Come Fly with Me on Mythological Wings: Part One

Mythology is full of strange winged creatures, some of them humanoid. If these creatures are not native to Earth, that is they are really real, not mythological, but extraterrestrial, is there anything really implausible at work here? There’s nothing implausible about wings – obviously – even when extrapolated to beings our size or larger. There are just three variables at work here, sheer oomph muscle power; the density of what you’re flying in; and gravity. With the right combination, all sort of flying creatures not native to Earth might be possible.

There are lots and lots of really real winged creatures – birds, bats, insects, and in prehistoric times flying reptiles like pterosaurs/pterodactyls. One might even count ‘flying’ fish or ‘flying’ foxes or squirrels if one had a broad enough definition of ‘flying’. But just because you have wings of course doesn’t of necessity mean you can fly. There are lots of terrestrial flightless birds for example yet they still have wings.

There are also a lot of mythological creatures that fly – the griffin (or gryphon – alt spelling), the dragon, and on and on and on. One can’t of course forget Pegasus, the flying winged horse as one of those.

Now perhaps these are real terrestrial animals. Alas, despite lots of eyewitness accounts, there are no dead bodies available for examination or any other fossil evidence for them.

Or perhaps they are misinterpretations of real, or once real, terrestrial animals. In that latter case, dragons or griffins are misinterpretations of fossils. That’s highly unlikely IMHO. Perfectly intact, fully articulated, fully exposed large winged reptiles from the Age of Dinosaurs are as rare as hen’s teeth. Any vertebrate palaeontologist would probably sell their soul to the Devil for such a find.  The norm is for much of any vertebrate fossil skeleton to have substantial bits missing; what remains is usually in a jumbled state; and near all of it is buried and out of sight. 

Perhaps they are really real, but not of this Earth, that is to say, they are extraterrestrial, or in other words, alien life forms. That’s the most likely scenario IMHO. 

But of course the most logical explanation is that they are, as common knowledge has it, entirely mythological – that is purely fictional with as much reality as a $7 bill!

WINGED BEASTIES

One facet in particular leads me to suggest that such beasties were considered as much a part of the ancient’s menagerie as animals we today know exist. That is, dragons, Pegasus and griffins were 3-D physical flesh-and-blood organisms: for example…

*Dragons: I find it interesting that in the Chinese calendar, there are years for the rat; ox; tiger; rabbit; snake; horse; goat; monkey; rooster; dog; pig and dragon. Of all the twelve, only the dragon is considered by modern society mythical. I find it odd that the Chinese would employ eleven real beasties and one mythical one. Perhaps all dozen were real!  

If only a Chinese emperor or empress could, under pain of death for transgressors, wear an image of a dragon, it’s because their dragons weren’t fictional. Could you imagine the President of the United States being the only American allowed under the Constitution to wear a Felix-the-Cat tee-shirt and anyone else receives the death penalty for doing so? It could only take place in the context of a really real highly significant ‘animal’ that would we think be offended if just anyone of the great unwashed wore their image. Such extreme penalties are more than just a tad hard to comprehend if the ancient Chinese knew perfectly well that there weren’t such things as dragons. Translated, the ancient Chinese (and other cultures) took their dragons very seriously indeed. The fact that the serious occupation of dragon-slaying is a popular, widespread image in ancient, even historical times speaks volumes IMHO.   

Dragons could also be used in place of horses and hitched to aerial chariots. Medea (of Jason and the Argonauts fame) had an aerial dragon-drawn chariot.

And if you believe in the accuracy of the Bible then you need to accept the reality of, for example, those dragons.

Dragons were considered flesh-and-blood right through the Middle Ages; dragon-lore persists right down to our own modern era as witnessed by their popularity in video games, films and novels. 

*Griffins: I recall seeing a photograph of an ancient Greek pottery piece, vase probably, that had surrounding the circumference illustrations of various animals, animals we today instantly recognise as a representation of reality. Bulls, horses, dogs, ducks, etc. – oh, smack dab in the middle of this reality was an image of a griffin! 

Griffins dominate the images in the throne room of the palace at Knossos in Minoan Crete from roughly over 3,500 years ago. Ditto that at in the throne room at the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, Mycenae in Greece. That has images of lions, deer, and of course griffins!

One tends to decorate objects like murals and pottery with familiar things, and what could be more familiar than animals. If you hark back to all those Palaeolithic cave artists, nearly all their artistic images were of animals that all and sundry can recognise and name today with very few exceptions.  So, the logic follows that if you have lots of images (and statues, etc.) of griffins, then griffins were a familiar animal and therefore no doubt really composed of flesh-and-blood.

Griffins were also well known and established in ancient Old Kingdom Egyptian lore as well, as far back as 3,300 BCE in fact. They were no stranger back in ancient Assyria and Sumer, in fact throughout the entire ancient Middle East. The popularity and reality of griffins extended right on through to and including the Middle Ages.

*Pegasus was that famous winged horse of ancient Greece. Pegasus was born out of a pregnant Gorgon, the Medusa, after her decapitation by Perseus. 

Pegasus has been depicted on a 4^th Century BCE Corinthian silver coin as well as on other antiquities such as a Parthian era bronze plate excavated in now modern day Iran. Of course Pegasus is well represented too as a stellar constellation.

Pegasus wasn’t the only flying horse, of course. The Greek sun god, Helios, had his chariot pulled across the sky daily by a team of four white winged horses. The Greek moon goddess, Selene (Luna to the Romans) was drawn through the night sky by two white horses in her chariot.

There are lots of similar illustrations of a mixing between the obviously real animal kingdom and the ‘obviously’ mythological equivalent in the various artistic, even everyday works of the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc.

Further, there’s nothing in the ancient texts or inscriptions or images that says “Hey stupid, this is a work of fiction. I’ve imagined this all on my own. Aren’t I really something for having conceived of this?”

And that’s the crux of the question – did the ancients know that dragons, griffins and say Pegasus were as fictional as we know Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are? If so, did they just go along for the ride and the fun of it all, or did they accept their reality like we accept the existence of giraffes and the platypus? The latter is the answer.

Having, I trust, established the plausibility that griffins, dragons and Pegasus might exist, what about even more interesting, even exotic, winged beasties – of the humanoid kind.

Just as we tend to be more interested in and fascinated by extraterrestrial intelligence relative to extraterrestrial critters, and for obvious anthropological reasons associate intelligence with images of ourselves, or at least variations on that image – call it the humanoid image. One has to look no further than the depiction of intelligent aliens in the movies or on TV – nearly all have some sort of humanoid face. 

So, I’m more interested in a humanoid extraterrestrial context, which is not to suggest that dragons or griffins couldn’t really be alien but non-humanoid, rather I’m just looking for something say that’s not just alien but human or humanoid in appearance with wings, and for that one needs to further examine primarily ancient mythology. 

To be continued…