Skulls, Hoaxes, and Dragons: News from the October 2013 Fortean Times

10/4/2013

It’s often the case that we in the Western world tend to downplay how utterly horrifying so much of the world was before modern medicine. As a result, when we see the frightening results, many, especially “alternative” theorists, are prone to attribute the unusual to extraterrestrials and lost civilizations when more mundane explanations better fit the evidence.

Fair warning: What you are about to see contains disturbing images.

In 1995, Robert Connelly photographed misshapen skulls and declared them evidence of alien-human hybridization. Most were the result of head-binding, a well-known anthropological phenomenon. But the skull below has taken on special life with ancient astronaut theorists because its shape is inconsistent with head-binding.

Most scholars who have looked at the skull recognize it as hydrocephalic, but it doesn’t really hit home until you see an actual person suffering from this rare condition, which is usually treated before it reaches an advanced stage. The October 2013 Fortean Times has a picture of Roona Begum, an Indian toddler with untreated hydrocephaly.

In the condition, the skull expands—in this case to three times its normal size—to accommodate fluid buildup in the brain. The child was eventually treated and underwent several operations to remove fluid and resize the skull.

The October Fortean Times also gives a positive review to Gary Lachman’s biography of Helena Blavatsky, with which I had some differences a few months back. The reviewer praises the book for being “even-handed,” which means that it treats both supernatural and non-supernatural explanations as equally valid. Readers, the review says, are “free to decide for themselves” whether Blavatsky really commanded supernatural powers of alien beings from parallel universe versions of Venus and the moon. This strikes me as akin praising a history of NASA for giving equal time to moon landing hoax claims while leaving it up to readers to “decide” the “truth.” False equivalence and artificial balance are ways of surreptitiously giving extra support to the side that lacks evidence, a subtle form of manipulation.

I should also give notice to another review, of The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed by Miles Russell (History Press, 2013), a book unread by me, but which the review says makes a compelling case that the Piltdown hoaxer was Charles Dawson, as long suspected. According to the review, Russell has established the Dawson was responsible for at least 33 other fake artifacts, including a filed-down tooth he passed off as a transitional species between dinosaur and mammal in 1891, accepted at the time as Plagiaulax dawsoni in his honor. Like the Piltdown skull, many artifacts Dawson faked were designed to fill the gaps in biological or cultural evolution, including a horseshoe meant to bridge a gap in the development of horseshoes! A recurring theme is that Dawson’s fakes received acceptance because scientists had trouble conceiving of a gentleman faking mundane artifacts—despite, of course, the widespread and admitted fakery in the antiquities market for ancient art. Surely, fakers would fake something more profitable, like statues, not bone fragments and horseshoes. At any rate, this looks like a book to add to the reading list.

One thing I do want to know more about is a story apparently included in the new Legendary Beasts of Britain by Julia Creswell (Shire Publications, 2013) in which the Fortean Times reviewer says Britain’s last dragon hunt, in 1812, was occasioned by panic over the introduction of pheasants, mistaken for dragons. This seems like something worth following up on as an example of how monsters and aliens emerge out of practically anything. Sadly, though, I’m not able to immediate track down any sources for this, which must, I suppose, be local records in Wales.

31 Comments

The Other J.

10/4/2013 09:09:30 am

It seems fraudulent nature abhors a vacuum; if a gap exists and not enough evidence exists to provide a satisfying answer for what should be in that gap, that evidence will be manufactured somewhere.

I have a cousin in Australia who's son was born hydrocephalic. He was treated early on and only dealt with some seizure issues, but I'd never seen a full-on untreated case like Roona Begum's... that's just awful.

Isn't hydrocephaly also what probably formed the Starchild Skull?

Erik G

10/4/2013 09:39:11 am

Your last paragraph is very interesting, Jason. The dragon is of course a symbol of Wales. The common pheasant was probably first introduced into Britain by the Romans. It later died out, possibly during the medieval period, and was reintroduced (or rediscovered) in the late 18th or early 19th centuries CE, which would tally with the "dragon hunt" mentioned.

What is interesting here is that no-one appears quite certain just why the dragon became a Welsh symbol. Certainly it appears in Anglo-Saxon legend, and is reputed to have been associated with King Arthur. If there was an actual Arthur, he was probably a Romano-British dux bellorum (duke or warlord, usually commander of frontier troops) who fought the Saxon invaders of Britain.

Arthur is always associated with his mounted armored knights. The closest analog to a mounted knight in the later Roman Empire was the cataphract or clibanarius clad in mail, scale, or banded metal, mounted on a similarly armored horse and wielding a long lance or kontos. The cataphracts originated with the Sarmatians of the Caucasus. They were enemies of Rome, and then, as often happened, took service with the Empire. In 175 CE Marcus Aurelius posted 5,500 to Britain, and it is believed that Sarmatians were still active there in 400 CE.

The important thing here is that the Sarmatians used "draco" standards, hooped tubed banners of cloth on poles which fluttered in the breeze or at speed, supposedly simulating a flying beast (as per Arrian -- Ars Tactica). There has been speculation that memory of these draco standards was the basis of the mythical Romano-Briton and Welsh dragons -- and possibly of those dragons throughout Eastern Europe.

The Sarmatians go back even further than Rome, all the way to Classical Greece, as you must know -- but so does the pheasant. I understand the common pheasant is associated with the River Phasis of Georgia, and that its scientific name (Phasianus colchicus) is derived from both Phasis and Colchis. (Did the Argonauts encounter it, I wonder?)

Both Sarmatians and pheasants originate in the same part of the world -- and both were introduced into Britain. Could the draco standard have symbolized a gloriously-plumed pheasant? Could the Welsh (still largely Briton at the end of the Western Roman Empire) have adopted that symbol? Did the Sarmatian cataphracts and their standards morph into Arthur's Knights of the Round Table?

(As a brief aside -- the Sarmatians apparently prized long swords in an almost religious manner, as is the case in the Arthurian myth.)

That pheasants could be mistaken for dragons in 1812 does seem to indicate the awe these birds inspired. Could dragons have been pheasants all along?

Please let us know what you discover about the 1812 "dragon hunt", Jason. I, for one, would appreciate it.

To refer briefly to your opening paragraph -- much of the globe beyond the confines of the Western World is STILL horrifying to those who live there. Think Darfur or Congo or Somalia. "Alternative" theorists expound their beliefs from the comfortable security of the Western World. They don't have to worry about day-to-day survival, or the suffering of their children, or who will come in the night to take away what little they have. It's so easy to talk about alien gods and ancient supermen and hidden truths when you just know you'll never be terrified enough to have to call on Osiris or Enki or the Sirians to save your sorry ass when strange troops enter your village at four in the morning...

10/4/2013 11:23:16 am

That's an interesting take on where the Welsh dragon comes from. Admittedly, I'm a little more convinced that it's a hang-over from Sarmatian occupation than pheasant misidentification. Peacocks are more flamboyant-looking than pheasants (but the golden pheasant is pretty striking). And pheasants aren't all that large. The worst I've seen a pheasant do is choke a bird dog that was trying to retrieve it, so I'm not sure how a pheasant would get blown up into a destructive reptile.

St. George and the Pheasant just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Here's a question: Could it be a hangover from the history of dragons in Spain? Since many of the people who originally settled Wales came from the Iberian Peninsula, is it possible that the dragon myths from that region, like Herensuge, travelled along with them and morphed into the Welsh dragon?

The one problem I have with that is the Iberian influence on Wales seems likely from Irish migration into Wales, and I'm not familiar with any persistent dragon myth-traditions in Ireland, at least not to the degree they persist in Wales. There's Oilliphéist, who supposedly ripped a scar across the land that became the River Shannon, but I had to go digging for that (there's nothing in the 1200-page door-stopper The Encyclopedia of Ireland). Otherwise, you don't get much in the way of dragons in Irish myth, although there is a Loch Ness -type creature story at Glendolough.

Then again, that Iberian influence could flow both ways, and maybe there were Iberian people with a dragon myth who just filtered out into Wales instead of Ireland. Here's another monkey-wrench; perhaps there was a slight remnant of a dragon tradition from the Iberian Peninsula in both Ireland and Wales, but the Sarmatian occupation in Britain reinvigorated the myth in Wales and helped to generate another layer -- which wouldn't exist in Ireland because the Sarmatians just weren't there.

So many angles.

Jason Colavito link

10/4/2013 12:51:28 pm

I haven’t been able to find the specific incident that allegedly occurred in 1812, but I did find a book on the folklore of Wales that offers what I think is the explanation behind Cresswell’s story. You’ll see in the link the stories of dragons (winged serpents) that were still current in the mid-nineteenth century when the folklorists collected them, including in Denbighshire, where Cresswell places the story. One of the dragons is described as being crested with “brilliant coloring around its head,” like, I suppose, a pheasant.

http://archive.org/stream/afl2317.0001.001.umich.edu#page/166/mode/2up

The Denbigh Dragon was apparently one of the most famous in Wales, and therefore remained current in folklore. It was allegedly the origin of the name Denbigh, which had folk etymology of Dim Bych, meaning “no dragon,” in honor of the dragon’s death. In the late 1700s, the town had a werewolf scare that lasted for several years, but I don’t know how much to trust that story since the only source I can find for it is Nick Redfern, the unreliable UFO writer, citing the credulous Tom Slemen, author of a series of books on ghostly hauntings. I can’t find any other published source for this, so take it with a grain of salt.

As for the pheasant, yes, indeed, the word comes from the Phasis, where they were plentiful. However, the Argonaut myth knows nothing of pheasants, another indication that it originally had nothing to do with Colchis.

I can't quite see how anyone could mistake a pheasant for a dragon, though.

Shane Sullivan

10/4/2013 03:00:38 pm

I dunno about pheasants, but the first time I saw a wild turkey face-to-beak, I remember wondering for a moment what the Hell I was looking at. It was at least sixty yards away, and its high posture and distinctive locomotion looked decidedly non-avian.

Of course, my idea of "avian" at the time was largely based on the crows and robins that frequented my yard. Granted, pheasants are much smaller than turkeys, but maybe if the nineteenth-century Brit or Brits in question were unfamiliar enough with game birds...

10/4/2013 04:13:16 pm

The common pheasant doesn't look too exotic or weird, even compared to a wild turkey (turkeys and vultures look like skeksis from The Dark Crystal). But the golden pheasant looks pretty cool, and at least from the colors you could see someone extrapolating from its appearance to something more supernatural. Google "golden pheasant" and you'll see what I mean (and they're in Britain).

Varika

10/5/2013 11:11:57 am

Well, Jason, people can manage to turn lens flares into spaceships, fragments of bone into aliens, and "There's no such thing" into massive world-wide conspiracies. Is pheasant to dragon really that much of a stretch by comparison?

10/5/2013 11:14:12 am

No, not really, but pheasants are just so small that it seems odd. I would have liked to have found some actual reports of the supposed dragon hunt, but I came up empty, and I'm not special ordering the book from Britain to find out.

Only Me

10/7/2013 06:50:22 am

If there was any supernatural creature the pheasant might be mistaken for, I think it would be the alternate form for the basilisk.

"The best representation of the basilisk is found in the decorative field of heraldry where the basilisk had the head and legs of a cock, a snake-like tail, and a body like a bird’s. It seems that the wings could be depicted as either being covered with feathers or scales. In this form the creature was sometimes referred to as a basilicock or cockatrice."
Read more: http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Basilisk#ixzz2h3jiAF3b

I'm like everybody else; how could a small- to medium-sized game bird transform into a serpentine, fire-breathing orm/wyrm/dragon?

10/7/2013 06:57:31 am

The review implied that the pheasant identification was Cresswell's own. If anyone reading this is from Britain and has seen a copy of the "Legendary Beasts of Britain" book, I'd be very interested in knowing Cresswell's source. So far, I can't find any reference to this dragon hunt anywhere.

10/7/2013 07:38:52 am

I think I found something relevant. Check out this link:

http://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2012/07/peacock-plumed-winged-serpents-of.html

It mentions Marie Trevelyan, a name I've found associated with the story on other sites, writing about the dragon hunt in her 1909 book "Folk-Lore and Folk Stories of Wales".

10/7/2013 07:44:30 am

That tallies exactly with Cresswell's claims, as summarized in the review. Not to knock her, but her research is not particularly deep, so that must be the source. And to think, I linked to the book in these very comments but missed that page because I wasn't looking for the right geographical name. Curse my lack of geographic knowledge of Wales!

I'll read through it and perhaps work something up about this for tomorrow. Thanks!

10/7/2013 10:58:17 am

I reviewed the material, and it seems that Cresswell exaggerated in calling the creatures dragons. They were apparently small enough that people tried to catch them by hand, which certainly suggests a misidentified bird. Oh, well. You know what they say about not letting facts get in the way of a good story.

10/8/2013 01:27:37 am

Maybe they were actually wyverns. Easy mistake.

Thane

10/4/2013 03:31:48 pm

Folklore does travel and mutate as peoples travel and intermingle. We do know there were mass migrations of early peoples throughout all areas of the world and even across continents. Simple beliefs can transmogrify into complex belief systems/myths as a result of the cross contamination of cultures. Absent of written records, we don't really know what fed into what from where and what was the originator.

Isn't there recent speculation that dinosaur bones and fossils may have formed the basis for tales of dragons and other beasties. Early man, having no context, used his imagination to make sense of the world around him.

But none of that is any excuse for people who should know better to promote false information. Nor is it any excuse for people who don't know better not to make use of the unprecedented access to information modern technology has made possible to educate themselves.

About two years ago, I met a woman in a shopping center parking lot. Why she started talking to me, I don't know but I am a friendly person and so, we talked. Eventually our conversation turned to food, health, natural medicines, etc. It turned out she is a non-believer in vaccinations and believed them to be horrible things. I pointed out the epidemics of earlier years and commented on the re-emergence of diseases that were considered extinct or sufficiently rare that they were no longer a threat such as measles, polio, and tuberculosis.

She didn't think that they were an issue any more and that the threat from vaccines are worse. I tried reason with her that the reason she doesn't see them as a threat is that the vaccines were so remarkable successful that she was able to be raised and to raise her children in a world where those illnesses were not a threat. She doesn't have the memories of her mother or grandmother and earlier who lived through epidemics. She doesn't have living memory of those trying times. Needless to day, she wasn't moved but she did admi to not knowing much about past epidemics where in The States, much less the rest of the world. She said she'd do some research. As we were just passing, I never saw her again but can only hope she did some research and came away better informed.

As an aside, I had an uncle (now deceased) who, with his siblings, were all orphaned by the Great Flu Epidemic. He was a baby and ended up being raised in a orphanage. It wasn't until late in his life that some of his siblings found him and they were reunited.

I do think that the fact that within two generations humans lose connection to what came before them is one of the greatest challenges humanity faces. This is why we are condemned to repeat history....and all the mistakes previous generations made and managed to survive through. This is probably the reason why myth-making and storytelling was so important in our societies so that those hard learned lessons aren't forgotten.

10/4/2013 04:27:13 pm

Do you know about Eagle Mountain International Church in Texas? Keep this in your back pocket if you ever run into that woman again: The church is an anti-vax church, and the pastor -- also a televangelist -- has promoted the idea that vaccines lead to autism on TV.

Back in Aug. 2013, one of the church members contracted measles in Indonesia and brought it back to Texas. That one man led to an outbreak that infected 20 members of the church, including children. All of the church members who contracted the disease had not been vaccinated for measles.

Since the the pastor has seen the light and started urging his flock to get its immunizations. All of the infected individuals were vaccinated.

10/5/2013 12:23:48 pm

What a terrible story! At lease some good came of it with the pastor realizing the error of his ways and how he's endangered other people. Some people have to learn the hard way, I guess.

Dave Lewis

10/4/2013 05:52:16 pm

The folks who don't "believe" in vaccinations usually home school their kids citing that our education system is only valid for left/right? brain learners.

10/5/2013 12:22:38 pm

I don't know where you've gotten your information, Dave, but all the home-schoolers I know have had their children vaccinated at the time and ages recommended by the medical profession. I've not encountered anything that states that this is a problem with home-schoolers. I have read articles, however, about outbreaks of measles and other diseases in schools because of the lack of vaccinations.

I don't have the links available as they were news items I read but not collected. I am sure you can find references if you Google it.

CFC

10/5/2013 02:49:47 am

Your comments about vaccinations brought to mind this article. Some of the comments under this article are worth a look:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html

10/5/2013 12:34:09 pm

Thank you, CFC. I've read this article and a few others. There was one I read that went into detail about the damage done in Wales where they really bought into the link between MMR and Autism. Heartbreaking. Sadly I don't have the link.

10/5/2013 01:44:41 pm

Thane- If you find the link to other articles on this topic I would appreciate seeing them.

Jason - A great article with lots of new information I knew nothing about.

10/5/2013 03:02:47 am

Thanks, Jason. Actually, I don't take the pheasant-as-dragon hypothesis seriously, but maybe one shouldn't underestimate the ignorance, credulity, and superstitious nature of peasant folk back in the old days, especially in the rural areas of Britain, which remained intensely parochial until well into the industrial revolution and the resultant breakdown of the old way of life. Every valley had its own dialect, sometimes incomprehensible to its neighbors, and education was minimal, given solely by the Church -- not Roman Catholic but Anglican, which appears not to have been quite as dedicated as the former when it came to teaching. And one has only to examine bestiaries of the past to encounter the most fanciful depictions of "foreign" beasts and plants. In those days a pheasant would have been both strange and "devilish" to many country folk seeing one for the first time.

To "The Other J" -- Thank you too. I know nothing whatsoever about dragons in Spain, so that's something else for me to look for. That Iberians, Southern Britons, and the Irish had extensive contact for centuries seems certain. I'm not sure about Irish settlements in Wales, though, or vice-versa. I too tend to believe the "draco" is the basis for the Welsh dragon -- but where did the idea for it come from when it was adopted by the Sarmatians? The Chinese have dragon myths too, of course -- and, curiously enough, pheasant breeds stretch from the Caucasus eastwards to Manchuria... But I'm not prepared to speculate further...

The Sarmatians did not occupy Britain as such -- they were posted there as part of the Roman force. It's likely that none of them ever returned home -- on discharge they would have been granted farmland near their bases, and would have married local women. Their sons would have become the next generation of cataphracts. Within two generations, it's probable that all such troops were Britons, who, given the military mind, would have maintained the regimental customs and traditions of their forebears, which must have included the dragon standards. Cataphracts were impressive figures with their glittering armour and barded steeds -- certainly the stuff for later legends.

And Thane -- yes, memories fade; the present overwhelms the past. When I was young, I was able to speak with veterans of the Great War, and a number of my teachers had fought in World War II. But younger generations have little knowledge of those times and the hard lessons learned then. One hopes they will never have to learn them again. My family lost members in the Great Flu Epidemic; I remember the tales, but I'm the last to do so. And today's generation may never hear of smallpox, or typhus, or any of the terrifying diseases of the past. Again, one hopes they never need to. The past should educate the present. Sadly, that does not seem to be happening on any scale large enough to matter...

10/5/2013 07:53:19 am

Erik G --

All I can say about the Iberians and Irish and Welsh is that the original settlers of post-ice-age Ireland and many of post-ice-age Wales were from the Basque region of northern Spain. DNA testing has confirmed this. So it's possible they brought a dragon tradition with them from Spain. But the oldest genomes in Wales aren't just Spanish; they're also French, so it's possible there was some other continental tradition that carried over. After all, both countries do share quite a bit in their myths, but dragons don't hold as important of a place in Irish mythology as Welsh, which suggests some other influence.

There wasn't a whole lot of migration from Wales to Ireland in those early days, but there was from Ireland to Wales, and those Irish would sometimes return to Ireland from Wales. The word for 'Gaelic' comes from the Old Irish word 'Goidelic,' which comes from the Old Welsh world 'Guoidel,' which means 'pirate' or 'raider.' So from a Welsh perspective, the people from that island were pirates because they kept raiding Wales.

Fun Fact: An elementary school in the Burren region of Ireland did some DNA testing on a class after the grave of a 3,5000 old body with recoverable DNA were found in the region. The mitochondrial DNA of that body traced back to Northern Spain and France. Three of the children in that one class shared DNA with those bodies. But that also confirmed just how few people migrated to the area or left it.

10/5/2013 07:56:08 am

*Apologies for the number agreement errors; sent before I finished editing. There was only one body recovered for that test.*

10/5/2013 12:48:12 pm

The Other J, I had read that the ancient Britons were forced into Wales, Cornwall, and across the channel into what became to be called Brittany due to expansionist pressures by the Germanic influx (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, others). With some of the Britons lingering in the Gloucestershire and Wiltshire regions.

Does the DNA bear this out?

10/5/2013 01:58:33 pm

Thane --

The ancient Britons pushed west by Angles, Saxons and Jutes is a weird one. Let me take this in parts:

First, the Iberian migration into Ireland and Wales is the earliest human migration to those lands, and predates the Germanic invasions by thousands of years. (But the Irish migration is the most recent human settlement in Europe.) The Iberian genome density drifts as you move to the south and west -- once you get down to Munster and out west to Connacht, you're getting toward 90% similarity with Basque region people. (FYI -- this is where the term "Black Irish" really comes from; it's not from the Portuguese sailors who spent time with the ladies in Cork.)

In Wales, particularly in the north and parts of south Wales, they also show a higher concentration of that same Iberian marker, but they also have a marker that links them to the coast of France. It's unique on those islands, and apparently marks them as possibly the oldest population on the island of Britain. So it seems likely that the Iberian people who settled Mesolithic Ireland and Wales migrated up the coast of France from northern Spain, but it at least one population also blended with another French population before migrating to Wales.

As for the Germanic invasions pushing people back, that was thought to be case for quite a long time until these population DNA tests began. It turns out that what most likely happened is the local populations were absorbed into the invading populations. There was some migration, but for the most part it looks like the island wasn't too terribly populated when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes first started invading, and the DNA suggests a large proportion of the Briton populations just stayed put and adoped the new culture where necessary. Have to remember that many of those invading Germanic tribes were invited by native Briton chiefs to use as mercenaries against other tribes.

But as with Ireland, you get a genetic density drift in Britain as you move south and west -- and obviously more Germanic markers as you move north and east. (Scotland's a bit of a different story.)

The BBC has done quite a bit showing the work done on population genetics from University College London. There's also their documentary The Story of Wales, which is about 6 years old now, so some of that will be outdated (a lot of this data was recent as of 2012).

Trinity College - Dublin did the majority of the Irish studies, and there's an RTE documentary about it called Blood of the Irish that came out last year.

But if you dig, the studies showing Mediterranean DNA markers among certain Welsh and Irish populations to a much greater degree than others on those islands began back in the 1990's. University College - London was the first to show how the Welsh were more Mediterranean than Continental, and Trinity College picked up from that research.

(About a decade ago I took part in one of those genographic studies, and wasn't surprised to find I share most of my DNA with Irish males. But the next largest match was Spanish males, which surprised my family because we don't know of any family with Spanish ancestry. But a lot of my ancestors came from Cork and north Wales, so that answers that.)

10/6/2013 01:06:24 pm

The Other J, Thank you for such a detailed response. I am fascinated by the genome tracking being done....but have been a indifferent student.Too many other obligations demanding my attention to really focus on this topic.

My question is a result of a conversation I had with some colleague from the UK. I only know one half of my biological heritage (an English/Swiss mix.) I don't recall how it came up but we compared freckle patterns on our arms (Silly, I know but this was the after-conference bar gathering one night) and my English colleagues confirmed I'm one of them. Them being from the western parts of Britain and not from the areas where you have more of the descendents of the Germanic and Nordic types. As a result, conversation turned to the displacement of the native British of the era. We never discussed paleolithic immigrations.

I should do one of the tests...

10/5/2013 08:36:03 am

"Other J" --

Thank you again! That is fascinating information, especially as I have an ancestral link with the Basque/Bearn region of Southern France through my maternal grandmother. I wasn't aware of the Iberian-Irish-Welsh connections in the distant past, and I'm definitely going to hit the books to find out more. Our ancestors may well have led short brutal lives, but they certainly got around!

10/7/2013 04:05:15 am

While it is hard to imagine someone mistaking a pheasant for a dragon, don't forget all of the housecats being mistaken for large carnivors in the UK and US. Bad lighting, nothing nearby to give a size comparison, propensity for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, etc. can really mess with the retelling of an encounter.