10 Mythological Creatures and Their Possible Origins

Copyright 2016 by Gary L. Pullman

In ancient times, much of the world was unknown to most of the peoples who inhabited it. Travel was slow, arduous, and expensive. Consequently, not many people traveled. Even those who did were able to see only portions of the distant lands they visited. People were also more gullible, in some ways, readily believing reports that, today, would be considered incredible, defying scientific laws or well-established theories.

Limits on travel, however, were not the only causes of belief in mythological and legendary creatures. Sometimes, remnants of prehistoric animals; existing, but exotic animals; artwork; religious totems; geographical features; military and political events; human remains; mis-translations; chicanery; or genetic mutations may have led ancient peoples to conclude strange creatures, often hybrids of humans and animals, once existed and, indeed, might still live in far-off lands or heavenly places.

Although hypotheses about the origins of mythological monsters are mostly educated guesses, they're rooted, for the most part, in history and science, which makes them intriguing. They may even be true.

Here, then, are 10 mythological creatures and their possible origins.

10 Blemmyae

2,500 years ago, in his Histories, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus described bizarre Libyan creatures without heads, whose eyes and mouths were in their chests. The first-century Greek geographer Strabo, in The Geography, identifies these headless creatures as the Nubian Blemmyae. Later, in Natural History, Pliny the Elder conflates the two, describing Strabo's Blemmyae as headless like Herodotus' nameless monsters.

Belief in the headless Blemmyae apparently persisted into the Middle Ages. The dubious 14th-century travelogue, The Travels of John Mandeville, mentions headless “folk,” placing their eyes in their shoulders, rather than in their chests, and relocating them to Asia. Sir Walter Raleigh also describes a race of headless men, calling them Ewaipanoma. Raleigh's version of the Blemmyae makes their home in Guiana, South America.

The accounts of Herotodus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Mandeville, and Raleigh show the Bleemyae's origins: A Nubian tribe, they were “fictionalized,” becoming “acephalous (headless) monsters,” living first in Libya, then in Nubia, next in Asia, and, finally, in Guiana.

9 Centaur

In Greek mythology, centaurs are half-human, half-horse creatures. Most centaurs were of low character, drank excessively, and were prone to violence. However, the centaur Chiron was cultivated, wise, and kind.

One explanation for centaurs is that the ancient Greeks mistook nomadic horsemen for the half-human, half-horse creatures. The Greeks had never seen such riders. Supporting this hypothesis is Bernal Diaz del Castillo's report that Aztecs regarded Spanish cavalrymen as such creatures. Writer Robert Graves offered another possible explanation of centaurs: they could be derived from a “pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had the horse as a totem.”

8 Cyclops

One-eyed giant cannibals, the Cyclopes made their home in Sicily. The most famous among them, Polyphemus, appears in The Odyssey, eating several of the hero's crew before Odysseus blinds him and he and the rest of his men escape.

It appears that a prehistoric animal's fossil may account for the origin of the Cyclopes of Greek mythology: “The tusk, several teeth, and some bones of a Deinotheriumgiganteum,” one of the biggest mammals ever to exist, were discovered “on the Greek island Crete.” It is recognizable by the “large nasal opening in the center of its skull,” which, some scientists believe, the ancients may have mistaken for the single socket of the one-eyed monster they called Cyclops.

7 Dragon

Typically, the fire-breathing dragon is described or depicted as having the wings of a bat, the body of a gigantic lizard, reptilian scales, and “a barbed tail.” Sometimes, dragons were represented as having only one head, but, other times, they were also described as having many. Unlike the dragons of Middle Eastern and European folklore, the usually wingless Chinese dragons were not evil, but symbolized the male yang principle of the yin-yang, “the two complementary forces . . . of life.”

There are several possible explanations for the origin of dragons: dinosaurs, Nile crocodiles, goannas, whales, and an innate human fear of predators.

A stegosaurus fossil may have suggested the dragon to ancient peoples. It is known that, in one case, “Chang Qu, a Chinese historian from the 4th century B. C., mislabeled such a fossil in what is now Sichuan Province.” Such fossils have attributes that could easily convey the image of a gigantic, scaly beast: They “averaged 30 feet in length, were typically 14 feet tall and were covered in armored plates and spikes for defense.”

Another possible inspiration for the dragon is the Nile crocodile, which grows to a length of 5.5 meters (18 feet) and can walk with its “trunk elevated off the ground” in a “lumbering” gait.

In Australia, goannas, a species of monitor lizard, might have given rise to the belief in dinosaurs. Large predators, they have “razor-sharp teeth and claws” and may “produce” infectious venom.

A fourth candidate for the source of belief in dragons is the whale. Bones on beaches might have been mistaken for skeletons of gigantic terrestrial predators.

A final hypothesis, set forth in anthropologist David E. Jones' An Instinct for Dinosaurs, is that human beings' “innate fear of predators” may have led to their creation of dragons.

6 Gorgon

In Greek mythology, gorgons had snakes for hair, and their fierce gaze could turn a person into stone. Their bodies, which were armored in scales; their brass hands; and their fangs added to their fierce appearance. Although some believed the gorgons to be bearded, their so-called beards were actually “blood flowing under” their heads.

One explanation for the origin of the gorgons is that they are derived from images of female monsters on Neolithic art objects, including vases and shields. Some of the gorgons' “reptilian attributes” may be “derived from the guardians closely associated with early Greek religious concepts at the centers of oracles.” The guardians' “skin was said to be made of impenetrable scales.”

Another  possible origin of the gorgons is the monster Humbaba, who appears as an adversary of the hero Gilgamesh in the ancient Babylonian epic poem named for him. Parallels between the earlier Assyrian Humbaba and the later Greek gorgon suggest that "the former have morphed into the Greek Medusa.” Like the gorgon depicted on Greek masks, Humbaba was portrayed on Assyrian masks. In both cases, the masks “are never shown in profile and always full-frontal.” Both Gilgamesh and Perseus decapitate their respective adversaries, and both put the heads of their enemies in leather bags. When Medusa was killed, the winged horse Pegasus sprang from her blood. In the Gilgamesh epic, there's a similar creature, the Bull of Heaven, a winged gryphon. Whereas Athena featured “a mask of Medusa on her shield,” Sicily, which had been a Greek island before it was part of Italy, “uses a mask of Medusa as its emblem and flag.” Medusa may have derived from Humbaba, but both were “based on the description of a lion.”

5 Griffin

Part lion, part hawk, and part eagle, the griffin was added, probably from earlier Middle East cultures, to the ancient Greek pantheon of gods and monsters. Mandeville mentioned the beast in his spurious medieval travelogue. The imaginary animals had sharp teeth and often flew victims to a great height “before dropping them to their deaths.”

Researcher Adrienne Mayor attributes griffins' origin to dinosaur fossils. She believes “the gold-guarding griffin” may be derived “from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground.” The ancient Scythian' attempts to “reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures” and to explain their existence could have resulted in the legendary griffin.

4 Hydra

As one of his 12 labors, the Greek demigod Heracles (in Roman mythology, Hercules) slew the many-headed serpent named Hydra, a monster living in Argos, near a Lerna swamp. In some accounts, the beast has 5 heads, in others as many as 100. These apparent discrepancies are explained, perhaps, by the monster's ability to grow two heads for every one that was cut off. Only one head, though, was immortal. In fighting the Hydra, Heracles enlisted the assistance of his friend and nephew Iolaus. As Heracles cut off a head, Iolaus cauterized the wound with a torch so another head could not grow back. After Heracles decapitated the immortal head, he buried it under a boulder, before draining its body of its poisonous blood.

Scholars explain the origin of the hydra by suggesting that the monster was a personification of a river delta. In Myth and Geology, Luigi Piccardi and W. Brube Masse contend that the Hydra's many heads symbolize “the many water sources feeding the large swamps near Lerna.” The battle between Heracles and the Hydra, likewise, represents “the draining effort.” The burial of the Hydra's head beneath a large rock may reflect the conquest of Lerna by invading “Indo-European Greeks.” Afterward, the invaders buried the “head” of the conquered land, the destroyed Lernean Palace, “under an enormous funerary tumulus (grave mound). The tumulus, the authors point out, “corresponds to the huge mythological rock placed by Heracles above the head of the [Hydra] beast.” There is still another parallel that suggests the geographical and political origins of the Hydra myth: “Even the position of the buried Palace, [sic] corresponds to the location of the head of the Hydra, buried on the side of the road to Elaeus.”

3 Phoenix

A symbol of rebirth, the phoenix, which rises from the flames of its own funeral pyre, entered Greek mythology through Egyptian and Arab lore. After living for 500 years, the “eagle-like bird with shining red, golden, and purple plumes” builds itself a nest. The sun burns the nest, the phoenix dying in the fire. From its ashes, a newborn phoenix arises and returns to Arabia to live out its days before the cycle is repeated. 

The phoenix's “tale may have evolved from the Egyptian Benu, a sacred bird, mentioned in the Book of the Dead, that is associated with the sun god Ra and looks like a heron in hieroglyphics.” However, an actual bird may be behind the phoenix: “In Egypt, a prehistoric flamingo may have inspired the tale, because heat waves rose from the hot salt flats where it laid its eggs, perhaps suggesting a nest of fire.”

2 Satyr

The Greek satyr (Roman faun) was a fertility figure in ancient Greece. His Hellenistic counterpart was the Roman faun. The satyr was half-man, half-goat, but the Roman version was equipped with a horse's tail and ears. Both satyrs and fauns were fond of wine, women, and song.

Emperor Constantine made a pilgrimage from Constantinople (Istanbul) to Antioch to view a “satyr.” Actually a man “extremely well preserved in salt,” the statue-like remains weren't the first of their kind to have been discovered in abandoned salt mines in the Middle East, and these “salt men” might have been the origin of the mythological satyr.

Stanford University's Adrienne Mayor, a folklorist and author of "The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times

, contends “the head of the man preserved in salt since about 540-300 B.C. 'bears a striking resemblance to ancient Greek and Roman depictions of satyrs,'” showing a “similar hair and beard, a snub nose and [a] protruding jaw.”

AndrewMerrills, a Roman historian with London's University of Leicester, believes Mayor's hypothesis is an intriguing “maybe.” However, Tufts University's archaeologist Bruce Hitchner regards her view as plausible.

1 Unicorn

A horse with a single, sharp, conical, sometimes spiraling, horn growing from the center of its forehead, was depicted in ancient Mesopotamian art and was featured in ancient Indian and Chinese myths. The ancient Greek historian Ctesias (c. 400 BC) claimed the creature's horn had medicinal properties that could provide protection “from stomach trouble, epilepsy, and poison.” 

Several explanations have been put forward for the unicorn's origin. One view is that the unicorn, as Ctesias describes it, may derive from the hippopotamus.

A second hypothesis suggests belief in the animal stems from an error in Biblical translation. The Hebrew word, re'em, translated as “unicorn” or as “rhinoceros,” probably means “wild ox,” the term translators often now use.

The idea that unicorns really existed might have received further credibility due to the fact that rhinoceros horn or narwhal tusk, ground up and sold as an antidote to poison, was said to be derived from unicorn horn.

Some who accepted the existence of unicorns believe they evolved into the narwhal, “a member of the porpoise and whale family,” which has “a single, twisty tooth.”

Yet another possible explanation for unicorns presented itself with the recent discovery, near Florence, Italy, of a deer with only one horn. The horn is a product of genetic mutation, and the deer who possesses it is probably not the first to have undergone such a variation. Deer “with similar abnormalities could have been spotted throughout history, and contributed to the persistent unicorn legend.”