Theory On The Origins Of Some Monsters

[Dark Chasm]

So I have a theory on how some of the stories on monsters came into existence.

As you can probably imagine, there were a lot more health problems back in the days of mythology, for various reasons. For one, they lived in more unsanitary conditions than we do today. First of all because they didn't have the cleaning technology and disinfecting chemicals we have today. They drank water straight from wells, which were most likely teeming with microbes. Their food was also exposed to microbes a lot more than ours is today. They also had a primitive way of understanding sickness and medicine. A lot of it was based on magic. In fact, most likely all of it was.

So you can imagine that more babies would be born with deformities than are today. It's sad, but most likely true. And unfortunately, society back then probably saw such children as the spawn of demons or creatures cursed by the gods to live as a monster. They were most likely not very accepting of them and probably either killed them or scalded them their entire lives. Enough to probably make them leave society.

They would have nowhere else to go but the wild. And it's difficult to live in the wild, especially when no one would get close enough to you to teach you how.

And of course, it would be rather easy to overpower a passing traveler, more so than it would be to tackle a quick-footed deer or a giant moose. And unfortunately, it would probably be rather easy to turn to cannibalism when the rest of your race treated you like an animal and kicked you whenever they could. So then rumors would start to pop up about a hideous creature living on the side of the road that would grab passing travelers and devour them. Then these monsters would be given names like "troll" or "ogre."

[blow_fly]

An interesting and plausible theory.  It's not uncommon for monsters in ancient mythology to have been  inspired by actual mundane phenomena. Take the Gorgon for example. Its hideous appearance is actually based on the physical form of humans corpses that were in advanced states of decay.  Another possibility that we must take into account is that some monsters that continue to feature in the folklore of certain cultures were potentially mentally ill individuals who committed serious crimes. This certainly seems to be the case with many of the various assorted were-beasts that show in African folktales.

[Dark Chasm]

Also, there's the fact that people from the age of mythology had a more primitive way of understanding things and a vocabulary not as advanced as ours is today. So whenever they would encounter phenomena that was strange to them, because they had a primitive way of understanding things, they would think of it as something that it's not, then go on to describe it with whatever words they could. For instance, let's pretend for some reason an airplane flies through a portal that sends them back in time to the age of mythology. Someone from that time period sees it and goes on to try and describe it. Because the only thing that someone from that time period would know of that flies is a bird, he might describe it as a giant metal bird that soared through the air with a tail of flame trailing behind its wings.

In the present, a scientist finds and ancient text written by that same person who saw the metal bird. He sees the way he described the airplane, but because of the words that were used, the scientist doesn't think of the word "airplane" at all. Instead he thinks of some sort of mythological monster that the writer claims he saw.

So you see much of mythology could actually be based on, as was said by blow_fly, mundane phenomena. But because the people in the age of mythology used completely different words than we do to describe the same thing, we would never realize they were actually talking about something we know of.

[Moloch]

I too find this both interesting and plausible, as it has been theorized, and in some cases shown that many legendary heroes and monsters were never actually seen, and their legends were based on enormous bones that were unearthed by farmers and other plebeians. These folks did not understand that what they had found were actually fossils; so to make them fit their understanding of the world they put them together as best they could, made up fantastic stories about who they must have belonged to, and then reburied them or placed them in temples to be relics of worship.

[AEUBERTI]

A high level of plausability for some tales.  Though it would be the Ancients' understanding not their language that would cause the fantastic nature of the expression.  The same is likely true for religions.  The text read in various places of worship  probably started as tales told around the fire to explain natural events; storms, wild fires, night.  As groups of nomads became villages then cities etc the tales of different groups were assimliated and codified and finally fell under the control of a select few (priests witch doctors or whatever)  and finally became religion. 

Not to pick nits hwever this topic is less a theory and more of a notion.  But it is a thoght provoking notion.;}

[blow_fly]

A high level of plausability for some tales.  Though it would be the Ancients' understanding not their language that would cause the fantastic nature of the expression.  The same is likely true for religions.  The text read in various places of worship  probably started as tales told around the fire to explain natural events; storms, wild fires, night.  As groups of nomads became villages then cities etc the tales of different groups were assimliated and codified and finally fell under the control of a select few (priests witch doctors or whatever)  and finally became religion. 

Not to pick nits hwever this topic is less a theory and more of a notion.  But it is a thoght provoking notion.;}

Indeed. Dark Chasm's explanation did an excellent job of illustrating the difficulties that scholars have in interpreting ancient mythological accounts. However, the links between mundane reality and mythology need not be restricted solely to the area of physical phenomena. For example, some scholars speculate that the tale of Apollo's victory over the monstrous snake that initially inhabited the site of Delphi is actually a reflection of a distorted understanding  of the usurpation of the holy site by the followers of Apollo from an earlier serpent worshipping cult. It is plausible that as the centuries  passed, certain unsophisticated minds might have confused analogy or dramatic metaphor  with actual reality.

[Dark Chasm]

All good points.  There is also the fact that stories seem to change when passed from person to person. When one person tells another person the original story, and then that person tells it to someone else, they can sometimes change small details in the story, whether it's because they can't fully remember the original story or because they want to make the story more interesting. And as the story is passed from one person to the next, little details are constantly changed, and eventually the story becomes so drastically different from the original that you could tell it to the original storyteller and they might not recognize it. And back in the time of mythology, a person might change the story so that it has mystical phenomena in it, and the person they're telling it to would believe it. Also, this kind of thing still happens today.

[Angelus]

So I have a theory on how some of the stories on monsters came into existence.

As you can probably imagine, there were a lot more health problems back in the days of mythology, for various reasons. For one, they lived in more unsanitary conditions than we do today. First of all because they didn't have the cleaning technology and disinfecting chemicals we have today. They drank water straight from wells, which were most likely teeming with microbes. Their food was also exposed to microbes a lot more than ours is today. They also had a primitive wa
y of understanding sickness and medicine. A lot of it was based on magic. In fact, most likely all of it was.

So you can imagine that more babies would be born with deformities than are today. It's sad, but most likely true. And unfortunately, society back then probably saw such children as the spawn
of demons or creatures cursed by the gods to live as a monster. They were most likely not very accepting of them and probably either killed them or scalded them their entire lives. Enough to probably make them leave society.

They would have nowhere else to go but the wild. And it's difficult to live in the wild, especially when no one would get close enough to you to teach you how.

And of course, it would be rather easy to overpower a passing traveler, more so than it would be to tackle a quick-footed deer or a giant moose. And unfortunately, it would probably be rather easy to turn to cannibalism when the rest of your race treated you like an animal and kicked you whenever they could. So then rumors would start to pop up about a hideous creature living on the side of the road that would grab passing travelers and devour them. Then these monsters would be given names like "troll" or "ogre."

The troll and ogre theory is good. i just have problems with a couple of parts. Because the sanitation and cleanliness of water back then was of a much lower scale our imune systems were far greater so anything in the water would not effect us. Deformed babies would very rarely survive past infancy due to poor care,  being killed at birth and natural selection and would have been very rare due to our bodies being stronger, faster and better then. Deformity is far more common now than then because of our modern world of drugs, science and human rights. Nature gave us the ability to have perfect kids, we ruined that with science. Not the other way round. But it only takes for this to happen once on a continent before the tale spreads all over by word of mouth, a few games of chinese whispers later and you have hundreds of different stories that all came from one event. The rest is true though. This is documented, deformed or brain damaged men running free in the wild. Changeling babies so hidious that the mother swears a fairy spirit must have taken her child and left this abomination, men running naked through the woods during the full moon howling like wolves.

[AEUBERTI]

The troll and ogre theory is good. i just have problems with a couple of parts. Because the sanitation and cleanliness of water back then was of a much lower scale our immune systems were far greater so anything in the water would not effect us. Deformed babies would very rarely survive past infancy due to poor care,  being killed at birth and natural selection and would have been very rare due to our bodies being stronger, faster and better then. Deformity is far more common now than then because of our modern world of drugs, science and human rights. Nature gave us the ability to have perfect kids, we ruined that with science. Not the other way round. But it only takes for this to happen once on a continent before the tale spreads all over by word of mouth, a few games of chinese whispers later and you have hundreds of different stories that all came from one event. The rest is true though. This is documented, deformed or brain damaged men running free in the wild. Changeling babies so hidious that the mother swears a fairy spirit must have taken her child and left this abomination, men running naked through the woods during the full moon howling like wolves.

All very good points, esp about the distortion a story goes through with each telling.  Everything we read or are told passes through  our filters to conform to our understanding.  The only comment I will make is that in the past it would be those with a strong immune systemwould survive, so true people had stronger immunity because fewer of those with weaker immunity were less likely to survive.

[Loki]

Of course these are the skeptical theories ...

However some monsters did really exist, probably animals that survived from Prehistory or species that gone extinct since.

If science continue to progress at the present exponantial rate, it is likely that it will possible to reengineer monsters through genetics combination. So myths will become reality.

[Dark Chasm]

Yes, their immune systems would have been stronger. I forgot to take that into account. Even so, their immune systems wouldn't have been strong enough. Yes, they could withstand disease better than us, but their more unsanitary living conditions would also make them sick more often. And since they didn't have our modern medicine, they couldn't cure their illnesses as well and so even ailments that we wouldn't consider severe could possibly have been deadly to them.