I have heard that the Unicorn was REAL. Anyone else hear anything about this? I used to be really into Unicorns when I was little, as I was into most fantastic creatures. The horn of a Unicorn was also said to have magical powers...

By Bryan (Houdini) on Unrecorded Date:

Unicorns?

A long time ago

By Rigel (Nat) on Unrecorded Date:

the unicorn tapestries in the Cloisters Museum are REALLY faboo. Anyone see them?

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Unrecorded Date:

I know alot of Christian/Catholic mythology--Heaven, Hell, Saints, Angels, Bible stories, etc. All left-overs from Catholic school (k-4th grade) and then confirmation classes (8th grade). Also, spiritual research when I began to believe in "something more" than the Catholic faith lets on...

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Did you know that the Narwhal, Unicorn of the Sea, is real? Anyone have a web-picture to show?

By Rigel (Nat) on Unrecorded Date:

They have a tusk from the whale on display in the Cloisters museum with the unicorn tapestries. whalsers would cut off the tusk and then claim it was the horn of a unicorn.

By Margravine Issold (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

There has got to be a reason that 'mythic' creature show up in the literature and traditions of almost every culture. Eons before communications advances, unicorns, dragons and the like appeared in the lore of the Mayan, Chinese, Western Europe, and more. Is this universal mind?

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

I think everyone just likes a big lizard!

Sol

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Unrecorded Date:

I think they existed, but went dormant as man grew more aware. Any other thoughts?

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

I don't look at visions as literal anymore, but instead view them to be like directed dreams. You have to be open to possibilities to experience this, however, so it is too with the Unicorn. It occurred to me that there are people who believe in magic because... well... it makes the world a more colorful place, and in the end, it is all how you look at it. From the right perspective, there is magic everywhere.

"You live in a Universe of Darkness. You will not drag us down with you."

--Kai Wynn, DS9

By Bryan (Houdini) on Unrecorded Date:

Dragons it is thought, are the mythos created by
early civiliations as an explanation for the discovery of dinosaur bones.

Cool! :>

Hmm.... I'd almost rather go against a red
dragon in a RPG campaign then the genuine article, a T.Rex!

-Houdini

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Actually, the first dino bones weren't even discovered until the 1800's ... what a shock THAT was!

Sol

By Bryan (Houdini) on Unrecorded Date:

The first documented finding was in the 1800's.
Who is to say earlier humans didn't discover them and simply did not know what to make of them?

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Check it out!

The Hadrosaurus


People simply did not believe it - remember, the early Christian Church said that all the animals in existance were also in the Garden of Eden... to suggest that ANY animals came before man, or that God made a "mistake" by creating an animal that would go extinct was lunacy and blasphemous. After the find, all that was called into question... Did God actually create something BEFORE man? Or worse, did God really exist?

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Re: Dragons

Maybe someone's dog accidentally swallowed some firecrackers...

By Margravine Issold (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

An Irish Archbishop named James Ussher decided he would calculate the creation from the information available in the Bible. Using the generational begats he counted back to Adam. He fixed the creation of the Earth at 4004 BC. This was in (AD)1650. Later a fella called Lightfoot took Ussher's calculations a step further and fixed the creation at October 26, 4004 BC.

Most fossils at that time were viewed as the results of the Flood - Noah's flood. A guy named John Ray published a discussion of the nature of fossils, creation, and the flood in 1693.

It wasn't until 1771 that someone decided the Earth might be older - 75,000 years old - older than life on the planet. The first "giants bones" were found shortly after in NJ about 1787. These were the first (probable) dinosaur fossils we know about.

The term dinosaur wasn't coined until around 1840. The first T. Rex wasn't uncovered until around 1901 or 1902.

In China they still grind up dinosaur fossils and sell them as 'Dragon bones' a curative powder.

Sorry if this turned into paleo 101. But I think it's all pretty interesting.

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Cool! Thanks for the insights, Ranger! I never would'a pulled the early creationists and dinosaurs together, but you pulled it off quite believably. bravo.

I hear that there is a team of Japanese scientists working to clone a living Wooly Mammoth. Did I mention that? With just a little bit of sperm from a mammoth (they found that even dead sperm works) they will be able to recreate this prehistoric creature.

By Margravine Issold (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

Why? Isn't it possible extinction happens for a reason? Talk about opening a can of worms.

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Well, the Bible says that God created all the animals for man's benefit... and the idea that there were huge monstrous creatures that died out eons before man even existed doesn't seem to jive with that.

By Margravine Issold (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

Okay, I really don't want to get bogged down in a religious nuance discussion but remember that despite its inspiration, the Bible was still written by men, and Man does tend to be self centered. Besides aren't scientists benefitting from the study of extinct species? Aren't we learning a lot about past ecosystem, and the cyclic nature of ecosystem evolution. Won't we be able to apply this knowledge to help ourselves? I think so. Do we really need our benefits in the shape of a mastadon-burger?

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

I'm saying that if you believe what Genesis said about the Creation, then you also believe that life was created for man (this is what the whole Western World believed for hundreds of years). Right? That is why the suggestion that all of a sudden, there was this huge epoch b4 man was nothing less than sacreligious and even damnable.

By Margravine Issold (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

True. One Italian gentleman, whose name escapes me, was burned alive for suggesting an evolutionary theory in the 17th century. I think it was Copurnicus who was imprisoned for suggesting the Earth (ie man) was not the center of the universe. A case of those who do not agree with us are not only wrong but evil. A thought prevelent even today I find.

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Unrecorded Date:

You are all wrong. You are thusly all evil. You will burn in Hell...

Seriously--Do you hear yourself, Sol? When did you start taking everything in the Bible at face value? Doesn't the Sol I know constantly question all things spiritual and take all things into consideration? We must remember that the Bible was written by people--usually the people who won the wars. Winners of wars almost ALWAYS portray the losers as a lesser people and even evil. Ancient history, by its very nature, is a very biased portrayal of what may have happened. The stories even become glorified, and thus you get mythology. Anything that was beyond human comprehension is chalked up to being either a work of God or a work of the devil. If we were to travel back in time with a truckload of technology and knowledge, we would either be burned at the stake as heretics/devils or praised as gods for the bringing of light to the people. Actually, we would probably all be burned, but that's besides the point. Since the dawn of mankind, Religious institutions, run by men, have had a controlling factor on the way people think, how they act, and what they do. I do not discount the existence of Christ, or God, or any of the other deities of the world--I'm simply saying that mankind's influence on religion has been great.

The further back in time we look, the more sketchy the information becomes. Each culture throughout history had their own views on everything. Were they all wrong? Were they all right? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between the two--when you look at how each culture developed as compared to each other, you see a strand that might tie them together... That strand is the beginning of Truth, and when you follow its full course, a tapestry is woven...

By Margravine Issold (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

Just as an aside, the etymology of the word 'hell' turns out to mean the garbage dumps outside of Jerusalem where they burned their trash. Interesting journey that word took.

Additional aside for you Shadowrun players, the game - I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong - took it's starting date for the Awakening from the Mayan calender, another interesting religion that followed cycles of birth (creation) and destruction.

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Fred,

what gave you the impression that I believe everything in the Bible at face value? Can't I say the word "Bible?" Bible Bible Bible :P

If you look carefully, you will see that all I am saying is that the Bible is a powerful MOVING force over the last thousand years whose influence on the entire world is undeniable.

As for my personal religious beliefs, which I've not mentioned here, I think you may know them already...

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Within this Century, it may interest you to know that Galileo was pardoned by the Church for his crimes centuries earlier. I think it was like 30 years ago.

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Unrecorded Date:

Took them long enough, huh? J

By Margravine Issold (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

When you bill yourself as infalible, it takes you a long time to say you might have erred - or perhaps everyone else just misinterpreted that ole excommunication order.

Casting back to the start of this discusion before we went tangential, every thing ever found of ancient fauna has been explained as dinosaur, megafauna, etc. The only naturally occuring single horned animal seems to be the narwhale, and we've yet to prove the existance of dragons. So where do the stories of fantastic creatures come from? Would we be able to come up with something similer with nothing to base our ideas on? Care to speculate?

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

What do you think, Ranger? What's your theory?

By Margravine (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

Juniper-geef, Sol! I all ready know what I think, I was hoping for new thoughts, but okay... I think that the human imagination comes to us without boudries - we impose those ourselves. I also think that there is a whole lot of universality (is that a word?) among the mankind membership. I think that faced with the unknown that humans HAVE to explain it. If their reasoning is later shown as flawed, out comes theory number two.
I am amazed that when looking up at the night sky, ancient peoples, thousands of miles apart said 'gee, don't that look just like a big fish?"
I think that the human imagination has been getting pretty pasturized lately, and origionality has taken a back seat to the commercial. I think that one should excercise ones imagination at every opportunity. I keep telling myself I'll keep TV a secret from my kid until after he's learned to read, and start his little imagination out on the right road.
I recommend 'The Motel of Mysteries' by David Macauley on more of mans absolute need to explain every thing - even if they get it wrong. :)

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

So you feel that stories of fantastic creatures came from the imaginations of people?

By Bryan (Houdini) on Unrecorded Date:

Of course. Do you doubt the power of the human imagination?

Look no further then our own back yard:

Star wars lore is very much a part of our current culture. The fantasic tales of a galaxy far far away with banthas, and ewoks, and wookies, and droids, and big men with lightsabers. This is the stuff imagination was made of. A future archiologist could examine all the memoribilia and
fan related stuff and think we made a religion
centered arround those films.

Myths might even emerge that yoda is real or
that ewoks did exist. Why? Because, listen to the stories, look at all the archilogical evidence. These people belived in star wars, there MUST be some basis of truth for it! Man those 20th century humans sure were strage, but hey, it has to be real right?

Now compare that to all the cutural references
to dragons, and uniocorns and you see a pattern emerge. If people like a story, real or fiction,
they begin to embrace it, as if it were actualy real. They might colect artifacts to support there
love of the stories, they might even create there own myths and pass them from vilage to vilage, town to town. Given enough time, the story, is
now a legend. Wow. We humans are a strange lot eh?

By Margravine (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

Yes. I believe that barring any hard evidence, Man went out and created what he needed to explain something he wanted explained. As in the above - who ever heard of a wookiee until some one created its existance out of whole cloth?
Therefore, came the like of Quetzlquatle, Smaug, the ogre who played jackstraws, and the lot.

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

or Cthulu!

By Margravine (Ranger) on Unrecorded Date:

Yep. Lovecraft invented his own universe. We invent new worlds when we make up our stories. Imagination is a fairly powerful thing.

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Unrecorded Date:

ROLE-PLAYING! J

By Bryan (Houdini) on Unrecorded Date:

It's freedom baby!

YEAH!

-Houdini

By Tony (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

Imagination can also create reality...

By Solenoid (Sol) on Unrecorded Date:

So what's the deal with this gorillapotomas? You know, the gorilla-hippo centaur? I've been hearing about it, but it just sounded plain weird to me. Anyone have any info?

By Technomage (Houdini) on Wednesday, January 23, 2002 - 07:21 am:

With the arrival of Kelly and her online vamp persona I thought it might be cool to revive this old discusion topic. Vampires are one of the more universal creatures of modern mythology.

Since my brain doesn't quite work so well at 6:30 am I am simply puting together a list of the vampires from film, and print that I think are cool. BTW - A vamp that kills innocent mortals doesn't ever get to make this list. This effectively eliminates any Anne Rice character from making the list.


Blade (rent it if you haven't see it)- Half-vampire that can walk in the day or night and kicks evil vampire arse. Very skilled, very powerfull, and looks cool in sunglasses.

Vampire Hunter D (see movie of same name)- A half-vampire who is the direct desendant of the first one. Another very cool looking and deadly evil vampire killer.

Nick Knight (tv show Forever Knight) - He's your classic modern day version of repentant vampire. Having turned away from his dark past he works with the mortals as a cop to solve heinous crimes using his vampire powers to guide him.