[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][Subject Index][Author Index]

RE: historical origins of BCF



Tracy,
It is probably just the skull of dwarf elephants that may have been the source of the cyclops legend, and even dwarf elephants presumably had skulls larger than those of humans. And the earlier dwarf elephant ancestors would have been bigger yet.
Viewed from the front, the skull of a dwarf elephant looks (with a little imagination) sort of like a human skull with the two orbitals fused together (and thus like a large one-eyed human). Not only does the dwarf elephant's nasal cavity look a lot like two human orbital cavities merged together, but the illusion might be even more convincing if the back part of the skull was missing. Those ancients were pretty imaginative folks.
----Ken
******************************************** 
From: "Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@home.com>
Reply-To: dino.hunter@home.com
To: "Dinonet" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Subject: RE: historical origins of BCF
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 14:51:16 -0800

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
David Marjanovic
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 1:39 PM
To: The Dinosaur Mailing List
Subject: Re: historical origins of BCF

* Yes, like ancient Greeks thought that mammoth skulls were cyclops
skulls.>>
>
> Well, no Greek ever saw a cyclops, but we have all seen birds. The Greeks
> >did< recognize that mammoths were unlike anything else they had ever seen
> and acted appropriately within their cultural milieu. If the term
"mammoth"
> weren't so entrenched, one could actually make a case for renaming
mammoths
> "cyclopes."

Not mammoths!!!
The dwarf elephants of various Mediterranean islands, *Elephas falconeri*
and suchlike.<<

Ah, I don't know about that. From the pictures from the book, Cadbury, D.,
2000, Terrible Lizard, The first dinosaur hunters and the birth of a new
science: A John Macrae book, Herny Holt and Company, 374pp, there were
pictures of a MAMMOTH skeleton next to a Human skeleton and it was huge. A
dwarf elephant wouldn't even come up to a man's chin standing like that!
Sure there were dwarf elephant skeletons, but I wouldn't doubt that they
found skeletons of larger elephants back then. Of course my book is buried
right now and I can't double check...


Tracy L. Ford
P. O. Box 1171
Poway Ca  92074



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp