E02 - Hidden and Mythical Organisms

Question 1

what is a sphinx (Greek)

Answer 1

body of a lion; wings and the head of a woman

Question 2

what is the difference between a sphinx in Greek and in Egypt

Answer 2

Greek has the head of a woman

Egypt has the head of a king

Question 3

what is a manticore

Answer 3

body of a lion; face of a person; can shoot an arrow from stinging tail; also a man-eater

Question 4

Basilisk

Answer 4

the king of snakes; one glance at the basilisk brings death

Question 5

Mandrake

Answer 5

root that resembles a human figure; when pulled from earth it emits a shriek that kills anyone who hears it

Question 6

Apple of Sodom

Answer 6

grows at the site of the former towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, which god destroyed. When the apple from the tree is picked it turns to ashes and smoke in hand

Question 7

Zieba Tree

Answer 7

a tree full of bare-breasted mystics and philosophers

Question 8

The Unicorn: order of legends

Answer 8

1 . Ctesias: Greek Historian

2. The Old Testament
3. Pliny, the storyteller
4. Marco Polo and the rhino
5. Alicorn: medicinal unicorn horn

Question 9

Ctesias: Greek Historian

Answer 9

Said the unicorn lived in India. It was larger than a horse and had a horn half a meter long. Filings from the horn were believed to be an antidote to poison

Question 10

The Old Testament: unicorn

Answer 10

a group of Alexandrian scholars wanted to translate some of the books from the old testament from Hebrew to Greek. When they did not fully understand. Only knew that it was an animal

Question 11

Pliny, the storyteller

Answer 11

• the Orsean Indians hunt an exceedingly wild beast called the Monoceros: has a stags head, elephants feet, and a boars tail. The rest of the body is like a horse and has one black horn.
• in Arab mythology the unicorn was huge, it killed elephants by skewering them, but when it had accumulated 3-4 elephants the unicorn grew tired and vulnerable: could not shake them off
• in Jewish mythology it was too big to fit on Noah’s ark. It survived by treading water, resting its horn on the ark
• In christian mythology the unicorn could be pacified by only virgins. To catch a unicorn you need a 1) virgin 2) large net

Question 12

Allicorn

Answer 12

Alicorn touched to food would reveal the presence of poison and shavings of it were an antidote to poison (like Ctesias)

Question 13

The Upas Tree

Answer 13

• Friar Olderic of Portenau and the Sir John Mandevill claimed that it made the deadliest poison in the world

Question 14

variations on the upas tree myth

Answer 14

1. Dr. Englebert Kampfer wrote a book called “Ammoniates Exoticae”. The local people used to get criminals to collect the sap because the tree deadly to approach. If the criminal lived he was set free.
2. Rumphius - poison gas eminates from the tree. You can only approach the tree if all your skin was covered by fabric; no other plants grew near the tree; dead birds littered the ground
3. London Magazine - The danger zone had a radius of 12 to 14 miles; criminals assigned to collect the sap were equipped with leather caps, protective glasses and leather gloves; only 70 of 700 returned. The ground underneath the tree was littered with dead bodies

Question 15

Leschenault

Answer 15

• found the truth about the legend. In Hava he was shown a toxic tree but vegetation grew around it, there were no dead animals nearby
• he was able to collect poisonous latex from the tree

Question 16

Why was there a bunch of dead animals in the stories

Answer 16

could be a confounding of 2 phenomena: a poisonous tree, and deadly CO2 emissions from dormant volcanos

Question 17

What was the Piltdown man

Answer 17

• a possible human ancestor whose cranium, jaw, and teeth were found in Sussex, south of London

Question 18

Charles Dawson

Answer 18

• fossil collector

- made most of the Piltdown discoveries

Question 19

What happened to the Piltdown man?

Answer 19

• was revealed as fake
• the bones and teeth were found to be modern
• the bones were artificially stained to make them look old, teeth had file marks on them

Question 20

Who was to blame for the piltdown man hoax

Answer 20

Probably Charles Dawson

Question 21

How do these stories arise and spread

Answer 21

• -> observations of real organisms
• -> a priori reasoning: the idea that everything must have its opposite: the tree of life and the tree of death
• -> confounding of two or more organisms or two or more phenomena: CO2 seepage of the volcano and the toxic tree
• -> secondhand reporting: of the upas tree and the unicorn
• -> mistranslation
• -> exaggeration (size of unicorn)
• -> authorities given too much credence
• -> difficulty of verification: if something is a long way away it is difficult to prove that it doesn’t exist
• -> appearance in literature: gives legs to these stories
• -> outright fakery: alicorn = narwhales tusk posing as a unicorn
• -> good story