All the same, the bones of the "Centaur of Tymfi" stands proudly on display at Tucson's International Wildlife Museum in a just-opened exhibit. Nearby is the skull of a "griffin," a legendary flying lion with an eagle's skull, and the noggin of a "cyclops," the one-eyed giant of Greek myth. Taking center stage is the centaur, designed by sculptor and zoologist Bill Willers of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.
Entitled "Mythological Wildlife," the exhibit aims to make folks think about how we know what is real, says museum director Richard White. A paleontologist, White says the exhibit also looks at how folklore might hold a few hidden scientific stories.
"Once upon a time, mythology was science," White says, accepted as part of the natural history world as perceived by the ancients. The ancient Greek poet,Hesiod, wrote about centaurs around 700 BC.Herodotus, "The Father of Historians," wrote aboutgriffinsaround 500 B.C. "It's legitimate for museums to display mythological creatures to make people question what is real and what is science today."
A shadowy corner of scholarship called "cryptozoology," filled with folks looking for Bigfoot or the Loch Nessmonster, has put these sort of questions into disrepute. But scholars such as Stanford University's Adrienne Mayor, author of The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, have opened wide questions about what folklore has to offer science today.
For the exhibit, for example, the "cyclops" skull on display takes its cue from the suggestion that the skull of a prehistoric elephant called a mastodon, tipped on its side, might have resembled the skull of a one-eyed giant to the ancients, including a Roman emperor who perhaps kept a mastodon skull on display. A horn-faced dinosaur calledProtoceratops, may have partly inspired the griffin."[1]
No comments:
Post a Comment