stenAanden, stenaanden@feddit.dk

It has become common to claim various mythological creatures have been inspired by fossils, often as an established and certain fact.

There are two issues with these theories.

Firstly, whenever you research these claims, you ALWAYS run into the glaring fact that no single massive fossil has ever truly been confirmed to have been identified by any ancient culture. Texts discussing this idea seriously, always admit this, yet still presents fossils being an inspiration as an established fact.

Secondly, these claims almost always strain under closer examination. Dragons, are often seen as inspired by dinosaur fossils. However, their appearance, especially in early sources, differ significantly from dinosaurs. In near eastern ancient and antique sources they often look like giant snakes. In European medieval illustrations, they also take on mammalian traits. Chinese dragons have the face of a camel and the body of a snake. The depicting of dragons as dinosaur like is a very recent phenomena.

Another issue I personally find with this theory is that it’s not inconceivable that ancient peoples constantly stumbled upon massive fossils but simply didn’t identify them.

Look at this video, at around 4:11. Basically, some archeology youtubers are digging in a hill in Africa that is literally bursting with lystrosaurus (Permian mammal relative) fossils, and they even find two such skulls in a matter of hours. But even when you have this skull right in front of you, you still need an expert to identify that it even is a skull and what parts of the skull you are looking at and when.

This article discuss this idea and have some nice pictures.

Links to videos and articles discussing similar, specific claims: - Did Cyclopes Come From Elephants? - Why Protoceratops almost certainly wasn’t the inspiration for the griffin legend

Lastly, there are a few accounts that I find somewhat plausible. Like mammoth skeletons being found and seen as ancient monsters. Interestingly, we don’t have widespread myths about giant hairy elephants, so if mammoths were found, they didn’t inspire much mythology. And it does seem native Indians found trilobite fossils and referred to them as water bugs and wore them as gems for good luck

This video shows and interviews devotes at her altar in Tepito, Enriqueta Romero, a critical catholic priest and a large service to Santa Muerte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssI96kBTQF4

OH thanks. I was thinking of making a post about him soon too.

I didn’t know that… But I find them to be inspiring if anything.

You cannot believe how much I would want that!

A link to the book on archive is now included. It was eaten after I included the Djadek picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Revolt

During the Spanish colonization of the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico, the Franciscan missionaries and Spanish authorities tried to ban various aspects of traditional Pueblo life. This included many of their religious rituals like dances and Kachina dolls. A Tewa indian known as Pope organized a revolt among the various Pueblo peoples. This was difficult to organize as they lived in villages apart from each other and many spoke completely unrelated languages. However, in order to help organizing the revolt, runners were sent to the surrounding villages with a cord with knots. Each day the runners would release a knot and when they were all undone the revolt would start. The Pueblo Revolt succeeded, kicked the Spanish out, and became one of the first successful revolts against a European colonial power.

Today, many aspects of Pueblo life that Pope protected are still practiced by the Pueblo peoples.

I made another post where I detailed a chapter from the book where this wikipedia page gets a lot of its information: https://feddit.dk/post/20838665

Noted…

Oh cool. And Thanks!

If your translation is true, it could track with what we know from other folkloric sources at the same time, even if the exact details are a bit embelished. There are other texts that describe people swearing on the sun or moon, giving special attention to the full or new moon when rituals or certain actions are to be performed. Or watching the sun rise on certain special days.