Long ago, in the 4th Century BCE, a Greek doctor named Ctesias described a very unusual animal. It was big, fast, and strong, with a white body, a red head, and dark blue eyes. It had a horn about two feet long, white at the base, black in the middle, and crimson at the tip, growing from its forehead. This creature was hard to catch unless it was near its young. Ctesias called it a wild ass, but today we think of it as the first written description of a unicorn.
Unicorns have appeared in stories from all over the world for thousands of years. In Europe, they are often shown as white horse-like creatures with a long, spiraled horn. In Asia, similar creatures exist, like the Qilin, which looks like a deer with dragon scales and sometimes a single horn.
For a long time, people believed unicorns were real. Pliny the Elder, a Roman author, described an animal called “monoceros,” which had a stag’s head, elephant’s feet, and a boar’s tail, with a single black horn. Marco Polo even claimed to have seen unicorns, though he thought they were ugly and found them wallowing in mud. In the 1500s, Conrad Gessner included unicorns in his book, based on explorers’ tales. People believed in unicorns until the 18th century, but as explorers traveled more, they found no evidence of them.
Today, scientists think early unicorn descriptions were based on real animals like oryxes and rhinoceroses. The “unicorn horns” sold in the past were likely from rhinos or narwhals, whose horn is actually a large tooth.
Mermaids, half-human and half-fish creatures, have been part of legends worldwide. The most famous mermaid story is Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” In Slavic mythology, there’s the Rusalka, a spirit of a woman or child. African tales feature Mami Wata, a water spirit part mermaid, part snake charmer. Depending on the story, mermaids can bring good luck or danger.
When Christopher Columbus saw what he thought were mermaids, he noted they weren’t as pretty as expected. They were actually manatees. Scientists believe that manatees and seals were often mistaken for mermaids by sailors.
It’s important not to confuse mermaids with sirens. Sirens, from Greek mythology, were half-woman, half-bird creatures that lured sailors to their doom with their songs.
In South Asian folklore, the Pontianak is a spirit of a woman who suffered during death. She appears in white with long dark hair and a floral scent, seeking revenge. The Indonesian version is called the Kuntianak. These stories are popular in Malaysia, Indonesia, and other nearby regions. Horror movies have helped spread these tales since the 1950s.
Werewolves, humans who turn into wolves, have been part of stories for a long time. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a woman turns a lover into a wolf. Ancient Rome and Greece also had tales of men transforming into wolves. Some believe these stories came from people wearing wolf skins for warmth.
Vampires, creatures that suck the life from humans, have been around for centuries. The word “vampire” appeared in English in the 18th century. Western Europeans became interested in vampires due to reports from Eastern Europe. Modern science suggests that diseases like porphyria and rabies may have inspired vampire myths. Decomposition of bodies also played a role, as shrinking skin made it look like hair and nails kept growing after death.
Zombies, often shown as brain-eating undead in movies, have roots in Haitian folklore. In these stories, zombies are dead bodies revived by voodoo priests. The slave trade brought these beliefs from West Africa to Haiti. Some believe zombies are real, like the case of Clairvius Narcisse, who claimed to have been turned into a zombie after being buried alive.
Leprechauns first appeared in an old Irish tale about King Fergus. He captured water sprites called “lupracans” and made a deal with them for three wishes. Today, leprechauns are known for their love of gold, pranks, and green clothing, though they originally wore red.
Dragon-like creatures have appeared in myths worldwide, from Mesopotamia to China. These myths likely came from misidentified animals like dinosaur fossils or crocodiles. Some sea monsters seen by sailors were probably whale penises.
Cyclopes, one-eyed giants from Greek mythology, might have been inspired by ancient elephant bones. These bones had a large hole in the skull, which could have been mistaken for a single eye socket.
Griffins, with a lion’s body and an eagle’s head, may have been inspired by dinosaur bones found in the Gobi Desert. These bones had beaks and long shoulder bones that might have looked like wings.
The Scottish Highlands have tales of the “cat she,” a fairy cat that can steal souls. There’s also the “kushi,” a fairy dog that chases people. In Iceland, the Yule Cat is a giant black cat that eats lazy children who don’t finish their chores before Christmas.
These myths often have roots in real animals or cultural beliefs. What mythical creature would you add to this list? Share its story or a fun fact!
Imagine a new mythical creature by combining features of real animals. Draw your creature and write a short story about its origins and powers. Share your creation with the class and explain how it fits into a cultural myth or legend.
Choose one mythical creature from the article and research its historical and cultural background. Create a presentation that includes images, stories, and any scientific explanations for its origins. Present your findings to the class.
Participate in a class debate about whether mythical creatures could have been real. Use evidence from the article and additional research to support your arguments. Discuss how myths might have been inspired by real animals or events.
In groups, choose a mythical creature and create a short skit that brings its story to life. Focus on the creature’s characteristics and the cultural context of its legend. Perform your skit for the class and discuss what you learned about the creature.
Create a world map and mark the origins of different mythical creatures mentioned in the article. Include a brief description of each creature and its cultural significance. Display your map in the classroom and explore the global nature of myths.
Here’s a sanitized version of the provided YouTube transcript:
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In the 4th Century BCE, Greek physician Ctesias described a strange animal. It was large, fast, and strong, with a white body, a red head, and dark blue eyes. It also had a roughly two-foot-long horn, white on the bottom and black in the middle with a crimson red tip, growing from its forehead. Catching the creature was nearly impossible unless it could be cornered near its young; then it wouldn’t flee. However, Ctesias wrote that with their horns, they would kick, bite, and kill many men and horses. They were eventually captured after being pierced with arrows and spears, as it was impossible to capture them alive. Ctesias called the animal a wild ass, but today we consider this passage the first written description of a unicorn.
Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, and this is The List Show. Today, we’re unraveling the origins of all kinds of mythical creatures, from vampires to Cyclops and beyond. Let’s get started!
Single-horned creatures occur in folktales, some of them thousands of years old, in cultures around the world. In European accounts, the unicorn is often depicted as a white horse or goat-like animal with cloven hooves and a long spiraled horn. Similar creatures are found in Asian folklore, including the Qilin, a deer-like animal with the scales of a dragon and sometimes a single horn.
For quite some time, people believed unicorns were real animals. Pliny the Elder described an animal he called “monoceros,” which he wrote had the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a boar, while the rest of the body resembled that of a horse. It made a deep blowing noise and had a single black horn projecting from its forehead. Later, Marco Polo, who believed he had seen these creatures himself, wrote that unicorns were very ugly brutes and could be found wallowing in mud.
In the 1500s, Conrad Gessner featured a description and illustration of the animal in his Natural History text. Like Ctesias and Pliny before him, he based his account on descriptions from explorers, not on an actual specimen. For people of the Middle Ages, there was no doubt that these animals were real. Sailors and merchants even sold long white spiraled horns that they claimed came from unicorns. Drinking from cups made of these horns was said to protect against disease and poison. The belief in the existence of unicorns persisted until the 18th century, but as travelers ventured into increasingly distant lands and found no actual unicorns, that began to change.
Today, scientists believe that early descriptions of unicorns were based on real animals that explorers had no reference for at home, including oryxes and rhinoceroses. Those unicorn horns probably came from rhinos or narwhals, whose horn is actually a large tooth.
Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” and the cheerful Disney adaptation are probably the most famous merfolk of all time, but tales of half-human, half-fish creatures date back to ancient Mesopotamia and are present in legends from cultures worldwide. For example, Slavic mythology features the Rusalka, said to be the spirit of a virginal woman or an unbaptized child. Tales from Western, Central, and Southern African cultures feature Mami Wata, a water spirit often portrayed as part mermaid, part snake charmer. Depending on their origins, mermaids might represent good luck, fertility, or the dangerous and unpredictable nature of the ocean. For sailors, spotting one could either be a good sign or a bad omen.
When Christopher Columbus saw what he believed to be a group of mermaids, he remarked that they were not as beautiful as they were painted, though they had some human features. Spoiler alert: they were manatees. Scientists suspect that sea cows and their relatives, as well as seals, are responsible for most mermaid sightings reported by sailors.
It’s important not to confuse mermaids with sirens, though they have often been conflated. Sirens were half-woman, half-bird creatures from Greek mythology that lured sailors to their deaths with their songs. According to Britannica, one theory suggests that these creatures evolved from ancient tales of the perils of early exploration combined with an Asian image of a bird-woman, anthropologists explaining the Asian image as a soul bird—a winged ghost that stole the living to share its fate.
Now, let’s talk about a spirit from South Asian folklore with a very good reason for her actions. In Malaysia, a woman who suffers during death, whether in childbirth or at the hands of a man, is sometimes said to become a spirit called Pontianak. Dressed in white with long dark hair and the scent of frangipani, the Pontianak wanders at night seeking revenge. In some versions of the tale, she disembowels a man with her nails and then consumes his insides. As Charlene Teo, who wrote the novel “Ponti,” explained, the Pontianak mimics vulnerability through her high-pitched baby cries and frangipani scent, but if you take advantage of her, she’ll retaliate.
The Indonesian counterpart of this mythical being is the Kuntianak, but it’s difficult to pinpoint where these stories originated. Related spirits appear in Bangladesh, India, and Singapore. There’s even an Indonesian city named Pontianak, but that name comes from the spirit, not the other way around. According to legend, the area was once infested with ghosts until the city’s founder and his men drove them out.
One thing we do know is that horror movies have helped spread these stories. Films and TV shows about the Pontianak have been made since at least the 1950s.
If you’re a fan of the “Underworld” film series, then this next fact is for you. The werewolf might be as old as literature itself. One version of the Epic of Gilgamesh features a story about a woman who turned a former lover into a wolf. Men who transformed into wolves also appeared in the mythology of ancient Rome and Greece. Herodotus wrote about a tribe from Eastern Europe who were said to transform into wolves at certain times of the year.
According to some theories, using wolf skins for warmth may have contributed to these beliefs. This is likely why Herodotus described their practice as transformation.
Stories about demons that survive by sucking the life force from humans have existed for millennia, but modern vampires are more recent than you might think. The word “vampire” only appears in the English written record around the turn of the 18th century. The earliest reference may have referred to vampires metaphorically in a business context, suggesting the concept was already familiar to readers.
Western Europeans became interested in the phenomenon of vampires during the late 17th and early 18th centuries as reports emerged from Eastern Europe of vampire epidemics. Modern science has some ideas about what might have caused these epidemics, many of which lead back to real-life diseases. For example, porphyria causes light sensitivity, while rabies is associated with biting and hypersensitivity to strong aromas, like garlic.
The introduction of corn into European diets around this time may have played a role in spreading vampire myths. Europeans who ate the unprocessed version of the grain often ended up with dietary deficiencies leading to widespread bouts of pellagra, one symptom of which is light sensitivity.
Decomposition may have also played a role. The bodies of suspected vampires were often exhumed, and as the skin shrinks during decomposition, it would appear as though the hair and nails of the deceased had continued to grow after death. This may have led to the assumption that the corpse wasn’t quite so dead after all.
Eastern Europe was experiencing extreme social and cultural upheaval at the time, which can drive these kinds of epidemics.
These days, pop culture depictions of vampires show the creatures being created by a bite, but traditional vampire lore had other methods. In certain myths, all it took for someone to rise again was for an animal to jump over the corpse. In Slavic regions and China, it was usually a dog or a cat doing the jumping, while in Romania, a bat flying overhead was said to reanimate a dead body.
Now, let’s talk about zombies. In pop culture, zombies are often depicted as undead flesh-eaters, especially hungry for brains, thanks to George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.” However, the idea of zombies has roots in Haitian folklore, where they are dead bodies revived by voodoo priests called bokors. Once reanimated, the zombie is under the bokor’s control.
The slave trade may have brought these beliefs from West Africa to Haiti, but once in the New World, they evolved. According to some Afro-Caribbean traditions, a natural death allowed souls to return to Africa. However, those who took their own lives would be condemned to wander the plantations as soulless zombies, trapped in their own bodies.
As horrific as that mythology is, it’s worth noting that for some, zombies are not just a myth but a real phenomenon. There is at least one documented case that seems to support this belief. In May 1962, a man named Clairvius Narcisse, who was suffering from a mysterious illness, died in a hospital in Haiti. His death certificate was signed by two doctors, and he was buried. However, in 1980, he returned to his hometown and approached his sister, claiming he had been turned into a zombie following an inheritance dispute with his brother.
Narcisse’s story was studied and featured in ethnobotanist Wade Davis’s book “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” which posits that zombies are created using powders laced with tetrodotoxin, a poison that can cause paralysis derived from pufferfish.
Now, let’s talk about leprechauns. The first written record of a leprechaun appears in the old Irish tale “The Saga of Fergus Mac Letty.” Fergus, the king of Ulster, was taking a nap on the beach when some water sprites called “lupracans” tried to drag him into the ocean. He captured the sprites and made a deal: he’d set them free if they granted him three wishes. They agreed, and the leprechaun tale was born.
Some sources look even further back, suggesting connections to ancient Rome. A team from Cambridge University and Queen’s University Belfast discussed the “Luperci,” a group that may have run around ancient Rome during the Lupercalia Festival.
These days, leprechauns are usually portrayed as crafty cobblers who love gold, pranks, and the color green, but in early tales, they preferred to wear red.
Accounts of dragon-like beings go way back, appearing as giant serpents in Mesopotamian art, in the realm of the dead in ancient Egyptian mythology, and symbolizing good fortune in Chinese folklore. Interestingly, these myths evolved independently around the world. One theory for this is that real-life animals, from dinosaur fossils to Nile crocodiles to whales, were misidentified in a pre-Google world.
Speaking of whales, they may have inspired more than just dragons. Some sea monsters spotted by sailors throughout history were likely misidentified whale penises, which can be quite large.
If there’s anything we’ve learned so far, it’s that many mythical creatures probably had a basis in real animals. Cyclopes, the famous one-eyed giants of Greek mythology, might be another example. They may have been inspired by the discovery of bones belonging to a relative of modern elephants. These creatures were up to 15 feet tall and had 4.5-foot-long tusks, with skulls featuring a single prominent hole, which ancient Greeks may have believed was for one huge eye.
That being said, many experts remain unconvinced. Classics professors have pointed out that while these theories often have satisfying explanations, they lack tangible evidence.
Similar to the Cyclops, griffins—creatures commonly described as having a lion’s body and an eagle’s head—may have been inspired by the bones of protoceratops dinosaurs, which had beaks and long shoulder bones that might have been confused for wings. Their skeletons have been found in the Gobi Desert, where, according to Greek mythology, griffins guarded their hordes of gold.
Finally, let’s wrap up by talking about a couple of mythological cats. The Scottish Highlands are said to be home to the “cat she,” a fairy cat the size of a dog with a white patch on its chest. According to legend, the cat she can steal the souls of the recently deceased, but the people of the Highlands had at least one powerful tool at their disposal to distract the cat she: catnip.
There’s also the “kushi,” or fairy dog, in the Highlands, which will come after you even if you’re alive.
Perhaps my favorite mythological creature comes from Icelandic folklore: the Yule Cat, a giant black cat. When I say giant, I mean bigger than a house. It exists to encourage children to do their chores. According to tradition, children who finish their work before Christmas will be rewarded with new clothes, while those who are lazy will be eaten by the Yule Cat, which roams Iceland on Christmas night looking through windows for fancy new clothes.
This myth may have originated as a way to encourage productivity during the winter months in pre-industrial Iceland. Personally, I prefer to think there’s a real giant cat terrorizing the children of Iceland.
What mythological creature would you have featured in this list? Share its origins or a fun fact in the comments below. We’ll see you next time!
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This version maintains the essence of the original transcript while removing any inappropriate or sensitive content.
Unicorns – A mythical horse-like creature with a single horn on its forehead, often symbolizing purity and grace in literature and history. – In medieval literature, unicorns were often depicted as elusive creatures that could only be captured by a virgin.
Mermaids – Mythical sea creatures with the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish, often featured in folklore and literature. – In Hans Christian Andersen’s famous tale, “The Little Mermaid,” the mermaid sacrifices her voice for a chance to live on land.
Vampires – Legendary creatures that subsist by feeding on the life essence, generally in the form of blood, of the living, often featured in Gothic literature. – Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is one of the most famous novels about vampires, exploring themes of fear and immortality.
Werewolves – Mythical beings that can transform from human to wolf, often associated with folklore and tales of transformation and duality. – In literature, werewolves are often used to explore the conflict between human nature and primal instincts.
Dragons – Mythical creatures often depicted as large, serpent-like beings with the ability to fly and breathe fire, appearing in various cultural myths and legends. – In J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” the dragon Smaug guards a vast treasure hoard in the Lonely Mountain.
Cyclopes – In Greek mythology, one-eyed giants known for their strength and skill in crafting, often appearing in epic tales. – In Homer’s “Odyssey,” Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus during his journey home from the Trojan War.
Griffins – Mythical creatures with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, symbolizing strength and vigilance in various legends. – In ancient mythology, griffins were believed to guard treasures and priceless possessions.
Folklore – The traditional beliefs, customs, stories, and legends of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth. – Folklore often includes tales of mythical creatures and heroes that reflect the values and fears of a culture.
Mythology – A collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition, explaining natural phenomena and cultural practices. – Greek mythology is filled with stories of gods and heroes that have influenced Western literature and art for centuries.
Spirits – Supernatural beings often believed to inhabit the natural world, appearing in various cultural myths and stories. – In many Native American traditions, spirits are considered guardians of the natural world and are respected in cultural rituals.
