12/27/2022 0 Comments Griffin mythical creature![]() ![]() Mayor proposed that travellers on the Silk Road saw dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert. Mayor and Heaney point out the link between folklore about monsters or giants in regions rich in fossil discoveries (Mayor 1993: 49). The theory doesn’t explain that griffins were real, but rather how people may have thought they were. Is there a realistic explanation for the griffin? These creatures had the same fore-legs, wings, and eagle’s head as the griffins, but the bodies of horses. On the rare occasions that griffins and horses mated, their offspring were called the hippogryph. In the stories, they also used horses to attack griffins, which explains why in some depictions, griffins attack or kill horses. ![]() The Arimaspi lived in what is now the Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia (Levinson). A group of one-eyed men known as Arimaspians stole the gold from griffins (1920, chapter 116). So strong was the link between griffins and gold that in Book 3 of his Histories, Herodotus explained that the north of Europe boasted “the most gold”. It just goes to show how easily different word-of-mouth sources can give rise to a wholly new yet unfounded belief.Ī bronze head of a Roman-era griffin at Colchester Castle © Icy Sedgwick Yet this same report does refer to two different beliefs that griffins wove gold into their nests and that they actively guarded it. Rather than fighting humans over the gold in their nests, they fought humans to protect their chicks (Mayor 1993: 44). A report in 200 AD by Aelian, a Roman compiler, describes the griffins’ ferocity towards humans as being a parental instinct. In 77 AD, Pliny the Elder made the claim that griffins uncovered gold while making burrows (Mayor 1993: 42). People believed they guarded gold mines, though this association with gold could come from their solar links through Apollo. The guardianship or protective role of the griffin starts in the legends that see griffins guarding treasure. Instead, it’s treated like a real animal from a distant land where it interacted with real people (Mayor 1993: 48). Yet while the griffin appears in Greek art, it doesn’t actually interact with any of the heroes in the myths. In the Greek legends, heroes battle monsters that are clear hybrids of other species. A bronze griffin head at the Great North Museum © Icy SedgwickĪdrienne Mayor and Michael Heaney raise the point that griffin mythology differs from classical Greek myths. ![]()
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