They as soon as carried a Solar god throughout the sky, stood watch over golden treasures, and even protected the mighty Zeus with their sharp beaks; myths of griffins thrived throughout many historic civilizations and proceed in widespread tradition to today.
The prevalence of such monstrous beaked hybrids throughout various cultures has led some researchers to consider the inspiration for these fantastical beasts lay in actuality, attributing the origins of their legendary existence to the invention of fossilized dinosaur bones in Asia.
Two researchers from the College of Portsmouth have now laid their case arguing the dinosaur-griffin origin story is itself a fantasy.
“Not all mythological creatures demand explanations via fossils,” says paleontologist Mark Witton.
“Invoking a task for dinosaurs in griffin lore, particularly species from distant lands like protoceratops, not solely introduces pointless complexity and inconsistencies to their origins, but in addition depends on interpretations and proposals that do not face up to scrutiny.”
Tales of a beast with the pinnacle and forelimbs of a raptor and a physique of a lion have been attributed to central Asia by historic Greek and Roman authors. The unfold of such tales alongside worldwide commerce routes led classical folklorist Adrienne Mayo to counsel some 30 years in the past they have been imagined by Scythian gold miners who’d stumbled throughout beaked dinosaurs like protoceratops. This has since change into the favored principle of how myths of griffins started.
On reevaluating fossil information, Witton and his colleague Richard Hing discovered plenty of inconsistencies on this concept.Portray of a griffin above the fossils of the horned dinosaur protoceratops. (Mark Witton/College of Portsmouth)Griffins have been considered protectors in historic Greece, typically related to guarding caches of gold – therefore the proposed connection to gold miners.
There’s one downside: protoceratops fossils have really by no means been found close to gold.
“There’s an assumption that dinosaur skeletons are found half-exposed, mendacity round nearly just like the stays of recently-deceased animals,” explains Witton. “However usually talking, only a fraction of an eroding dinosaur skeleton might be seen to the bare eye, unnoticed to all apart from sharp-eyed fossil hunters.”
What’s extra, the parable of griffins existed within the Mediterranean, as depicted by a Mycenaean vase from at the least the twelfth century BCE, lots of of years earlier than information of the dinosaurs may have reached the identical space.
Witton and Hing additionally level out dinosaurs equivalent to protoceratops, are solely griffin-like in that they’ve 4 limbs and a beak.Comparisons between a protoceratops skeleton and depictions of historic griffins. The lengthy and versatile tails and coiled manes of the griffins strongly counsel their our bodies are primarily based on a giant cat, not a dinosaur. (Witton & Hing, Interdisciplinary Science Evaluations, 2024)”There’s nothing inherently improper with the concept that historic peoples discovered dinosaur bones and integrated them into their mythology,” explains Hing.
“However we have to root such proposals in realities of historical past, geography and paleontology. In any other case, they’re simply hypothesis.”
There are examples of geomythology which can be based in shreds of reality. For instance, tales of magical stone swallows with healing properties flying free throughout thunderstorms are prone to be fossils of shellfish from China’s Devonian period, which resemble the unfold wings of a chook.
Later of their historical past, fossil relics have been related to griffins too. Through the center ages the horns of hoofed mammals and extinct rhinos have been recognized because the legendary beast’s claws. However these have been centuries after myths of griffins had been effectively established.
An overview imprinted in clay from an engraved Mesopotamian stamp present in what’s now now Iran is the oldest identified depiction of a gryphon, relationship again to 3000 BCE.
“All the pieces about griffin origins is in line with their conventional interpretation as imaginary beasts, simply as their look is solely defined by them being chimeras of massive cats and raptorial birds,” Witton concludes.
Typically a fantasy is simply that, even when shared throughout huge quantities of time and cultures.This analysis was revealed in Interdisciplinary Science Evaluations.