa they captured like a bunch of gorillas and brought them back...

No way they had that big horns

Narwals?

>dragon

>29.000 years ago

At this point australian aboriginies already lived isolated from the rest of human development for 50.000 years.

theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/dig-finds-evidence-of-aboriginal-habitation-up-to-80000-years-ago

Really makes you think.

What did people make of fossils before the renaissance? Did they find dinosaurs and think they are dragons like implies?

Yeah, some people think that dinosaur bones were the origin of the dragon 'myth'

>it is no joke named Dracorex Hogwartsia

>What did people make of fossils before the renaissance?

the Chinese used to grind the fossils they found into make my pee pee hard potion because they thought they where dragon bones.

>because they thought they where dragon bones

therefore it logicaly follows they make your dick diamonds for hours on end

Imagine all the shit lost because of idiot asians.

>stories of animals
Funny how that happens.
>Icelandic has nowadays two words that are, to some extent, used as synonyms for the same exotic animal, the camel, and it has had them at least since the second half of the 13th century. Although both terms, úlfaldi (which can also describe a dromedary) and kamel, appear in 13th-century Old Norse texts, comparative etymology reveals us that the former must be an older borrowing as it already appears in Gothic (ulbandus), as well as in cognate languages like Old English (olfend), Old High German (olbenta), Old Saxon (olbundeo), while the latter is, according to blöndal magnússon, a loan from Middle Low German kam.

>One of the earliest examples of Icelandic kamel appears in Karlamagnússaga ok kappa hans as it is preserved in manuscript NRA 61 (Riksarkivet, Oslo). This saga is one of the riddarasögur or chivalric sagas whose tradition started in the Old Norse linguistic area with the translation of French chansons de geste.It is likely to have been borrowed via Old French, i.e. chamel, rather than Middle Low German. If this is true, then the borrowed form was probably of Norman French origins with /ch/ realized as [k] as a similar outcome is to be found in Icelandic kær.

>Icelandic úlfaldi has instead a quite controversial and to some extent obscure etymology as not all scholars agree on the origo prima of this word. Etymological dictionaries like those by Jóhannesson, de Vries and Blöndal Magnússon for Icelandic but also Lehmann for Gothic, describe it as a borrowing from Latin elephas, which had in turn been borrowed from Greek and shifted its meaning from that of ‘elephant’ to ‘camel’ in the Germanic languages. It is nevertheless worth saying that a probable cognate with the meaning ‘elephant’ is present e.g. in Old English, elpend and ylpend, and Old Icelandic, olifant. Moreover, the term ‘elephant’ in ‘make an elephant out of a fly’ is generally translated in Icelandic with ‘úlfaldi’ whereas the Latin version is ‘elephantem ex musca facere’, already recorded by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Adagia.

>Blažek, quoting Puhvel, does not agree on any connection between Greek and Gothic regarding this word; in fact he writes: Gothic ulbandus “camel” with its counterparts in other Germanic languages is not borrowed from Greek, but it is connected with Hittite huwalpant- “hunchback, humpback” […]. The regular Germanic continuants of the Greek “elephant” are e.g. Old English elpend, ylpend, Old High German elpfant, elafant “elephant”, borrowed via Latin.

They believed they were just hairy black people.

>Gothic ulbandus “camel” with its counterparts in other Germanic languages is not borrowed from Greek, but it is connected with Hittite huwalpant- “hunchback, humpback”

oh, one of THESE guys?

I mean when you think about it, an elephant is basically a monster

The Virgin Unicorn
>Only likes mild temperatures, will hide away if it's too cold
>Has tiny horn that's only good for healing
>Only eats plums and other fruit, can't digest meat
>Is attracted to virgins, but is too shy to make a move on them
>Gets his horn stuck in trees
>Is preyed on by lions

The Chad Narwhal
>Lives in the Arctic, won't live anywhere unless it's freezing cold
>Has huge horn that's for striking fear into the hearts of his enemies
>Only eats the flesh of the finest fish
>Has his way with any scuba diver in the area
>Gets his horn stuck in the hearts of his foes
>Orcas wouldn't even dare to mess with him

>mfw it turns out that we could have cloned dinosaurs all along, but chinks destoyed all of the genetic material to give themselves erections

I'm a virgin who goes into the woods a lot and you're full of shit, fucking /x/tard.

IIRC there's a book in which some guy argues that the origin of the gryphon stems from scythians coming across the fossilised remains of triceratopses i.e quadrapeds with beaked faces.

Fucking nerds.

Apperently they'd would also kick the ass of any polar bear.

Victorian zookeepers originally fed gorillas meat and wondered why they kept dying

They are the jedi of the sea.

gtfo rebbit, and never come back.

No more idiotic than Europeans turning mummies into paint and medieval viagra.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunyip

I've heard about this as well

I've always wondered about this sort of thing as well, like the Chinese dragon was based on some ancient slink or newt.

I've also wondered about myths of places and events as well, like Atlantis based on that Greek island civilisation that was destroyed by a volcano, or was all the great flood myths around the world based on the sea level rise after the last ice age, the one that flooded the North Sea, Malacca Strait, etc?

>slink
*skink

>weebl stuff is now reddit
ok

Source?

Imagine being a Macedon foot soldier, thousands of miles from home, and one of these comes roaring over the horizon.

Easy to see how half-heard stories of "monsters" evolved.

>When you realize Mr Weeble predates reddit.

floods are based on the earth axis chaning and subsequent wobble, which re-distributed the sea.

it happens every few thousand years...and were due for another soon

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia

desu if I found pic related in my backyard I wouldn't think "oh yeah this is some kinda ancestral wingless bird"

>Canaanites
>Semites

Pick one

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>the great flood myths around the world based on the sea level rise after the last ice age, the one that flooded the North Sea, Malacca Strait, etc?

The envelope keeps getting pushed back farther and farther and mostly likely sites are along river drainage basins, which are under the seas nowadays.

>semitic speakers
>not semite

This elephant is mughal tho, you should have just posted some random indian elephant

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mmm good point that would explain why so many cultures share the same myth, there really was a "flood many cost was lost.

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awesome maps, do you have for america?

Only secret thing among virgins in the woods are the national porn stashes.

Does the entire Chinese culture revolve around their small penises and the efforts to enlarge them?

Even today, they're grinding up tiger prostates, rhino horns, gorilla hands, ... all for the benefit of their penises and libidos.
Name one endangered species and there's sure to be a Chinese penis enhancement myth attached to it.

Subhuman scum.

>let's see your naval fleet defend you now motherfucker

And there's a species of louse named Strigiphilus garylarsoni. Who gives a shit what nerds do with their obscure species?

I find it hard to believe that ancients would just stumble across a decently preserved dinosaur skull (doing what?). I could buy that cyclops was an imagining based on an elephant/mammoth skull, but this 'mythical creature is extinct species bones being badly misinterpreted' hypothesis seems to get thrown at everything.

How much xp would that thing be worth if you hunted it down with your bros? Seems like a pretty tough guy

Some of it's for the liver or the brain, too. This is like calling online viagra ads the focus of western culture.

possibly

>Blažek, quoting Puhvel
Dr Puhvel I'm praetorian guard

Some Christians think that the biblical behemoth was a dinosaur because he's described as having tail as thick as cedar trees iirc.

Megafauna shows up in aborigines folk tales.
American Indians and Inuits remember mammoths (known as stiff-legged bears),

Yes, the definition of unicorn used to be the Asian rhino, the rhinoceros unicornus iirc. Only in the past few centuries did the definition change to "magical horse with horn on its head".

And they have found fields where tens of thousands of mammoths all died at the same time.

>Megafauna shows up in aborigines folk tales.
No shit, the abos drove said megafauna to extinction.

But it's a difference between human presence at the time and these creatures appearing in folk tales. If I remember those were Megalania, some rhino and Bunyip.

>the great flood
>myth
Oh child, you'll learn soon enough.

Why do you think you are smarter than the ancient Chinese?

Basically. It makes sense too given the description. Leviathan is pretty hard to identify, which causes some to think it's a completely different creature. I believe the Behemoth is a brontosaurus, or of a close relative.

Some sort of underwater sea monster, likely the basis for many oceanfaring tales of underwater sea monsters. Apparently capable of fire underwater, which seems quite unique, although there are substances that ignite in the presence of water.

s4s

Well no, not really. Bears and boars and wolves are part of this part of Swedens folklore, although we had neither until recently, and still no beers.

The Gigabear

They put some much lotion in mummies that people went "holy shit, this mimmy is really good for my skin!"

Here's a massive protip for you. The estimates for the number of species that have existed throughout history are in the billions, most in the single billions but some sources claim as high as 50 billion. It's estimated that 86% of the species alive in the world today are completely undocumented and completely unknown to humanity. You can find literally anything that looks like anything if you spend god knows how much effort digging up fossils.

>People still think that Mao trying to eradicate these superstitions was somehow a bad thing

The smell and overall mannerisms being the reason for confusion.

Correction.

It was ceratopsids that lived in their part of the world, not sure what they had though. The Triceratops was a ceratopsid that is exclusive to what is now called North America.

Hopefully not for long. There are strong indications it is just a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus.

The Bahamas had these legends about little three-toed gremlins whose head spun around, and they found an extinct species of burrowing owl there. I wouldn't be surprised if almost all "mythical" creatures were memories of extinct animals. Maybe there was a crocodilian that lived in southern Europe that helped inspire dragons.

This seems a simpler explanation. based on a living animal and all.

Also
>capitalizing species name...

Or this.

Or the fact that people sometimes make things up.

Wasn't it part of folklore that dragons' bodies dissolved after death? I thought I remembered reading about that somewhere.

It all makes sense. It really all makes sense. You always try to build a civilization near water, especially at the outlet of a river basin. At some point, a great flood happens as sea levels rise in many of these areas. Maybe not at once, but in close enough time to one another that all of these numerous religions have flood myths.

Technology is lost and civilization as a whole is set back. I'm not saying they were crazily advanced, or even our level, and most likely didn't reach past industrialization. You'd have to have had a massive near-extinction level event that destroyed all remnants, whether covered or not covered by water today, and returned everyone back to primitive times. Also, going back to the flood myths, that so many of them are explained as a deity angry with societies gone bad, it may even be postulated that there was a widespread rejection of the old ways of life.

It would be incredible to find ancient civilizations that were flourishing far before the set date.

It doesn't even have to be dinosaur bones. Cyclops were created when someone found a Mastodon skull.
There's a centuries old church in Poland that claimed to have the bones of a dragon that used to live under the town. Turned out it was whale bones.

There are different dragon myths all over the world. It's likely that was part of one.

I can definitely see it.

Cyclopia is a real condition thought, and even though it rare it was likely to have been seen in humans or animals at some point in history

Mining for gold or other precious minerals.

I never especially thought rhinos made sense as theorigin for unicorns. They look nothing like horses. I could buy a gazelle though.

But like you said, sometimes people just make things up. Unicorns and gryphons dont have to be misinterpretations of real things, they could just be someone's invention.