From conjecture to memory

A children's book once made me consider that perhaps the idea of the cyclops came from conjecture about an elephant's skull found by someone who had never seen an elephant.

The person who found the skull thought that the nasal cavity in the center must be an eye socket, and the legend of a one-eyed giant was born.


Scientists have found mammoth fossils in Greece.  Rather than an elephant's skull, it could have been a fossilized mammoth skull that inspired the cyclop's story. By Patrick Gruban from Munich, Germany (Algerien_5_0039) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons But what if the story of the cyclops came into being another way? What if the story came into being at a time when mammoths still trudged the rocky coast and islands of the Aegean? Perhaps the original story was not about a one-eyed giant, but about a tribe of ancient Greeks using their spears to kill a frighteningly large and clever woolly mammoth.  
"A Monster Born of a Ewe". In: "Journal des Observations Physiques, Mathematiques et Botaniques ...." by Louis Feuillee, 1660-1732.
The tale was handed down generation to generation along with the skull. Details changed over the millennia as each generation forgot some of the original story and added some parts relevant to themselves.  In time, the people forgot that the mighty beast had a trunk,  They improvised an eye to explain the cavity in the center of the skull.  public domain In time, the Greek storytellers anthropomorphized the mammoth. They made him to stand on two legs.  They gave him a voice and allowed him to argue with Odysseus. 

Because really, isn't man the most monstrous of all creatures?

We may be afraid of saber-toothed tigers, but it is man who truly terrifies us.
Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of three middle grade historical novels.  Swan Song, her first YA novel, a retelling of the Beowulf story, is due out August 20th. You can preorder the Kindle version here and the paperback here.