00:00.70 S_ Granarius And we're back for part 2 of this month's episode of archaeoanimals and we're discussing some um, classical mythical creatures. 00:14.83 ALEX Classical Greek mythical creatures. Obviously yeah, oh fancy. 00:17.85 S_ Granarius And Gregor Roman um so yeah, again, a lot of these most people will have heard of them already because again they've ah slipped into so much sort of pop culture. There is books literature. Films just you name it. But um, we're gonna talk a little bit more about them and figure out how this colito anatomy would work not well is this spoiler. 00:50.46 ALEX Yeah I mean so we're going to start looking at or first look at some of the classical kind of mythical creatures that most people know from Greek Mythology starting with I would argue the most famous of the mythical creatures which is cerberus which is. Your classic 3 headed dog traditionally at least oddly enough the number of heads often changed and was also the twelfth labor of Heracles. 01:21.80 S_ Granarius I Mean the the more heads the marry I mean like its it's a it's a dog isn't it just just more heads to to Pa except he probably wouldn't let you well. 01:28.88 ALEX Yeah now I mean ah one of the things about severus is that it's probably 1 of the most well-known because we have so much art from the the Greek periods of ah just depicting. Cerberus. It's archaeologically a favorite for pottery art as much as I hate pottery ah particularly in the sixth century bc and had some of the wildest kind of depictions. 02:03.86 S_ Granarius It's a thinger hesio it claimed he had 50 heads. The pinar gave him know why not a hundred there has a hundred now and um, yeah Euripides gave him 3 bodies as well which we kind of pretty sure that just makes 3 dogs. Um. 02:08.56 ALEX Yep yep Yep Yep yep. 02:21.51 S_ Granarius But and ah Bergil gave him multiple backs but but I mean ah and ah just I'm lost. 02:25.86 ALEX Don't know what that means. 02:30.36 ALEX Just a a peek behind the curtain for folks listening I literally wrote in in the show notes Virgil gave him multiple backs. Let's try and figure out what that means because what. 02:44.43 S_ Granarius And yeah, also you're missing the crucial. What 3 question marks. 02:48.80 ALEX Yeah I read that I had to read that a couple times I I couldn't find any images. No one just I guess everyone else was like virtual. What do you mean? I can't put that on our ah pottery I don't know what you mean by multiple packs. 03:01.67 S_ Granarius Um, could could it be like the like three backsides. So maybe it's it's it's it's got one I guess I don't know like 3 3 pelviss like the the vertebra like the spine column then just splits into 3 03:11.86 ALEX I thought. 03:19.96 S_ Granarius And it's got like 3 hips and butts. 03:21.37 ALEX What I thought after a while was I was like maybe he means like humps. 03:27.63 S_ Granarius Oh. 03:30.60 ALEX Which I'm kind of like oh did someone just see a camel like. 03:35.89 S_ Granarius With a dog's head. 03:36.42 archpodnet I Um, there are some dog breeds that have like humps and ridges like a rhodigean ridgeback. Pretty sure they like they got like but it's just like spine. You know the way it is I've been a hundred is a bit over the top like. 03:42.88 ALEX Oh yeah, ah. 03:53.76 archpodnet I feel like if there's something tasty on the ground. My dog has like a hundred heads like because he's so quick picking it up. It's almost as if like there's a hundred dogs there. So I don't know maybe it was tongue in cheek like we treated like a super serious but it could be just like. 03:56.63 ALEX Yeah. 04:09.46 archpodnet I can't get my dog to listen to me and if he sees something on the grind he has to eat it I mean it's like he's got a hundred heads and your amenities is like oh yeah, that's great. You know I just write that dog. That's a really good turn of phrase and then we're like picking up part. You know, just saying it could be humor. 04:24.72 S_ Granarius I mean that probably like a whole thesis that can be done are just humor in the archaeological record and I would probably missed a bunch of it or much like people doing things just because sometimes it's not a fertility ritual sometimes someone has done that painting or whatever. 04:32.81 ALEX Yeah I mean. 04:43.52 S_ Granarius Just because they could and they did. 04:45.73 ALEX It's something we yeah they thought it was cool and that's why they did it and yeah I mean it could be but I'm just it's less about whether or not this is like not factually correct but like. Super serious and more of the fact that I just want to figure out what eurides meant when he said that service had 3 heads and 3 bodies because again isn't that just three huns. 05:10.76 S_ Granarius And maybe it's a dog that's wagging his head so violently because he's so happy that he looks like he's got like 3 bodies as well. 05:14.62 ALEX True. Yeah, and I mean the funny thing is obviously and this is something that we'll we'll talk about and some of the other examples I think but you know there are cases of animals being born with 2 heads. And things like that and some people have put forth The idea that some of these mythical creatures could have come From. You know someone seeing one of those kind of ah unusual Animals. So Who knows maybe a dog was born with 50 heads. 05:57.36 S_ Granarius I mean so might maybe um Mayam could be that or humor or literally like Vergil wrote that and we'll see if anyone buys it. 05:57.77 ALEX Somewhere. 06:13.65 S_ Granarius Cause they all believe me cause I'm verants. 06:14.28 ALEX You know there's a lot Virgil anyway, we will move on to the next one another pretty famous example of Greek Mythological creatures ah most people refer to them as. Cyclops but technically it's not just one. It's a group of many eyed giants soy clubs slight cyclops I don't know. Multiple cyclops. 06:52.98 S_ Granarius There are many 1 ne-ey giants in Greek Mythology actually probably the most well known being polyphemus sin in the a seen in the odyssey. Um Jo like. 06:56.53 ALEX Yeah, but. 07:03.70 ALEX Yeah. 07:12.00 S_ Granarius Interesting fact, although probably not ah we have a grotto of polyphemus um in a village or small town not far from where I'm originally from. 07:22.93 ALEX Oh is that not far from you because I studied that when I was in Uni. 07:27.77 S_ Granarius Because there's one like I don't know whether it's it's always been cold that and I guess one of the variations of the myth has polyemmas residing in that cave even though really I think if you look at the odyssey like they just like at Landon. 07:39.58 ALEX Yeah. 07:47.21 S_ Granarius An island of giants altogether unless they mean to say that Sicily's an island of giants which um, 5 four. No um. 07:48.24 ALEX Yeah. 07:58.93 ALEX I think it's I mean I assume it's kind of one of those things where there's a lot of local variations on the myth you know where it might be locally. They said. Ah yeah, that it was actually here in the grotto. But again from what I remember. And may have also been like a later thing because obviously you had the romanization of a lot of Greek Mythology so a lot of that kind of you know? Ah, you know what's the word kind of using that aesthetics and things like that to. Liven up parts of you know Rome and. 08:39.23 S_ Granarius X I don't know when that ah grotta where that cave was named like the sort of the polyphemus cave in all fairness because course we did get romanized though to an extent like less than the we did stay pretty greek throughout. 08:54.61 ALEX Yeah, no, but I love that because like said I I like really remember studying that a lot. Not even vaguely I do remember studying that was one of the the things I actually liked about. 08:58.18 S_ Granarius But um, but yeah, no, it's just a bit and um there you go. 09:14.24 ALEX My degree. But yeah going back to Cyclops. We're talking about them more generally probably the most well-known example or potential example of a myth being inspired by Amo remains again. Potentially. Ah, one of the kind of origins in the myth that people have posited is that Greeks may have stumbled upon skulls of pleistocene dwarf elephants and interpreted them as the skulls of 1 ne-eyed giants where they misstook the nasal cavity which is kind of you know, almost dead center of the. Goal as a eye socket. Ah and an additional theory is that the appearance of congenital disorder called cyclopeia in which fetuses have only one eye in the sound of the forehead may have led to the myth kind of going back to what we were talking about with severus so kind of like. Ah, interesting potential origins for the myth. 10:15.15 S_ Granarius Because again one of the really interesting things things about mythology is the thought process. So okay, there's this fantastical creature. But what I want to know is that how did that even come into your head saying. Yeah, there is this creature. Yeah, it's ah it looks like. 10:20.71 ALEX Yeah. 10:34.86 S_ Granarius Like this. But what? what's the thought process. How did that come to be did you just make that up. What was your thought process. What were you thinking. 10:41.14 ALEX Yeah, it's and it's it's weird to think about now we're so far ahead of when these mythologies were originally you know orally spread So It's hard to imagine what it was like to come up with those things because nowadays a lot of what. We consume as kind of fantasy or fiction are based off of these original tropes and ah and then then realistically speaking these mythological creatures some of them may have had origins even older that were passed down that we can even you know. Find evidence for to learn ourselves. 11:19.60 S_ Granarius Next of course we can only talk about things for which we have either an oral or written record people the path you go back into prehistory don't know I mean like usually sort of like the Roman God sort of get. Um. 11:24.22 ALEX Exactly. 11:35.85 S_ Granarius Not quite mocked but made light of because it's sort of like it's almost a carbon copy of the greek pantheon but who's to say that the Greek panthe is actually a carbon copy of some other mythology that was there before that we don't know which about because there's no written record. 11:47.90 ALEX Yeah I mean there's there's already kind of those through lines when you look at the the mycenaans and the minoans and things like that. Um and even farther that than before that as well. That kind of. Get picked up in 2 specific gods and goddesses. But again you know time is very long and we can only know such a small portion of it and if you think too much about it. It hurt your head. So let's move on to the next one instead ah which is the chimera which is kind of just like a word. We use these days to refer to most you know hybridy type creatures. 12:30.69 S_ Granarius Yeah, just like a mix of 2 were more just animals. 12:36.79 ALEX Yeah, ah so they're made up of various animals in Greek Mythology specifically from what was from Lycia which is Asia minor nowadays. It's like I said it's a term that is used to refer to any kind of hybrid. But according to the likes of homer and Hesiod. It had 3 heads line in the front firebreathing goat in the middle serpent in the back and yes I do mean that the line head was in the normal head spot. The goat head kind of popped out of the torso and ser a tail a serpent head. Came out of the butt. 13:14.31 S_ Granarius Oh okay, um, ah. 13:17.32 ALEX Keep us on our toes. They're like you think? Okay, we'll have a 3 headed creature and then people are like hey you did that last week you said that servers had 3 heads that's boring and then they were like you know what fine the head There's one head in the normal spot and then on the in the back is another head. And then out the butt is another head. They're Happy. That's exactly what happened? Oh yeah, of course I completely need to like emphasize that the goat breeze fire is not just that There's a goat coming out of the back it breze fire. 13:38.30 S_ Granarius And the ah and the goat breathes fire. 13:52.35 S_ Granarius Okay, so like that that is actually like very very useful to to um, get yourself a bite to eat because of course if some if ah if something comes by and you want to eat it. So like the goat. Just both kills it and roasts it at the same time for then the lion to eat. But then if any scavenngers are sneaking up on you from the back the serpent bites them and hopefully it's poisonous or if not you're just Goingnna really hurt and they'll run away anyway. So actually ignore that that's ah apepe preator. 14:12.61 ALEX M. 14:21.99 ALEX Yeah, I'm not sure. 14:28.73 ALEX I Think what I'm very curious about is that serpents you know, rep Reptiles bone structure wise are so different. Ah at least you know in terms of kind of the the bone like the like I said the bone structures is very different to. 14:30.12 S_ Granarius Yeah, so. 14:49.21 ALEX Malian skeletons. So I'm very curious of how that kind of works out if you go from like a lion to a goat and then ah a snake. 15:01.83 S_ Granarius Then Also like not necessarily our department but in terms of organs like how does that work. 15:07.60 ALEX Lot going on there. It's just jumbled about you know, just kind of rolls about this one might be a bit impossible to kind of work out anatomically. Ah, the goch shoots out fire I don't know what else to say. 15:23.95 S_ Granarius Di Cool um the last one we've got here is the I won't be able to pronounce it The serastes. 15:32.59 ALEX Yeah, karest stays you know if you're not if you're doing that hard hard see or not. Ah. 15:39.82 S_ Granarius So it's a not entirely a hybrid because it's a serpent that was so flexible. It was set to not have a backbone at all and have 2 to 4 Rams horns on its head. Wait a serpent with no backbone. So just that a flimsy snake just flopping. 16:01.61 ALEX Eaten. I mean I get it I think even I think people who aren't necessarily as informed about Anatomy and things like that could say like oh it must not have like a vertebra because of how flexible. They are yeah as you do. 16:23.95 S_ Granarius They're just ah, a floppy snake with Horns I mean no worry I can see that because ah I'm not very knowledgeable on just reptile species. But I think there are some snakes that have some protrusions but the' not quite horns and then. Definitely not a goat-like horns. 16:43.56 ALEX It's funny. You should say that sevoa because it is widely believed that this mythologicalical creature came from experiences with what is now known as the saharan horned viper and the scientific name is actually named after the myth ah Saraccci saises. 17:00.40 S_ Granarius There you go. 17:00.86 ALEX Seized I can't pronounce that I'm so sorry again reptile people so sorry Greek people so sorry Greek Gods so sorry ah anyone else zoos not sorry. 17:10.19 S_ Granarius Ah, except for Zeus don't apologize the Zeus. 17:18.38 ALEX Saharan Horn viper very sorry I love snakes oddly enough hate fish love snakes. 17:26.80 S_ Granarius And we're just dropping truth bombs everywhere. 17:29.20 ALEX This is a very heavy episode for truth and with that. 17:32.66 S_ Granarius Yeah, like ah the truth. Oh do you mean that a lot of the mythologies have sort of parallels. Oh no one want that theory before. 17:40.24 ALEX Blow your mind. Yeah anyway, well and while everyone ruminates on that we are going to take a break and we will come back and talk about the other hybrids. That's right human creature Hybrids baby. Yeah. 17:58.40 S_ Granarius We're ruminating a lot this episode the rumination gonna be like a ah a cat or human hybrid. 17:59.70 ALEX Yeah I had hurts. Oh no.