A quirky guide to myths and lore based in actual science – Ars Technica

G is for geomythology

A quirky guide to myths and lore based in actual science

Folklorist/historian Adrienne Mayor on her new book Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore

By Jennifer Ouellette – Dec 29, 2025 7:30 AM |

Earthquakes, volcanic eruption, eclipses, meteor showers, and many other natural phenomena have always been part of life on Earth. In ancient cultures that predated science, such events were often memorialized in myths and legends. There is a growing body of research that strives to connect those ancient stories with the real natural events that inspired them. Folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor has put together a fascinating short compendium of such insights with Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore, from dry quicksand and rains of frogs to burning lakes, paleoburrows, and Scandinavian “endless winters.”

Mayor’s work has long straddled multiple disciplines, but one of her specialities is best described as geomythology, a term coined in 1968 by Indiana University geologist Dorothy Vitaliano, who was interested in classical legends about Atlantis and other civilizations that were lost due to natural disasters. Her interest resulted in Vitaliano’s 1973 book Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins.

Mayor herself became interested in the field when she came across Greek and Roman descriptions of fossils, and that interest expanded over the years to incorporate other examples of “folk science” in cultures around the world. Her books include The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (2009), as well as Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & the Scorpion Bombs (2022), exploring the origins of biological and chemical warfare. Her 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology, explored ancient myths and folklore about creating automation, artificial life, and AI, connecting them to the robots and other ingenious mechanical devices actually designed and built during that era.

When her editor at Princeton University Press approached her about writing a book on geomythology, she opted for an encyclopedia format, which fit perfectly into an existing Princeton series of little encyclopedias about nature. “In this case, I wasn’t going to be working with just Greek and Roman antiquity,” Mayor told Ars. “I had collected very rich files on geomyths around the world. There are even a few modern geomyths in there. You can dip into whatever you’re interested in and skip the rest. Or maybe later you’ll read the ones that didn’t seem like they would be of interest to you but they’re absolutely fascinating.”

Mythopedia is also a true family affair, in that illustrator Michelle Angel is Mayor’s sister. “She does figures and maps for a lot of scholarly books, including mine,” said Mayor. “She’s very talented at making whimsical illustrations that are also very scientifically accurate. She really added information not only to the essays but to the illustrations for Mythopedia.

As she said, Mayor even includes a few modern geomyths in her compendium, as well as imagining in her preface what kind of geomyths might be told thousands of years from today about the origins of climate change for example, or the connection between earthquakes and fracking. “How will people try to explain the perplexing evidence that they’ll find on the planet Earth and maybe on other planets?” she said. “How will those stories be told?”

Ars caught up with Mayor to learn more.

Ars Technica:  Tell us a little about the field of geomythology.

Adrienne Mayor: It’s a relatively new field of study but it took off around 2000. Really, it’s a storytelling that has existed since the first humans started talking to one another and investigating their landscape. I think geomyths are attempts to explain perplexing evidence in nature—on the Earth or in the sky. So geomyth is a bit of a misnomer since it can also cover celestial happenings. But people have been trying to explain bizarre things, or unnatural looking things, or inexplicable things in their landscape and their surroundings since they could first speak.

These kind of stories were probably first told around the first fires that human beings made as soon as they had language. So geomyths are attempts to explain, as I say, but they also contain memories that are preserved in oral traditions. These are cultures that are trying to understand earthshaking events like volcanoes or massive floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, avalanches—things that really change the landscape and have an impact on their culture. Geomyths are often expressed in metaphors and poetic, even supernatural language, and that’s why they’ve been ignored for a long time because people thought they were just storytelling or fiction.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: A quirky guide to myths and lore based in actual science – Ars Technica

#geomythology #AdrienneMayor

"Earthquakes, volcanic eruption, eclipses, meteor showers, and many other natural phenomena have always been part of life on Earth. In ancient cultures that predated science, such events were often memorialized in myths and legends. There is a growing body of research that strives to connect those ancient stories with the real natural events that inspired them. Folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor has put together a fascinating short compendium of such insights with *Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore*, from dry quicksand and rains of frogs to burning lakes, paleoburrows, and Scandinavian 'endless winters.'

Mayor’s work has long straddled multiple disciplines, but one of her specialities is best described as geomythology, a term coined in 1968 by Indiana University geologist Dorothy Vitaliano, who was interested in classical legends about Atlantis and other civilizations that were lost due to natural disasters. Her interest resulted in Vitaliano’s 1973 book *Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins*.

Mayor herself became interested in the field when she came across Greek and Roman descriptions of fossils, and that interest expanded over the years to incorporate other examples of 'folk science' in cultures around the world."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/a-quirky-guide-to-myths-and-lore-based-in-actual-science/

A quirky guide to myths and lore based in actual science - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/a-quirky-guide-to-myths-and-lore-based-in-actual-science/
In which I discover a new domain I _must_ open up and follow, but can't possibly find the time for, oh dear what shall I do, wait there's that xmas money, blam, new book(s) coming for the nightstand and a fedi tag followed: #geomythology , oh no what have I done, shrug, not like I was keeping up with the other stuff anyway. (Now, about those giant beavers and the great flooding of...)

A quirky guide to myths and lore based in actual science https://arstechni.ca/sKC8 #naturalhistory #geomythology #Mythopedia #Folklore #Culture #Science #History #books

#ClimateCrisis #geomythology #IndigenousKnowledge

“The other thing I think we can learn is that the most effective types of adaptations to these kinds of environmental stresses are locally based ones. This is something that science has really only worked out in the last five years, but if you go back 7,000 years, you can see that people took action locally, and they believed in its efficacy, and they drove it by themselves. They didn't wait for instructions from elsewhere.”

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210507-the-myths-that-hint-at-past-disasters

Spooky seismic lakes – Loch Ness and its monster

Loch Ness is known for a monster and for its location in the Great Glen, the most obvious tectonic feature of Scotland. Fault lines are associated with several spooky themes. For this entry into the Spooky Geology canon, I’m going to touch on some of the popular, paranatural ideas about fault-associated lakes. In this part 1 of 2, I’m tackling the oft-repeated relation between seismic activity on the Great Glen Fault and the Nessie legend.

There are some water bodies that exist above (and because of) an existing fault underneath, which conjures some spooky folklore. While all water bodies may be considered liminal areas between worlds, or passageways for the dead, those over faults are extra spooky because of the exaggerated ideas people have about what tectonic faults look like and how they behave. So let’s begin by touching on these fault-y ideas.

Faults and spookiness

Fault zones, in general, are already associated with three major spooky ideas:

• Lights – Earthquake lights are probably a real thing, but not in the way most people think of them. If they exist in one or more forms, they occur very rarely. We do not understand the mechanism and there is not a large body of convincing, reliable evidence. I’ve done extensive piecing together of what does exist in this post. They are spooky and still mysterious.

• Tectonic Strain Theory –  This is the idea by research scientist Michael Persinger who proposed that ghosts, poltergeists, UFO sightings, and general strangeness may be the result of localized and transient geophysical forces associated with seismic areas under tectonic stress. This theory is not credible, yet it persists as a “sciencey” idea, popular with paranormalists because Persinger was a scientist and they can cite his research, which appears credible. The details are too much to go into here so I’ll save it for another post someday.

• Breath of the gods – Faults in Greece and Turkey have characteristics that result in transmission of hydrocarbons to the surface. A few of these places were known to be ancient locations of temples or ritual spots which were undoubtedly constructed due to the geological activity that occurred there. Examples include the Oracle at Delphi and the Hieropolis’ Plutonium. Only a few faults have this exciting characteristic.

Geomythology of Loch Ness

It is such joy when two of my favorite subjects overlap. Here is my opportunity to talk about spooky geology + cryptozoology! I feel I am uniquely qualified for this. For this discussion, we reenter the familiar sphere of geomythology and head to Scotland.

Geomythology is the study of legendary stories that appear to modern observers to be an attempt by a pre-modern culture to explain a natural geological event. The cultural story can have a kernel of truth that suggests people of that time and place recognized a geological cause in a creative sense.

Geomyths are subjective in their translation and application. In other words, interpreting facts and making assumptions are a necessary part of making geomythological connections. Therefore, the process is tricky and fraught with pitfalls, particularly for those with an over-eager propensity for correlation.

Luigi Piccardi, a geoscientist who researches and writes academically about geomythology, proposed in 2001 that sightings of the Loch Ness monster may be related to seismic activity. On its face, this was a sciencey idea that seemed plausible. Piccardi suggested that waves, bubbles, and noises created by the fault activity could be mistaken for unseen monsters in the water. He also connected the cultural idea of faults as sacred places, and lakes as having supernatural creatures, to the lore of Loch Ness.

The Great Glen Fault

Loch Ness is part of a chain of lakes along the Great Glen of Scotland. The glen is a trough that cuts an obvious track through the country from SW to NE from Fort William to Inverness. It is a surface expression of the underlying Great Glen fault (GGF) and subsequent glacial action. The fault is very old, over 400 million years old, representing a suture of two land masses into what we now call Great Britain. The GGF is a strike-slip fault, but because it is so old, the movement of the fault over these eras is not clear.

Piccardi’s explanation, first proposed at a 2001 geological conference in Edinburgh, then followed by a paper in 2014 (see references below), was popular with the news media. He framed it as “a simple natural explanation” for sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. However, it fell flat with many who knew about the seismicity of this area and about the long and colorful history of Nessie sightings.

Significant quakes on the GGF are not that common. However, the consensus from geologists is that the GGF is likely still seismically active. Between 1768 and 1901 several earthquakes were felt around Inverness, including one of the largest recorded in Scotland at M=5.1 in 1816.  But because there was no precise measuring equipment in place, it’s unclear where the epicenters were or if they were the result of movement on the GGF or on other faults outside the glen. Nothing much happened after 1901 until October 4, 2013 when an earthquake with a magnitude of 2.4 occurred close to the village of Drumnadrochit, near Loch Ness. Reports described “a loud rumble” or “explosion”.

Piccardi cited the large quakes around Inverness from 1816 (M=5.1 and M=4.7), and in 1890 (M=4.5 with several aftershocks around M=3) as evidence of the Nessie-tectonic connection. He also referred to a quake in Inverness in 1934, close to the time when the Loch Ness Monster legend was really taking off. (That quake was later relocated off the GGF.) He pointed out that the Inverness Courier reported on that quake in the same issue as a monster sighting. It’s unclear if it occurred at the same time as the quake. This is the closest we get to a correlation and it is not that impressive.

Saint Columba and the Monster

For his primary evidence, Piccardi referred to the account of Saint Columba banishing a “monster” in the Ness River in the 6th century (which wasn’t written until more than a century later). A translation says the monster appeared with an awful roar. Piccardi supposes that this noise could be the sound of an earthquake. The other bits cited from this account as evidence of monster=earthquake are even weaker – a door opening by itself and the saint’s loud voice (I could not see any reason to mention the latter one). We will never know if the monster tale was coincident with an actual earthquake, or if Columba’s monster story had any truth to it at all.

While cryptozoologists love to roll back in time to say that the Columba story is evidence of a monster of long ago, scholars consider the story of the Saint rebuking the monster as a typical story of Christianity conquering the pagan sentiment of the lands. Indeed, Columba met with the King of the Picts, the native people of the area in the Middle Ages. It’s highly probable he was there, but the monster story was far more likely to have been propaganda than evidence of an unknown creature.

A vaguely described, man-eating river monster is just not similar to the modern accounts of Nessie, no matter how much cryptozoologists would like it to be. The Columba story is not evidence for a 6th century encounter with the creature.

Seismic activity as a source of Nessie sightings

It is certainly possible that even tiny seismic events can create upwelling, turbidity, or waves that people may interpret as a monster surfacing. However, this could reasonably account for only a handful of sightings in Loch Ness. The Highlands area now has a multitude of seismic sensors in place to catch quakes below M=1. The most obvious evidence for this claim – a time correlation between Nessie sightings and seismic activity – has not materialized.

Instead, we can be quite certain that most of the Nessie “sightings” can be attributed to a long list of mundane potential causes – boat wakes or wind waves, mistaken animal identification such as birds, fish, or deer (and the waves they create), or floating logs or vegetation.

Piccardi kept giving media interviews about his tectonic Nessie geomyth even though robust evidence was lacking. I recall hearing about it in 2001 and thinking it was a weak idea then. It never got better. Piccardi wasn’t well versed in cryptid tales and how they evolve; they aren’t that simple, especially to dismiss. The seismic Nessie story got publicity, though. History of geology writer (for Scientific American and then Forbes), David Bressan, also didn’t put any stock into the idea either. In 2013, Bressan wrote that Piccardi was aiming to get more attention paid to geomythology as a field but knew little about Nessie/cryptids. I totally agree.

Conclusion

What is the verdict on Nessie and seismic activity? A resoundingly negative.

Piccardi attempted to show that there was 1.) a basis for the seismic activity at Loch Ness, 2.) that historic earthquakes could have been source of, or at least enhanced, the monster legend, and 3.) that seismic activity might account for monster sightings today. While 1 may be true to an extent, I reject 2 and 3. The GGF is not active enough now, nor in the past, to have had a substantive influence on the Nessie legend. Piccardi attempted to line up a few known quakes with locations of monster sightings but they didn’t correlate in time, which is critical to make a solid connection.

Using the Saint Columba story is really reaching in several ways. First, the monster=earthquake connection is flimsy. And, the story itself is fictionalized. Even though it’s beloved by cryptozoologists, the ancient description of the creature, even though vague, is substantially different from modern reports. Instead, the actions by Columba represents a morality tale of Christianity triumphing over “evil” Pagan belief. It is not credible evidence of a long-existing mystery animal in the loch.

Finally, there is no basis to state that a rumbling sound, a main feature of small earthquakes, is associated with the monster in the lake from its entry into popular culture in the 1930s to the present. Anomalous waves are the most common association with the monster. These are regularly generated by several other mundane sources in the loch, but not notably via earthquakes. A reasonable correlation between seismic events and Nessie is absent.

The geomythological idea of seismic activity as an explantion for Nessie is sunk. It’s a fun idea, though, that keeps getting repeated even by people who should know better. Of all the many causes for the development of the Nessie legend and it’s sustaining popularity, we cannot fault the fault.

References

Allen, M. (2019). The long and moving story of the Great Glen Fault. Mercian Geologist. 19(4), pp. 216-223.

Galloway, D.D. (2014). Bulletin of British Earthquakes 2013. British Geological Survey Internal Report, OR/14/062.

Musson, R. M. W. (2007). British Earthquakes. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 118(4), pp. 305-337.

Piccardi, L. (2014). Post-glacial activity and earthquakes of the Great Glen Fault (Scotland). Mem. Descr. Carta Geol. d’It. XCVI, pp. 431-446.

Piccardi, L. (2001). Seismotectonic Origins of the Monster of Loch Ness (abstract). Earth System Processes – Global Meeting (June 24-28, 2001).

#cryptids #earthquakes #geomythology #GreatGlenFault #LochNess #LochNessMonster #Nessie

https://sharonahill.com/?p=10134

The many degrees of freedom of the griffin

Of late, my interest has been in watching the definition of “cryptid” expand to include anything people deem mysterious and sentient. This is the first of possibly several posts to show example of that happening in real time. This installment involves a popular idea about the origin of the mythological animal, the griffin.

Recently, Witton & Hing (2024) published a rebuttal to the idea, posed by historian and folklorist Adrienne Mayor, that the griffin, the chimeric eagle-lion creature mentioned in ancient Greco-Roman literature, was inspired by fossil remains of the dinosaur Protoceratops.

It’s a tricky tale, over 35 years old. Mayor popularized the connection, and it stuck and proliferated. The notion that fossils uncovered or discovered by pre-science civilizations served to influence the depiction of a large, quadrupedal, beaked and winged, fantastical creature was enticing. Mayor continued to popularize it through cryptozoological and natural history writings. Witton & Hing say that the hypothesis that connected these fossils to folklore does not hold up based on timing, location, and other factors.

I have many thoughts on this, but no set opinion. The connection sounds great, simple and neat. And, like many ideas that sound great on the surface, looking deeper reveals some serious flaws. I don’t think it’s fair to discard it entirely, however.

The griffin was treated in the ancient literature as a real animal. In our modern context, that seems ridiculous because there is no animal that is anywhere near matching the description. It is biologically implausible. So we classify the griffin as a mythical creature like the dragon, hydra, or minotaur. It feels wrong to call the griffin a proper “cryptid” today because no one (really) is claiming it’s out there to find. Therefore, this seems to be an example of cryptozoology trending away from the original intention of classifying an anecdotal animal as a living animal. But the premise by Mayor was that tales of the creature were based on a real animal, only one that was no longer living. Mayor proposed that this methodology be called “paleocryptozoology”. Paleocryptozoology, like its namesake, never caught on in academia. The distinct fossilized parts were real enough and they were found in the general regions where the griffin myth arose and then spread. In this way, the story of the griffin inspiration by fossils has become a beloved “geomyth”. I have a lot of reading to catch up on related to fossils and geomyths. There’s a lot. But from my research so far, folklore inspired by real things or events is inevitable, but fraught with pitfalls when one attempts to draw correlating lines from folklore to fact.

The truth might be present under an imaginative veneer. But sometimes, it might be mostly all imagination. Maybe there was a grain of truth to a legend, but the grain is really tiny. Unfortunately, old texts often mixed descriptions of real animals with exaggerated tales, making it difficult to distinguish zoological from fantastical. Until there were accurate ways to reproduce the true qualities, like a drawing from a living creature, a carcass, or from photographs, artistic depictions showed creatures with ambiguous or embellished traits leaving the viewers of today with multiple and disparate interpretations of what the thing was supposed to be.

Examples of known animals and the very mistaken attributes of their early descriptions would comprise several volumes. Consider what was once said of the gorilla (violent, man-eater), the platypus (a taxidermic hoax), and the giant squid (a menace to sailors) and you can get the idea of how off-base initial thinking was about newly discovered animals. When we didn’t know the reality of these animals, writers made up amazing tales and descriptions about them. Unfortunately, we can’t make out enough about the griffin to judge whether the ancient Greeks were describing real animals but we can fairly assume they were not talking about living creatures they actually saw, but ones they imagined or had heard about.

There are also many examples of fossils being used to represent fantastical monsters. This was certainly done. Witton & Hing cite some of these, but rather vehemently spell out several critiques against Mayor’s idea. The pushback is not new; the idea was never strongly supported by evidence, but mainly speculation and conjecture. Such reaching is a mainstay of cryptozoology, the field where Mayor first situated the griffin research. I agree that Mayor’s evidence put forward for the griffin+Protoceratops link is a probably a reach too far but it’s not unreasonable.

Protoceratops was a beaked, quadrupedal dinosaur with a neck frill. It did not have wings. The griffin has wings and no neck frill. Some depictions of the griffin show long ears, which does look similar to a Protoceratops in profile. It’s an OK match to the Protoceratops head, in some aspects and examples. But it’s not great. Is it possible that people saw pieces of Protoceratops skulls and bodies and were inspired by them to craft depictions of the griffin? We can’t rule that out – artists and storytellers pull from all areas to inspire their creations. They left no record that they exhumed the remains, which would have been difficult without modern tools.

I have many thoughts and the scope of the topic is massive – I am not at all qualified to expound in detail upon it. My conclusion is that I don’t think we can know for sure about the Protoceratops+griffin connection so it’s incorrect to be definitive either way. The goal of this post is to show you that nothing of this nature is so simple or obvious. Human society, our writing, our art, and all our ideas involve inspiration from various sources – maybe just bits from here and there. Sometimes things get all mixed up, turned around, and tangled to the point where our proposals won’t ever be conclusive. It’s usual to have varied and embellished descriptions of mystery animals – we have no specimen for comparison. If your creature is not based on a real, living animal, then you are unconstrained from adding new and creative characteristics.

In other words, there are a lot of independent variables at play here in the formation of folkloric creatures. Cultural evolution involves taking pieces from various sources and mixing things up. Many aspects of the griffin lore are free to vary, leaving us with a complex, possibly incalculable origin and evolution.

There are no current means to confirm that Protoceratops remains were an inspiration for the gold-hoarding and dangerous griffin. If we continue to think it was so, there is little harm in that. Perhaps someday there will be a clear connection. The connection remains, and may likely forever be, ambiguous.

Resources:

Mayor, Adrienne. Paleocryptozoology: a call for collaboration between classicists and cryptozoologists. Cryptozoology 8, 1989 https://www.academia.edu/531069/Paleocryptozoology_A_Call_for_Collaboration_between_Classicists_and_Cryptozoologists

Witton, Mark P. and Hing, Richard A. Did the horned dinosaur Protoceratops inspire the griffin? Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, June 20, 2024. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03080188241255543

#cryptid #Cryptozoology #fossils #geomythology #griffin #myth #protoceratops

https://sharonahill.com/?p=8658

Zoological melodrama – Hutton on dragons

Everything by Ronald Hutton is a treat. His talk on dragons, held on 14 Feb 2024, is so much of a treat that I wanted to share this video lecture courtesy of Gresham College.

I am moderately interested in dragons, much less so than now than my younger self who read the DragonRiders of Pern, made ceramic depictions, and collected pewter statuettes. The topic does cross over into cryptozoology, as some claim dragons are real creatures similar to that described in fantasy fiction and legend. But, I do not subscribe to that idea – see below for more on that concept. I do enjoy the various aspects of dragon discussions, particularly at the high level afforded by Professor Hutton.

Dr. Hutton describes his ideas about how dragons came to be ubiquitous across cultures, and why nasty European dragons rose to prominence when East Asian dragons were considered benevolent (an unusual characteristic).

Specifically, Hutton asserts that humans have an innate need to fear the lone, large, alpha predator that wants to eat us. The idea of a monstrous being with teeth, difficult to kill, and may breathe fire, originated with our ancient tales, including Leviathan in the Bible. While other continents had alpha-predators, Europe did not have bears, lions, tigers, or giant snakes to contend with, so the dragon became that symbolic and popular depiction.

Dr. Hutton exhibits multiple times in this entertaining lecture how one fortuitous story can gain serious mileage for centuries and influence societies to modern times.

The topic also crossed over into my other specialty area of “spooky geology” by connecting to leys, earth energies, and interpretation of fossils by imaginative pre-scientific discoverers. I loved all of this so much. Have a watch – it’s well worth the full hour.

Transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU-SZo2dMHk

Here are a few of my loose ends to “tidy up”.

Hutton notes the idea of the griffin was influenced by dinosaur fossils. This has been challenged by Witton, et al. who published a paper just a few days ago called “Did the horned dinosaur Protoceratops inspire the Griffin?” The answer appears to be no, “there is little evidence for the popular idea that the creature was inspired by dinosaur fossils in central Asia” and “the whole idea is conjecture and speculation”. I haven’t read the paper yet but will be sure to do so. I often get queasy when authors propose direct lines to an explanation. Culture is so incredibly messy. From my geomythology research, I’m inclined to allow for more capricious (and unaccountable) contributions to the formation of complex legends. And so it is with dragons. However, it is obvious, (also considering the examples that Hutton alludes to and the work of Mayor he references) that fossils and animal remains provide inspiration for monsters. We know this happened in the past and still does today.

I’ve read several books attempting to explain the origin of dragons and have been disappointed in every one. Unfortunately, Hutton has not published a book on dragons. I do not accept that it’s a simple answer, particularly one that any self-styled cryptozoologist is going to contribute to. Hutton illustrates that things are complicated and people use imagination to build cultural content. An overly simplistic view of dragons (as deliberate amalgamations of all our most feared animals or, worse, as a real cryptid that people still see) doesn’t make sense. Thanks to social media and tech, multiple hoaxed “real” dragons have circulated, and I would dare to say that there is a not zero percent of people who do believe dragons exist today (or in the recent past).

Finally, the widespread idea of a dragon that exists across cultures as an apex, magical beast, reminds me of the “hairy wild man” theme as well. Some other real creatures, often greatly exaggerated, inspired these legends, but the being in its fantastical form does not zoologically exist today, even though people say they see it. Of course, it’s not as far a stretch to believe in Bigfoot than in a dragon.

More:

Blowholes and a dragon’s nose – My take on a modern TikTok promoting a “real” dragon

Is This a Real Dragon Shot Dead in Malaysia? – A hoax from 2015 – Snopes

Author’s dragon hoax pays off with book deal – Dragon in a jar news story from 2004

Professor Ronald E Hutton – list of publications

#Cryptozoology #dragon #earthMysteries #fossils #geomythology #griffin #history #historyOfDragons #legends #myths #realDragons #RonaldHutton

https://sharonahill.com/?p=8609

December 5th is #Krampusnacht in the #Alps.
According to local #geomythology, the devilish #Krampus - a half-man & half-goat demon - leaves his cloven hoof-prints all over the rocks in the #Dolomites 😈⛰

https://tinyurl.com/y3tpvo5w

December 5th is #Krampusnacht in the #Alps. According to local #geomythology, the devilish #Krampus - a half-man & half-goat demon - leaves his cloven hoof-prints all over the rocks in the #Dolomites 😈⛰

https://tinyurl.com/y3tpvo5w

fascinating read from last year on #geomythology and the need to create future myths around present, world-threatening issues https://theconversation.com/dinosaur-bones-became-griffins-volcanic-eruptions-were-gods-fighting-geomythology-looks-to-ancient-stories-for-hints-of-scientific-truth-162071