Hidden + Mythical Organisms Flashcards
What is a cryptozoo?
the medieval/early centuries cryptids - organisms that have not be proven to not exist
What were 3 cryptozoos which people believed in?
Sphinx - body of a lion, wings and head of a woman in Greek or head of a king in Egypt
Manticore - face of a person, body of a lion, shoots arrows from its stinging tail and eats humans
Basilisk - the King of Snakes which brings death with a single glance
What are cryptogardens?
mythical plants
What are 3 examples of cryptogarden? describe them
mandrake - roots resemble a human and when removed from the ground emit a shriek that kills anyone who hears it
apple of Sodom - only grows in the townsites of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which God destroyed during a righteous tyrant over lustful behaviour - if picked, the apple turns to ashes and smoke
Zieba tree - a tree of bare-breasted mystics and philosophers
When was the first mention of the unicorn?
in Ctesias writings, a Greek historian that lived c. 398 BC in Persia
How did Ctesias describe a unicorn? What were its supposed medical purposes?
monokeros lived in India
larger than a horse with a horn half a meter long
filings of the horn were meant to be an antidote to poison and resistance to epilepsy
What other famous works included unicorns?
the Old Testament (3rd century BC)
Pliny’s 37-volume encyclopedia
How did Scholars of Alexandria perpetuate the idea of the unicorn from the Old Testament?
Alexandrian scholars were translating the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek and got stumped by the Hebrew word ‘re’em’
they translated it to monokeros = unicorn (but it actually referred to the ancestor of modern cattle)
so the bible included references to unicorns
How did other cultures exaggerate the story of the unicorn? including Arabic, Jewish, and Christian mythology?
Arab mythology: unicorns were huge and killed elephants (multiple at a time)
Jewish: too big to fit on Noah’s ark but could tread water
Christian: could only pacified by virgins
Who unveiled the source the unicorn legend? What was the source of the legend?
Marco Polo during his travels through India discovered that the unicorn was probably based on the Indian rhinoceros
What was an alicorn? How did this perpetuate the unicorn legend until the 18th century?
the alicorn was the medicinal unicorn horn whcih kept the unicorn legend alive
it was used to reveal the presence of poison on food and as an antidote to poison (as according to Ctesias)
What animal was actually alicorn?
narwhals and narwhal tusks
What was the Upas tree? what era was it first described? by who?
aka the Javan Tree of Death = biblical credibility (opposite of the Tree of Life) claimed to emit the deadliest poison in the world
existed in the Indies (Java, Indonesia)
first described by Friar Oderich of Portenau and Sir John Mandeville in the Medieval times
Who was John Mandeville?
he never existed, some unidentified fraudster created this English knight who ‘saw’ the Upas tree in Java and claimed it to produce the most deadly poison in the world - more likely just read Oderich’s description and popularized it
How did the rumour of the Upas tree spread through Europe?
in the 18th century, Europeans visiting Java were told about a tree that produced arrow poison sap and further embellishments were made in lieu of real evidence/observations
What was the popular story about the Upas tree in Europe?
Dr. Kampfer in the 18th century wrote a story about how they used to get local criminals to collect the sap from this tree of death and if the criminal survived, they were set free as reward (many died)
T or F; the legend of the Upas tree entered popular literature during the 18th and 19th centuries
true, it was in plays, poems, and other works
What was the truth of the Upas tree? who uncovered it?
in 1804, the French naturalist, Leschenault, discovered that the Javan tree produced poisonous latex (cardiac glycosides) if consumed
but what about the criminals and dead animals near the tree?
scientists now think that it was likely a combination of 2 phenomena: the poisonous tree AND the CO2 emissions from nearby dormant volcanos
What was the Piltdown Man?
a supposed human ancestor who represented a missing link between the other discovered fossil hominins and Homo sapiens but turned out to be a hoax
what was found: cranium, jaw and teeth
discovered in Piltdown, Sussex in early 20th century in a rock quarry
What was the significance of the Piltdown Man to paleoanthropology and the study of evolution?
he represented the ‘missing link’ between ape-human divergence as the earliest form known was from Java Man who had only human traits and the Piltdown Man had both human and ape traits
- smaller teeth
- larger cranium
- ape-like jaw
anthropologists didn’t know at the time whether bipedalism or cranial enlargement evolved first
Who was involved with the Piltdown Man discovery aka the Piltdown players?
Charles Dawson - amateur fossil collector who discovered most of the fossils
Sir Arthur Smith Woodward - Chief of Dept of Natural History of British Museum (paleoicthyologist) - friend of Dawson, helped with excavation and supported findings
Pierre Teillhard de Chardin - scientist-priest, friend of Dawson
Sir Arthur Keith - anatomist, paleontologist, defended Piltdown fossils
Martin Hinton - curator of zoology at museum and fossil deposition expert
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - wrote Sherlock Holmes, friend of Dawson, helped with excavation
How were the Piltdown Man findings perpetuated through science?
because Dawson’s buddies were all well-established and well-connected people in the Museum and all highly educated as paleo and anthro - they defended and vouched for the findings so people believed them
What were the major discoveries of the Piltdown Man?
fragments of 2 humanlike craniums
2 humanlike teeth (smaller than chimps)
parts of an apelike lower jaw
mix of human and ape anatomy
How were the Piltdown discoveries received?
widely accepted, especially in Britain - a lot of influential and knowledgable people backed it up and England hadn’t contributed any hominin fossils yet (nationalism)
over time it fell out of favour as it aligned less and less with other findings (it suggested that the brain evolved first, but other findings were that bipedalism evolved before brain size)
When and how was the Piltdown hoax exposed?
when the bones and teeth were found to be modern by fluoride tests - bones had been artificially stained and teeth had been filed
cranial bones were from medieval human, teeth were chimp teeth filed down to human size, jaw was from orangutan
The Piltdown Man was revealed as a hoax way after all the Piltdown Players died, but who was blamed?
Dawson is most suspicious and all his buddies were hook ups for the bones and credibility for the longevity of the story
What does the perpetuation of a hoax mean for science?
- science is meant to be self-correcting but in the case of the Piltdown Man, many eminent scientists supported it and no one really contradicted it (tested it), it just phased out of popularity until proven as a hoax
- delayed understanding and progression of anthropology and evolution
What are some reasons why legends and stories and myths arise and spread?
if a real organism is observed but the story is untrue - ex. Upas tree, narwhals, human ancestors
a priori reasoning - pre-existing knowledge before asking questions
confounding of 2+ phenomena or organisms - ex. Upas tree and volcanic emissions
secondhand reporting - communication was also super slow back then
mistranslation (ex. unicorn in the Old Testament actually was an ancestor of domestic cattle)
exaggeration
authorities give too much credence (ex. Dawson’s buddies)
appearance in literature
outright fakery
people love a good story
