Behold an example of a fabled Griffin claw, said to neutralize poisons and once collected as prized objects by Medieval kings. The upper image is of a purported Griffin claw, with a silver band inscribed with the Latin: “GRYPHI UNGUIS DIVO CUTHBERTO DUNELMENSI SACER” (“the claw of a Griffin sacred to the blessed Cuthbert of […]
Medieval Griffin Claw Read More »
If you were ever saddened to learn that Santa Claus isn’t real (sorry), I am here to cheer you up by letting you know that the Ancient Mesopotamians believed in the existence of a fearsome toilet demon that could rise up out of the commode and attack a person at their most vulnerable. This was
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These “Hero Twins” are two of the most important characters from Ancient Maya mythology, and now we can link their stories to an actual Maya practice of sacrificing boy children, especially twins, in the Classical Maya settlement of Chichén Itzá. The findings appeared this month in the journal _Nature_, co-authored by geneticist Rodrigo Barquera, which
Chichén Itzá Sacrificial Burial of Twin Boys from Hero Twin Myth Read More »
Happy Halloween, yunz’ all! In honor of the day, I thought it appropriate to do a post about the Bloody Mary apparition, which terrified many pubescent girls in the United States in the 1970s and ’80s.Trying to see if you could summon Bloody Mary was a genuine folk tradition. Because it was spread by word
Islamic demons, anyone? The famous Jinn (our word “genie” is derived from it) appeared in pre-Islamic mythology, but once the Arabian Peninsula had been taken over by the Muslim conquests of the seventh century, they were incorporated into this monotheistic religion. In early Islam, believers thought of the Jinn as mortal beings, albeit with superhuman
Jinn and Ifrit in Islam and Earlier Read More »
This second-century BCE Etruscan urn shows the death of Actaeon. The myth was popular in the Ancient Mediterranean world and tells a story about a fated hunter, Actaeon, who gazed at the virginal Goddess Artemis/Diana. This forbidden act caused the Goddess to transform the man into a stag, and he was then devoured by his
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Here you see the Spider, one of the most important geoglyphs that form the Nazca Lines amid the arid coastal plain of southern Peru. The Nazca peoples constructed this and other shapes and lines between 500 BCE and 500 CE, in one of the world’s driest regions. Today the Nazca Lines are a UNESCO World
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How we treat the dead reflects much about what the living believe. In the Ancient Mediterranean, pagan cultures considered the proper burial of the deceased to be of critical importance: otherwise, the dead person’s spirit would have a restless afterlife. On the other hand, the world of the living was to be kept separate from
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“The pishtacos would kidnap people and change them into tallow to sell them for soap,” reads this ghastly modern cartoon. Legends about the pishtacos as boogeymen have been around the Andean cultures of Peru and Bolivia since the 1600s. Traditionally depicted as a white man with a beard and blue or green eyes, the pishtaco
The magnificent ruins shown here are only some of the thousands of Ancient Puebloan structures found in southwestern Colorado’s Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. This particular site, found along the 6.5 mile Sand Canyon (loop) Trail, is similar to many of the region, with remarkable masonry that includes cliff dwellings, towers, public roofed
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Many of us have had need to wrap presents in the last few weeks, but maybe only some of us waited until early this morning on December 25 to start wrapping their children’s gifts. (Yours truly, ahem). The discipline of intentionally folding paper into different shapes is known as origami because this practiced flourished
This is a story about a ghost story — the legend of Big Liz of Greenbrier swamp. The tale dates to the American Civil War, when, according to a retelling by S.E. Schlosser, a young but powerfully strong woman — her huge arms could carry two sows at once — was suspected of being
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This fleshy female figure, found facing frontal with felines (haha say that ten times fast) comes from one of the earliest human civilizations that developed agriculture, the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük. The ruins are wonders, spanning thousands of years from 7,500-6,400 BCE, built up layer upon layer of 18 levels. Çatalhöyük gives lots of evidence
You are looking at one of the most puzzled over artistic products of Early Medieval Britain — it is one panel of a rectangular container known as the Franks Casket. Made in 7th-century Northumbria in northern England, it has a fascinating hodgepodge of Germanic/Celtic/Ancient Roman influences, and scholars still debate the exact meanings of the
In recognition of St Valentine’s Day, I thought I had better write about demon sex in the Middle Ages. And Church theologians thought this actually happened, where demons could appear to a woman and have sex with her, making her pregnant. The character Merlin from Medieval Arthurian legend, was born from a woman and
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This extraordinary scene from a 348-long muslin painting called “Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley” was done by an American artist named John J. Egan in 1850. Looking carefully at the details, you can see that white Americans are using their black slaves to open up an American Indian burial mound. The
Indigenous Burial Mounds Read More »
This painting, from Ukrainian artist “AveOko”, is called “Mofar (3)”, and is a modern rendition of a figure from the Hutsul culture. The Hutsuls, a mountain- and- forest- dwelling people in Western Ukraine, consider mofars to be a type of shamen, using herbalism and folk magic. Mofars are considered neither evil nor good per se,
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Here are three close up images from one of the most famous Chinese ink paintings ever created, the _Nine Dragons_, by Chen Rong. Chen Rong produced this handscroll in 1244, and it is massive — over ten meters long! (32 feet) The aesthetic qualities are immediately grasped even if you don’t know a darn
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This strange building, rendered by contemporary artist Yasen Stoilov, is the moveable homestead of the legendary Baba Yaga of Slavic origin. Her stories probably go back much farther in time than our written sources permit us to see, so scholars have argued about the meaning of her tales. Baba Yaga appears as an old
I adore Medieval flora and fauna mistakes! When they got things wrong, they were so extra about it. So here’s an example of a made-up species that Medieval people thought existed, called the “Barnacle Goose,” or “Branta leucopsis”. Much like the “Lamb of Tartary,” which I did a different post about, the Barnacle Geese
