a-book-of-creatures:

randomslasher:

injuries-in-dust:

autisticexpression:

excessively-english-jd:

historyisntboring:

weasowl:

glamourweaver:

gallusrostromegalus:

a-book-of-creatures:

cringe-incarnate:

a-book-of-creatures:

a-book-of-creatures:

Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going “what the fuck… what the fuck…”

Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelers’ tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).

So unicorns are real

behold… a unicorn

I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASED  to find out this is, in fact, the case.

Questing Beast

- Neck of a snake

- body of a leopard

- haunches of a lion

- feet off a hart (deer)

So is it

Or….

don’t forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other people’s mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?

these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, y’know, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.

In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giant  who’s knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?

And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangs… so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and aren’t hairy, you can’t fool us, pranksters!

Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, I’m pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or another 

It can’t explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if there’s a lot of interesting informations in it.

And it’s not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!

By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?

Well-

- the big nasal opening kinda looks like an eye if you have no idea what kind of animal had this kind of skull (you can read more about this theory in this old National Geographic article if you like).

Here’s a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, it’s called شیردال‌ (shirdal, “lion eagle”). Now, it’s been the subject of some debate and it’s not confirmed, but there’s a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as “a lion with an eagle’s head”:

Check the “origin” part of the wikipedia page for “griffin” if you want to find more sources for this theory and for the arguments against it! Again, it’s just a theory, but I think it’s super cool.

This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and went “oh fuck what’s that? some big…. lizardy thing?” and then created dragons.

Also many deagon legends are simply exaggerations of well-known living reptiles like snakes and crocodilians.a

It also explains why dragons can look so different in the myths of the various regions.

In asia, Dragons tend to look very long and snake like:

One of the most common dinosaurs that used to like in the asia region, so would have been the most common fossils found by people:

The Mamenchisaurus, this thing is just all neck and tail! You find just half a fossilised skeleton of this monster, you can easily end up thinking of a long snake-like beast.

South America also has legends snake-like dragons among some of its peoples:

What fossils from pre-historic south America could be found?

The Titanoboa, which can easily grow to be 40 feet long.

In North America there is the Piasa Bird

Which wikipedia tells me comes from “ the large Mississippian culture city of Cahokia,” it’s describes as

What fossils could have been found in that region:

Pterosaur, and Triceratops. Features of both sets of skeletons could have been merged into one legendary creature.

Then we get our European style dragon:

One of the most common fossils that could have been found was a Cetiosaurus 

which, despite being a herbivore, looked to have a mouth of sharp looking teeth, consistant with a dragons.

Dragons amongst the peoples of Africa are even more varied, but most revolve around some kind of giant snake-like creature. As a quick example, we’ll take Dan Ayido Hwedo commonly found in West African mythology.

Fossils in that area could have been included the Aegyptosaurus:

A quick google search tells me that most Sauropods: well known for being long necked and long tailed, are found in Africa.

If you found only a half complete skeleton of this thing; which is likely, because it’s rare to find a complete dinosaur skeleton, you could easily think of a giant snake monster.

IIRC, another possible explanation for long snake-like dragons/sea serpents in Africa could’ve been Basilosaurus, a whale from the Paleogene whose skeleton looked like this: 

A lot of the most complete specimens have been found in Egypt. 

You know what, I’m tired of getting notifications for this post and not saying anything about it. I know that last time I complained about this sort of thinking, I got called out by revretch, who called me a gatekeeper and then blocked me. But I don’t have anything left to live for anymore so I’m going to let my science and education background take over for a moment and discuss this in depth.

Okay, not in depth, I’ll try to be brief.

Yes, I know tumblr likes to believe scientists are silly old fools for refusing to accept the truth that is right in front of them. Fine. Believe in what you want. But the problem is that a lot of the information in the above post is either long discredited, not taken seriously by archaeologists/folklorists for good reason, or

Animals have inspired a lot of mythical creatures. That is true.

Fossils have inspired a few mythical creatures. That is also true.

Fossils have not inspired the creatures in the above post. Not provably, at any rate, and certainly not enough for any self-respecting archaeologist to take them seriously.

Why not?

There’s a popular misconception about how fossils are formed. People tend to think they look something like in Jurassic Park 3, where a Velociraptor is being excavated in Montana (that already makes it impossible, but bear with me).

Look how nice that fossil is. It looks exactly like an animal. You can see the head, the shape of the body, the arms and legs and tail. You easily picture what it looked like alive.

This is NOT what fossils look like.

Real fossils tend to be disarticulated. Broken up. Spread over a large area. Believe me, I know! I’m a paleontology washout who’s volunteered on at least 3 digs in 3 different countries! The only information an average person could get out of most real fossils is “this was an animal”, and “this was a BIG animal”. Nobody would have deduced frills and wings and stuff like that.

The griffon hypothesis up there? We owe it to Adrienne Mayor, and it’s popular among paleontologists but not archaeologists. It makes sense on a very superficial level – It Stands To Reason, after all – but once you start looking at it in detail it breaks down. Even if, somehow, someone saw a Protoceratops skeleton in enough detail to see wings and beaks and stuff, why would they leave out the teeth? The stubby-toed feet? The ridiculous tail? Mark Witton, a person actually connected to paleontology, has done a great article on the subject.

Griffons were inspired by a number of things, including Mesopotamian royal art, and there’s at least one real animal behind the griffon (and it’s not a fossil). But that’s another story.

What about elephant-skull cyclopes? Again, it sounds like it makes sense! Certainly more so than the griffon-Protoceratops. But here we run into another problem… complete lack of proof. It sounds reasonable, but it can’t be proven. And “one-eyed giant” isn’t exactly a colossal feat of imagination - giants are one of the standard baddies in legend, and making them one-eyed makes them just more monstrous. You can just as easily argue that cyclopes originated in solar wheel imagery associated with the gods, which is why their name means “wheel-eye” and not “one-eye”, and that also ties nicely into their association with metallurgy. Again, Mark Witton has more on that.

Creatures LEGITIMATELY based on fossils typically look nothing like their progenitors, and tend to incorporate features based on their fossil location.

Mammoth remains, for instance! Those are found sticking out of eroded riverbanks, so there must have been a big animal underground! In China they are the yin shu, an enormous mouse or mole that digs underground but dies as soon as the sun touches it. (My interpretation below. Note that I couldn’t resist making it mammothy anyway)

In Siberia the witkes is a horned lake monster that demands offerings of the people who cross its water. Note that the “tusks” are seen as horns, and because the fossils are found near water, it becomes a water animal. See how the facts of the fossils become part of the legend? (Again, my interpretation below, and same comment as before)

The lindwurm of Klagenfurt was based on the discovery of a cave rhinoceros skull. Again, you can see how little the creature has to do with the fossil! People already have dragons on the brain, so finding a skull reinforces that, instead of altering it. You’ve got crocodile skulls in castles in Hungary displayed as dragon remains. Same story. Everything’s a dragon if you want it to be.

Brontotheres (thunder beasts) are named so because of the legends of the Great Plains people! Their remains were seen as the casualties of great battles, and the name honors that legend. Again, they aren’t described as being big rhino-like horned animals, just as… big animals that are now dead.

As for the others, again, those are incredible speculations that require, once again, to dismiss far more obvious things that would have inspired them. And there’s a whole lot of cultural evolution that goes on that isn’t taken into account.

The unicorn in particular. There’s no reason to think that it was anything other than the one-horned Indian rhinoceros. Elasmotherium tends to get dragged into the discussion, but all the original unicorn stories tell of a one-horned Indian monster. Not something that lives underground.

The Piasa? The above post compares it to pterosaurs, but the original did not have wings! It was a version of the “underwater panther”, a mythical underwater lynx of the Northeast Woodlands and Great Lakes regions. There’s a long story behind that but that’s, again, beyond the scope of what I wanted to say.

Of course, if you want to consider the underwater panther a dinosaur as well, be my guest.

Regarding the sauropods (and Titanoboa, and whales) inspiring giant snakes thing.

If only there was some terrifyingly large, reptilian, legless, snake-like creature in South America…

Or Africa…

Or Asia to fire people’s imagination and cause them to think of giant snakes?

And it’s not like rainbows aren’t associated worldwide with snakes because of their, well, long and thin and curvy nature.

Now if you think I’m a big horrible gatekeeping meanie for saying all this, that’s fine! There’s still a lot we don’t know, and there’s still a lot of things that could very well be based on fossils, so you can keep your hopes up!

Like the ketos of Troy, for instance!

That… looks awfully like it could be a skull! Adrienne Mayor thinks it’s a fossil Samotherium, which sounds like a stretch. It looks more like a pterosaur to me. But still, that’s something that could indeed be a fossil!

The other thing about all this is the “scientists didn’t listen to native people who told them about monsters they’d encountered”. And yes, this is true and a noble thing to believe in. But also consider that one of the reasons dinosaurs were believed to exist in “darkest Africa” (all the scare quotes) is that it was held that native people couldn’t possibly be creative enough to imagine them. Europeans talk about giant reptiles? Myths, legends, folklore. Non-Europeans talk about giant reptiles? OMG LIVING DINOSAURS. It goes both ways, sadly.

Mythical creatures are the product of culture, literature, and biology. Reducing their creation to “sees weird fossil => invents monster” is, to me, just sad, and cuts out a lot of the process and wonder and translation errors and sheer mistakes that intervene.

(via sniperct)

politijohn:

90% of people killed in drone strikes were not the intended target

The whistleblower who revealed it was sentenced to ~4yrs in prison

War criminals who continue bombing innocent lives are rewarded

(via freshberries)

scallioncreamcheesebagel:

radicalurbanista:

more perfect union on twitter. 7/25/21

[Tweet from user More Perfect Union @ MorePerfectUS:

EXCLUSIVE: Frito-Lay worker Brandon Ingram was severely electrocuted on the job, disabled and denied medical care. Now Brandon, his wife, and children are being stalked and secretly filmed by company agents. This is the most disturbing Frito-Lay story we’ve covered.]

30 seconds of the video are embedded, but i recommend clicking the link and watching the full 8 minute video to hear this family’s story. the absolute malice pepsi/frito-lay treated them with is heartbreaking. in order to get approved for long-term disability, brandon ingram had to “prove” he’s “really disabled” by going to countless doctor’s appointments, which he did without insurance after being abandoned by pepsi/frito-lay, plunging him into massive debt.

brandon ingram’s wife, melissa ingram, runs a health and beauty shop called dyan denise beauty which you can find here. you can also find their gofundme here, which has thankfully raised almost $100k at the time of writing.

(via therealsongbirddiamondback)

geoclaire:

:

Bruh

I can’t believe I read this post with my own fucking eyes

(via ocultodelacreed)

everythingstarstuff:

Sunlight passing through the wings of a Black Jacobin Hummingbird forms a prism of rainbows.

(Photo Credit: Christian Spencer)

(via becomethebooks)

jenniferrpovey:

sonofahurricane:

saxifraga-x-urbium:

luxflora:

jenniferrpovey:

So, this hasn’t crossed my dash yet. (Not blaming anyone, there is soooo much going on in the world and I’d also missed it in the noise).

There is currently a strike at Frito-Lay. in Topeka. These workers are striking because:

They were being forced to work 84 hour weeks. The company’s best offer so far is a 60 hour cap. This is shit we fought for a century ago, people.

Their generous offer also includes a whole 4 percent wage increase…over the next 2 years. I’m not sure what COL is in Topeka, but… Well, it’s better than the entire 77 cents they’ve apparently gotten in the last decade.

There’s also a report that a worker literally collapsed and dropped dead on the line and the foreman’s response was to make them move the body out of the way and put in a replacement. (However, this is unconfirmed and, of course, the company denies it).

There have been multiple OSHA violations at this plant over the last few years, including a forklift accident that’s under investigation.

They’ve now been striking since July 5 but, of course, it only hit the national media yesterday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/14/frito-lay-strike-forced-overtime/

So, why am I signal boosting this?

Because Frito-Lay is refusing to budge. They are attempting to make the excuse that union leadership agreed to the 60 hour work week and crappy pay cut…when union leadership only agreed to put it to a vote.

And this means that we need to put the thumbscrews on them. Remember, this is about 19th century style working conditions.

So, I’m calling on my followers to boycott Frito Lay’s until the strike is involved.

Frito-Lay owns:

Lay’s

Doritos (Sorry. I really am. I KNOW there’s no good alternative to Doritos, although Zapp’s are good if you can find them).

Fritos

Tostitos

Cheetos

Ruffles

Sun Chips

Baken-ets

Chester’s

Cracker Jack

Islen plantain chips

Funyuns

Grandma’s (the cookies)

Matador Meat Snacks

Maui style potato chips

Miss Vickie’s

Munchies

Munchos

Rolled Gold

Sabritones

Santitas

Simply

Smartfood

Stacys

The Walking Taco

NatuChips

PopCorners (this one wasn’t on their website, but was bought by Pepsi’s in 2019 with the intent of adding it. So best avoided just in case).

Yes, this really is more than half of the snack aisle. Suggested alternatives:

Kettle Brand Chips

Zapp’s (If you can find them. My supermarket had them once and not since, so I’m guessing the culinary cowards in this neighborhood were afraid of “Voodoo” flavored chips).

Pringles

On the Border for salsa.

Wise Cheez Doodles

Bugles

Utz

Store own brand alternatives, if your store has ones that are any good.

Cheez-its

Check before you buy and let’s tell these people they don’t get to treat workers like that.

This was posted on FB recently by someone supporting the strike!

UK people: Frito-Lay owns Walkers

Genuine question that maybe someone on this site can answer: do the striking workers WANT us to boycott?

Boycott has been called by Kansas Labor.

(via thehappysorceress)

chaosroid:

The Inquisitor after finding the Nug King in the Deep Roads:

(via fuckyeah-itme)

thepoweroffriendshipgivesumoney:

saecookie:

cryptvokeeper:

katjohnadams:

katjohnadams:

banjobutch:

thecyndimistuff:

Westworld did this as well. Storytelling is dead!

IF FAN THEORIES ARE RIGHT IT IS A SIGN YOU HAVE TOLD A WELL-PUT TOGETHER AND FOLLOWABLE PLOT, NOT A SIGN YOU NEED TO MAKE UP SOME BULLSHIT FOR A TWIST ENDING.

FUCK OFF WITH THIS SHIT.

No wait, I’m not done here:

If the fans get where you are going and ARE STILL HAPPY, you KEEP GOING THERE. It shows they’re invested and your story craft is setting up and paying off properly. 

It is not a sign you need to M Night Shamaylan things until narrative is fuckin dead and “surprise endings!” reign supreme. If no one can guess what will happen, you don’t have a plot, you have deus ex machinas strung together like a child’s macaroni necklace. It might be endearing and beloved but its hardly a fuckin masterpiece. 

To be utterly frank, this is where “NO SPOILERS! NO SPOILERS EVER! NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO BREATHE ABOUT THE PLOT UNTIL IT’S BEEN OUT ON DVD FOR FIVE YEARS” attitude has left us – And the studios ACTIVELY encourage that shit because first week viewing numbers are their whole lifeblood.

Sure, an “oh shit” moment is great, but if you’re doing it well, I should have that moment watching the show the second, fifth, or hundredth time, knowing how it will go. If being surprised were truly so important to a narrative, why even make a Shakespeare play? Is anyone out there still hoping Romeo and Juliet still get together at the end? Why make mystery novels into movies? Spoiler warning: Hercules Poirot gets the bad guy. Movies that directly follow historical events? Clearly worthless.

Come on, now. Sure, try not to spoil shit for people intentionally, don’t be a dick, but can we calm the fuck down and can Hollywood stop pushing this shit both in social media and with business choices like this?

“i cant help but think that fans should be allowed to like, gather in groups online and theorize and have fun without networks watching in”

-Lindsay Ellis abt game of thrones doing the same thing

If no one can guess what will happen, you don’t have a plot, you have deus ex machinas strung together like a child’s macaroni necklace. It might be endearing and beloved but its hardly a fuckin masterpiece. 

And you can always to what Alex Hirsch did when the fans were guessing too close:

(via fuckyeah-itme)

plantyhamchuk:

“ Since its installation Mr. Trash Wheel has intercepted over 3 million pounds of trash, making the harbor not only cleaner and more beautiful, but also a nicer home for local wildlife as well as waterfront businesses. Four different wheels now sit in Baltimore’s rivers, and soon more will be helping clean other cities across the globe. “

…

“If you go to MrTrashWheel.com you can actually download a spreadsheet of every dumpster we’ve pulled out of the harbor over the past seven years, with an estimate of different types of trash that was in that dumpster,” Lindquist said. “We know that we’ve pulled out over a million styrofoam containers from the harbor, and that’s the sort of information, data and photos that we share with our elected officials to let them know just how big of a problem this is.”

…

“Mr. Trash Wheel has a few relatives in Baltimore, including Professor Trash Wheel, the first female Trash Wheel; Captain Trash Wheel, who’s nonbinary; and Gwynnda The Good Wheel of the West, who was recently the star of a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark her installation. They all have their own likes and dislikes on their public profiles online.

They’re also hungry, with a reputation for being able to gobble up larger pieces of trash, including a guitar, a full-size beer keg and on one occasion a ball python who escaped from its owner and made a home for itself on the warm battery casing of one of the Trash Wheels. Because the Trash Wheels don’t harm animals, they’ve become a kind of refuge for creatures seeking a safe place to nest. A mother duck once laid its eggs under the conveyor belt, and fish enjoy the oxygenated water that’s created as the wheel turns in the river during the summer.”

…

“ If you’re a city leader or official, you can adopt your own Trash Wheel at MrTrashWheel.com. “

ALRIGHT EVERYBODY TIME TO CONTACT YOUR LOCAL OFFICIALS

(via vo-kopen)

politijohn:

TL;DR: Nestle argued they could not be sued for funding, overseeing, and profiting from a system of child slavery in Africa because the conduct did not occur in the U.S. The Supreme Court ruled in Nestle’s favor.

(via vo-kopen)