Have you ever wondered where our worst nightmares come from, For the ancient Greeks, they were probably fossils of prehistoric giant animals.
On the Greek island of Crete, researchers found several fossils of the bones of deinotherium giganteum, which can be interpreted more deeply as meaning a huge terrible beast. These monsters were much larger than the current elephants as these giant mammals were 15 feet (4.6 meters) long and had terrifying fangs 4.5 feet (1.3 meters) long. According to scientists, it was one of the largest mammals that ever walked on Earth.
“This is the first discovery on the island of Crete and the south of the Aegean Sea in general,” said Charalambos Vassoulas, a geologist at the Natural History Museum of the University of Crete.
“It is also the first time that we have found a complete Tusk of an animal in Greece “ We haven’t dated the fossils yet, but the sediments we found are 8 to 9 million years old.
The giant skulls of deinotherium found at other sites show that it is more primitive, and its collection is much larger than that of today’s elephant, with a very large nostril in the center of the skull.
For today’s paleontologists, a large hole located in the center of the skull indicates the presence of a pronounced trunk. For the ancient Greeks, deinotheremskills could be the basis for their tales about the frightening one-eyed giant.
In her book The First Fossil Hunters: paleontology of the Greek and Roman Era, Adrienne Mayor argues that the Greeks and Romans used fossil evidence – the enormous bones of long-extinct species – extinct species-to support existing myths and create new ones.
“The idea that myths explain the natural world is an old one,” said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist at California State University in Sacramento, who has done extensive work on the island of Crete. “You will never be able to test the idea scientifically, but the ancient Greeks were farmers, and they will certainly come across fossil bones like this and try to explain them” And with no concept of evolution, it makes sense to reconstruct them in their minds as giants, monsters, sphinxes, etc.
Homer, in his epic tale about the trials and tribulations of the Odyssey during his ten-year return journey from Troy to his homeland, tells about the traveler’s meeting with the giant. In the Odyssey, he describes them as a group of giant, one-eyed, man-eating shepherds. They lived on an island that Odysseus and some of his men visited in search of provisions. They were caught by one of the Giants, who ate several men. Only their mental thoughtfulness and courage saved them all from becoming a dinner for these giants. The captured travelers managed to make the Beast drink, blind him, and escape.
The second legend says that the Cyclops are the Sons of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky). The three brothers became the blacksmiths of the Olympian gods, and made the lightning bolts of Zeus, the trident of Poseidon.
“Mayor makes a convincing argument that the places where a lot of these myths originate are in places where there are a lot of fossil layers,” Strasser said. He added: “These excavations also indicate that in some legends monsters appear from the ground after big storms, which is just one of the things I never thought about, but it makes sense that after the storm the soil erodes and these bones appear “
Since elephants were nearby, living creatures roamed Europe, Asia, and Africa during the Miocene epoch (23 to 5 million years ago) and the Pliocene (5 to 1.8 million years ago) before becoming extinct.
Vasoulas said the finding of the remains on the island of Crete indicates that the mammals moved to larger European areas than previously thought. Vasoulas is in charge of the paleontology department of the museum, and supervised the excavations.
It is suggested that the animals arrived on Crete from Turkey, where they swam and moved between the islands through the southern Aegean Sea during periods when sea levels were low. Many herbivores, including today’s elephants, are exceptionally strong swimmers.
“We believe that these animals most likely came from Turkey through the islands of Rhodes and Karpathos to reach Crete, “he added.
The canines of dinotherium, like current elephants, grow out of their lower jaw and bend downwards and slightly backward instead of upwards. Signs of wear on the Thorns indicate that they were used to strip the bark from trees, possibly to dig up some plants.
“According to what we know from studies conducted in northern and Eastern Europe, this animal lived in a forest environment,” Vasoulas said. “He used his milled Tusk to dig, level branches and bushes, and in general to find his food in such an ecosystem, ” he explained.”