Creatures of ancient myths, no matter which mythology you swear by, always have something awe-inspiring about them. They seem so fantastic because they’re simply impossible to imagine walking around in the real world. But since people weren’t all that imaginative in the olden days, it only makes sense that some of these mythological creatures also hold some ground in reality, right? While that’s not exactly true, it’s not exactly false either.
Let’s take a look at some mythological creatures that kind of existed back in the day. Give or take a few small details.
The Kraken
Have you seen a giant squid? Can you imagine seeing one 1000 years ago? The first Kraken sighting was back in 1180, and it’s safe to assume it was actually a giant squid. These bad boys can grow up to 18 meters. Another option that they actually saw a colossal squid, which lives in the deep arctic water and we have no idea how huge these bad boys can get.
Mermaids
Bear with me here, but Mermaids were probably misidentified manatees. Yup. Well, there’s a few factors on why this can work: sailors that spend a long time at see often hallucinate, the rough skin of a manatee seen from the back almost looks like hair and sailors are known to sample plenty of alcoholic beverages.
Giants
Since being tall is hereditary, it only makes sense that people a few hundred or thousand years ago – who were a lot shorter due to having no hormones in food – thought of someone that was over 2 meters tall as a giant. Goliath was said to have been over 274 centimeters, but the Bible also said God created the Earth in a week.
Vampires
Pretty sinister, this one. The skin of a corpse shrinks after death, meaning fingernails and teeth appear a lot longer than they really are. After the internal organs start to break down, they can leak a dark fluid which makes it look like someone’s been drinking blood. And scratches inside the coffin? Well, back when they didn’t have fancy stuff like medicine, people could get buried while in a coma. The scratches on the coffin wouldn’t be the dead rising from their graves – it’d be the living trying to get out.
Cyclops
No, I’m not talking about the X-Man, I’m talking about the giant with only one eye. It seems pretty unlikely that giants with one eye exist, but there were actually a huge amount of skulls with one eye socket found. So what’s the deal? Well, they belonged to dwarf elephants and the eye socket was actually the nasal cavity of the elephant. The skull is huge though, and it looks pretty much like a giant skull with a single eye socket.
The Hydra
Where a snake with 9 heads might be stretching it, snakes do have the highest case of multiple heads of all species on our dear planet. If you’re going to invent stories about a creature with multiple heads, a snake would be most believable. This doesn’t explain Cerberus, however, but it doesn’t have to. I’m assuming someone had a dog with a genetic defect also. You know how these things happen.
