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On Monsters and Folklore: How Do We Select Which Stories to Believe?

8/20/2015

7 Comments

 
Yesterday the skeptic Sharon Hill posted an article discussing her views on folklore and cryptozoology. These views take the form of a book review of Michel Meurger’s Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, a book first published in 1988 from a 1982 French language edition, which I believe was focused primarily on Quebec. The English edition is apparently different from the French original since the author, who was also the translator, rewrote the book as he translated it. That’s neither here nor there, but Hill asks a very interesting question: How do we decide which folkloric stories are likely to represent real, discoverable animals and which are too embroidered with fiction to be of any use? “Should we be using folklore, traditional native tales, and historical texts as ‘evidence’ of, in this case, the existence of lake monsters? I would add, should we be using today’s modern media accounts (instant folklore) in the same vein?”
Hill and Meurger more or less agree that one should not use these stories as evidence of cryptids since there is no real way to determine which are true and which are false without the actual animal involved. But what interests me is how cryptozoologists and other fringe types pick and choose which legends they want to believe. I’m not sure there is a clear answer to that question.

One strand that immediately stands out in reading Hill’s discussion is that the overwhelming majority of cryptid stories accepted by cryptozoologists are associated with white people, either culturally or geographically. Stories told by Europeans, either from European folklore or in their own reports of traditions from Native peoples, are presumed to be more credible than reports that come unfiltered from other cultures. There are exceptions, of course, most notably Native American lore about giants and Sasquatches. But here, too, the interest in these stories is due to their geographic location—the United States—and their relationship to the Bigfoot phenomenon that emerges from twentieth century rural white American culture. A similar phenomenon occurred with the Mokèlé-mbèmbé of the Congo, where white colonialists in the 1900s related the legendary monster to the newly-popular (with Europeans) dinosaurs and thus sparked interest in proving the reality of the beast, roping in European missionaries’ misidentification of a rhinoceros or hippopotamus footprint in the 1700s to construct “centuries” of evidence for what had previously been considered primitive superstition.

Indeed, Meurger discusses the colonialist and imperialist underpinnings for such endeavors, noting that the effort to find a native witness for a particular monster of interest to Europeans and their colonial brethren “is an old gimmick of portraying the sighter as a kind of noble savage,” a spurious effort to turn stories into science by bridging the gap between reality and folklore through the intermediary of the uncorrupted primitive.

But there has to be more to it than that, and I think that the Mokèlé-mbèmbé perhaps helps to understand it a bit. The story of a large animal that tramped through the Congo only became interesting to Europeans when it related to a subject of interest to them and when it also had a superficial scientific plausibility, given the science of the time. In 1909, Lt. Paul Gratz described the creature as a sauropod, only a few years after the brontosaurus controversy of 1903 brought sauropods, known since the 1870s, to popular acclaim. Similarly, stories of lake monsters and sea serpents are particularly plausible in Euro-American culture because of their long cultural acceptance as our own cultural myths.

By contrast, equally well-attested stories of crazy animals and creatures that don’t reflect our scientific and cultural assumptions don’t find that level of interest or acceptance.

Here are a few of those fellows I recently encountered when translating the chapter of the medieval Arabic compendium Akhbar al-zaman on wondrous islands of the various oceans:

  • “It is said that Dhul-Qarnayn (Alexander), going towards the Darkness, passed near an island where he saw people whose heads were those of large dogs, with menacing teeth and spewing fire from their mouths, and which ran toward his ships.”
  • “The Malkān is a sea monster that […] has many heads with diverse faces and curved teeth; it feeds only on the fish it has caught. It is said that this monster was used as vehicle by a king of the sea djinn because it has two wings that, when drawn together near the heads, creates a form like a bow that would provide shelter against the sun.”
  • “The island of Rūd. Here there are people who have wings, coats of hair, and tapered horns; they walk on two feet and four feet; they fly away and come back to the island. They are said to be former satans.”

I don’t think anyone would hesitate to assign these creatures to folklore, yet some of them—especially the dog-headed people—can be traced back to Classical sources, making them better attested and better documented than nearly any of the cryptids. In terms of the dog-headed men, for example, Ctesias mentioned them in his Indica (Photius, Bibliotecha 72), and Pliny in his Natural History (7.2). In 635 CE they appear in the Liang Shu in China, alongside the tale of the marvelous land of Fusang and the Island of Women, stories possibly shared via the Alexander Romance (the direct source for the Akhbar account). Everyone down to Columbus claimed to believe they were real. Well, except for Aulus Cornelius Gellius, who wrote in his Attic Nights in the second century CE that “These and many other stories of the kind I read; but when writing them down, I was seized with disgust for such worthless writings, which contribute nothing to the enrichment or profit of life” (trans. J. C. Rolfe).

Ah, but I fooled you, didn’t I?

Some believed that the dog-headed people were likely real (sort of), and probably emerged from Greek confusion over the projecting muzzles of certain primates. The Greeks, for example, referred to Egyptian depictions of both dog-headed and baboon-headed gods with the same word--cynocephalus—meaning dog-headed. The dog-headed people found in folklore from Europe to China are likely the result of Ctesias’s goof up when trying to describe a monkey.

But this illustrates the problem: What criteria do we apply to pick and choose which stories to believe and which to doubt? Cultural expectations, scientific plausibility, and the investigator’s own convenience all seem to play a role. The same question applies to other legendary claims favored by the fringe: Why should we accept the idea that there were giants, but not the claim that there were people with faces in their stomachs? Why accept the supposed trans-Atlantic adventures of Henry Sinclair but reject the voyage of Euhemerus to Panchaea? 

7 Comments
Shane Sullivan
8/20/2015 06:39:07 am

Speaking of obviously made-up monsters and science, there's a novelty book called the Yōkai Daizukai with a bunch of entertaining illustrations exploring the anatomy of creatures from Japanese folklore.

Here's a taste:

http://pinktentacle.com/2009/10/anatomy-of-japanese-folk-monsters/

Reply
David Bradbury
8/20/2015 08:25:02 pm

It is perhaps not so much a question of what "we accept" ("What do you mean 'We,' paleface") as what we publish. There may be many equivalents of the Japanese book Shane mentions, around the world, but what we see in North America and Europe is books written to interest North Americans and Europeans.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
8/20/2015 11:24:27 pm

Well, that's the thing, isn't it: No matter how who is included in the "we," it will involve picking and choosing. Fringe claims in China or India will differ from Euro-American ones. I am obviously writing from a Euro-American cultural perspective, but "we" aren't going to get at the truth without recognizing the role that this cultural perspective plays in shaping our culture's approach to folklore.

Reply
David Bradbury
8/21/2015 02:00:21 am

Maybe the deciding factor is what "we" are told by "experts".

nablator
8/20/2015 09:23:15 pm

Seeing the world through cultural and personal biases is certainly the reason, in fringe subcultures scientific plausibility is hardly a factor. This discussion reminds me about the Ariel school 1994 incident in Ruwa, Zimbabwe: the African tokoloshe monster story told by some of the children did not stand a chance when the prevailing mythology of the grey alien visitor was forced upon them.

Reply
Dave
8/21/2015 03:43:10 am

The fringe people tend to use folklore as fact so long as the stories help "prove" or at least reinforce their theories. Also there are some folklore stories that are so fantastical that even the fringe will not argue they may be based on facts.

Reply
Bob Jase
8/21/2015 05:50:12 am

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    • Legends of the Pyramids
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    • Television Reviews >
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      • Ancient Civilizations >
        • Ancient Egypt
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    • Collection: Ancient Alien Fraud >
      • Chariots of the Gods at 50
      • Secret History of Ancient Astronauts
      • Of Atlantis and Aliens
      • Aliens and Ancient Texts
      • Profiles in Ancient Astronautics >
        • Erich von Däniken
        • Robert Temple
        • Giorgio Tsoukalos
        • David Childress
      • Blunders in the Sky
      • The Case of the False Quotes
      • Alternative Authors' Quote Fraud
      • David Childress & the Aliens
      • Faking Ancient Art in Uzbekistan
      • Intimations of Persecution
      • Zecharia Sitchin's World
      • Jesus' Alien Ancestors?
      • Extraterrestrial Evolution?
    • Collection: Skeptic Magazine >
      • America Before Review
      • Native American Discovery of Europe
      • Interview: Scott Sigler
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Oh the Horror
      • Discovery of America
      • Supernatural Television
      • Review of Civilization One
      • Who Lost the Middle Ages
      • Charioteer of the Gods
    • Collection: Ancient History >
      • Prehistoric Nuclear War
      • The China Syndrome
      • Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya
      • Easter Island Exposed
      • Who Built the Sphinx?
      • Who Built the Great Pyramid?
      • Archaeological Cover Up?
    • Collection: The Lovecraft Legacy >
      • Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft
      • Lovecraft in Bergier
      • Lovecraft and Scientology
    • Collection: UFOs >
      • Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits
      • Aliens and Anal Probes
      • Ultra-Terrestrials and UFOs
      • Rebels, Queers, and Aliens
    • Scholomance: The Devil's School
    • Prehistory of Chupacabra
    • The Templars, the Holy Grail, & Henry Sinclair
    • Magicians of the Gods Review
    • The Curse of the Pharaohs
    • The Antediluvian Pyramid Myth
    • Whitewashing American Prehistory
    • James Dean's Cursed Porsche
  • The Library
    • Ancient Mysteries >
      • Ancient Texts >
        • Mesopotamian Texts >
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • Berossus
          • Comparison of Antediluvian Histories
        • Egyptian Texts >
          • The Shipwrecked Sailor
          • Dream Stela of Thutmose IV
          • The Papyrus of Ani
          • Classical Accounts of the Pyramids
          • Inventory Stela
          • Manetho
          • Eratosthenes' King List
          • The Story of Setna
          • Leon of Pella
          • Diodorus on Egyptian History
          • On Isis and Osiris
          • Famine Stela
          • Old Egyptian Chronicle
          • The Book of Sothis
          • Horapollo
          • Al-Maqrizi's King List
        • Teshub and the Dragon
        • Hermetica >
          • The Three Hermeses
          • Kore Kosmou
          • Corpus Hermeticum
          • The Asclepius
          • The Emerald Tablet
          • Hermetic Fragments
          • Prologue to the Kyranides
          • The Secret of Creation
          • Ancient Alphabets Explained
          • Prologue to Ibn Umayl's Silvery Water
          • Book of the 24 Philosophers
          • Aurora of the Philosophers
        • Hesiod's Theogony
        • Periplus of Hanno
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • Eusebius' Chronicle
        • Chinese Accounts of Rome
        • Ancient Chinese Automaton
        • The Orphic Argonautica
        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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