Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids

Mythic Creatures | Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids

"Before there were any humans on Pallene, the story goes that a battle was fought between the gods and the giants. [Traces of the giants' demise] continue to be seen to this day, whenever torrents swell with rain and excessive water breaks their banks and floods the fields. They say that even now in gullies and ravines the people discover bones of immeasurable enormity, like men's carcasses but far bigger."

—Greek historian Solinus, c. AD 200

Gigantic Bones
The ancient Greeks told stories of giants, describing them as flesh-and-blood creatures who lived and died—and whose bones could be found coming out of the ground where they were buried long ago. Indeed, even today large and surprisingly humanlike bones can be found in Greece. Modern scientists understand such bones to be the remains of mammoths, mastodons and wooly rhinoceroses that once lived in the region.

But ancient Greeks were largely unfamiliar with these massive animals, and many believed that the enormous bones they found were the remains of humanlike giants. Any nonhuman traits in the bones were thought to be due to the grotesque anatomical features of giants.

At A Glance: Giant
From Paul Bunyan of American folklore to the Norse creator-god Ymir, humanlike giants populate the myths of many cultures.

	The long bones of elephant relatives and humans are similar enough to be confused.
	Geological events tend to destroy the skulls of prehistoric elephant relatives, leaving only enormous, humanlike long bones, ribs and vertebrae.
	Ancient authors often reported finding the remains of giants hundreds of feet tall—much bigger than an elephant or any other animal. These reports may represent attempts to reconstruct the bones of several animals found jumbled together as a single giant.

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