Scientists Reveal Shocking Historical Myths That Are Likely Real

There are many diseases that the origin of the ‘Vampire/Vampyr’ myth can be traced back to however I think rabies fits it the most.

In the olden days, people would tie those suspected of it to trees, in about three days time the disease would drastically change them. Extreme light sensitivity, paleness, aggression, excessive drooling. They could/would try to attack you and have bouts of either extreme slow fatigue or even adrenaline.

Also, Rabies can be passed form person to person through a bite, not just an infected animal.

https://www.reddit.com/user/LameOCallahan/

Not to mention that vampires in the oldest myths were unable to cross running water whereas rabies apparently gives one a fear of water, to the point it's known as hydrophobia.

https://www.reddit.com/user/foreboding_chorus/

Related, some of the earlier vampire myths talk about them having an insanely strong lust for women, and vampires would break in and sleep with them, with or without the bloodsucking. It was generally a woman they fancied in life (like a husband looking for his wife, or a secret admirer looking for his crush), although some stories suggested they were strangers.

It’s believed that these were basically cover stories for some affairs. An adulterous couple would do their thing, then when signs of the entry and fun times were discovered, the woman could cover it up with “Um...vordulak?*” and the townspeople would all be like “Holy shit we gotta protect this poor vampire victim!!” instead of thinking she was cheating. Didn’t help that any “sightings” of the vampire would be a man in a dark cloak in the dead of night.

So they’d lock the doors and all that, woman let the guy in, they’d go again, and in the morning she’d need to have an explanation. “Um...he hypnotized me to open the door?” and they’d be like “HOLY SHIT VORDULAKS* CAN HYPNOTIZE PEOPLE??!” It took off from there.

ABHylian

Archaeologist Here. There's a really interesting ancient Egyptian story called the Shipwrecked Sailor in which a man is washed ashore a beautiful island and is apprehended briefly by an enormous serpent. In the story, the serpent tells him that there used to be hundreds of others like him but a falling star wiped them all out.

I think it's unlikely that the Egyptians had knowledge of dinosaurs, but there's a site called Wadi Hitan that has thousands of ancient whale skeletons from the Eocene. I think it's possible they could have seen these skeletons and mistaken them for giant snakes. Herodotus actually tells similar tales of giant flying snakes in Egypt and I suppose if you saw these skeletons but no trails you might think they were capable of flight.

hetep-di-isfet

The Luska, giant octopus. It supposedly lives in the blue holes of the coast of Florida and the amount of food and temperature of water both support the theory of an octopus living long enough to grow way larger than we expect based on our current records

background_voices

Very simple mythological creatures like "black dogs" were probably exaggerated stories of encountering wild dogs in the dead of night. They're often described as having glowing eyes which isn't an unusual effect when torchlight is reflected in dogs' or cats' eyes. The black dog spirits/myths of the British Isles are also likely the "Grimm" Professor Trelawny was talking about in The Prisoner of Azkaban.

RimeSkeem

I live in Suffolk, England, where the most high profile cases of the black dog, or "Black Shuck" have happened. I was over at a friend's house, who lived a village over from me. Her dad took me home, and my friend came along for the ride. Partway home, middle of nowhere, late in the evening, her dad almost swerved to miss something. We carried on, but he was visibly shaken. My friend also reacted to seeing something, and they both described the exact same thing - a big, black, shaggy dog in the middle of the road, staring at them. It was the size of a large wolf, but looked skinnier and its fur was far more coarse and matted. I was looking through the windscreen at the same time as this all happened, and I saw nothing. The black dog is supposed to give forewarning of a death in the family. I can't remember if that happened, but I do recall my friend losing her grandmother and uncle at around the same time in our lives. I wish I could recall if it was after seeing the dog, but either way, it's a spooky tale.

queen_zombie

I regularly get to see pods of humpback whales at the beach where I surf. Most of the time, all you see is their backs as they partially surface from the water. Occasionally, one of them breaches mouth-first, so you see a giant mouth emerge from the water. Other times, you see a giant tail emerge. If you were watching them and had no idea what a whale was, or that you were looking at multiple of them, I could easily imagine mistaking multiple whale backs as the coils of a colossal snake. I strongly suspect that this is the origin of legends of sea serpents.

jamesianm

The cyclopes of Greek mythology.

Go Google up an elephant skull. There's this huge hole right in the middle of it looking to all the world like a single eye.

Now add this to the knowledge that the Cretan dwarf mammoth left subfossil bones on Crete easily discoverable, was one metre at the shoulder, and could be more or less assembled into a giant humanoid.

Hattix

Dragons? Dinosaur skeletons along with parts and pieces of various animals and plant fossils that looked scale-like. Combine the two and you get what seems to be a big scaly monster with big teeth, so probably reptilian. Throw in some flying when you're bragging to your pals in the mead hall about slaying the 30 foot beast (and/or be named Beowulf) while showing off these parts and you've got yourself a dragon story.

Another dino one would be griffins. Specifically the protoceratops, which is conveniently found in the same desert area as stories of griffins came about, the Gobi desert. And wouldn't you know it, it's a quadropedal, beaked dinosaur.

Unicorns? Well, not fossils, but certainly mistaken pieces. Turns out the Narwhal Is also the unicorn of the land and sea. The tusks were sold off as unicorn parts to add some value to an already pretty unique animal part.

Just pick a damn sea serpent. Either it's dino fossils, shark fossils, or preserved something-or-other that was mis-identified. The ocean has a plethora of fossils with mixed quality and it's no surprise you had situations where people would mix fossils together or spectacularly fail at their reconstruction.

ThinkOfANameHere

The Yeti. Recently they sequenced some DNA from so called Yeti evidence, they pretty much all turned out to be bears, some extinct, some still around. To me the most interesting one was the cross breed of the black bear and the polar bear.

drquakers

The Māori people of New Zealand have long told stories of the Pouakai, a monstrous bird that was big enough to hunt and eat humans.

Many believe that these stories are referring to the Haast's Eagle. It was the largest species of eagle ever to have lived on Earth, with weights of around 30 lbs and wingspans almost reaching 10 feet. It lived on New Zealand's South Island and primarily hunted the flightless moa bird, which weighed around 500 lbs. Given the large size of its main prey, it's likely that the eagle may have also targeted lone humans as well.

Interestingly enough, the Haast's eagle went extinct around the year 1400, not long after the Māori arrived in New Zealand. It's thought that its extinction can be attributed to habitat destruction combined with the extinction of the moa due to hunting by the Māori.

AvatarTreeFiddy

From the legendary people side of things, King Arthur was certainly someone who actually existed, albeit in a much different form than modern audiences would be familiar with. The earliest mentions of him are as a historical British king who lived during the 5th Century - he's in a king list, he's mentioned as winning a series of decisive battles against the Saxons, and his excellent swordsmanship is referenced once. And that's about it.

During the Middle Ages, Arthur's tale was romanticized and then conflated with other myths & folklore - several of his knights, such as Lancelot, were originally heroes of their own legends before being added to his - until we finally ended up with our present version that has all the Medieval knights and magic and the Round Table and the Holy Grail business. It's entirely possible that the name of Arthur itself was part of this later conflation, as his victories against the Saxons were also credited in some sources to a general named Ambrosius Aurelianus. Those sources may be wrong, or they may have been two different leaders who were mistakenly combined by later writers (a king and his general, perhaps).

Among historians who support Arthur's historicity, the thinking goes that he was a Romano-British (ie Welsh) leader who fought against Saxon incursions and held them off during his lifetime, becoming ruler of part of Britain in the wake of Rome's withdrawal. His name would've originally been Roman - Artorius, which became Arthurus in the vulgar Latin, and was later shifted to Arthur by Celtic influence in the 6th Century.

Troy

The Trojan War is another legendary event that was certainly based on something real. We know Troy was a real city that was actually razed around 1190 BC, and we have a lot of evidence that says the Mycenaean Greeks and the Hittite Empire fought several conflicts over the city (which was a powerful city-state and vassal of the Hittites at the time). The Trojan War from The Iliad is either a legendary account of the most glorious Mycenaean victory in these wars, or perhaps a dramatization of the entire series of wars distilled into one mythical conflict.

As for the people mentioned in the stories, though? No telling. Many were likely based on actual nobles from the conflicts, but Greek mythos has a habit of adding in later heroes to famous stories. Combined with the massive time gap before we inherit our earliest surviving copy of the story, at least some of the characters were probably added later. Serious scholarship tries to identify which parts of The Iliad are most guilty of this, and which parts most resemble its Bronze Age origins.

My favorite thinking from the historicity debate on Troy is that the whole Helen situation was originally understood to be a metaphor for the actual transgression that the Trojans committed - Hittite letters suggest that they were the aggressors, but don't specify how. So we're left guessing about what sort of treaty violations or trade disputes that Helen might have been meant to represent.

Axelrad77

The Wendigo probably existed, just not as a creature. People in the far north who survived a brutal winter by eating a family member had a psychological escape hatch for the guilt and horror by convincing themselves they were transforming into a ravenous, murderous beast. They'd continue killing and eating in a hysteric delusion that they had no control over it. Wendigo hunters would then have to come and kill them and perform a shamanic ritual to assure the rest of the tribe that the taint wouldn't spread.

Its actually an incredibly fascinating study into culturally specific mental illness. The lengths the mind will go to in order to avoid dealing with a traumatic event are so extraordinary that in that culture they would actually continue to murder and cannibalize fellow tribe members under the delusion they had transformed into a monster.

Vict0r117

The believe on the existence of dragons started in Slovenia, where a cave animal, Proteus, which is a blind species of salamander, would be washed out from the caves to the surface during flooding periods. People used to believe they were baby dragons and their dragon mother would live inside the caves.

gabiroba101

The mythical unicorn likely derives from travelers from Africa or Asia to Europe trying to describe a rhinoceros (there are Asian rhinos in India, Nepal, and Indonesia). When you consider that ancient Greek depictions of lions sometimes looked more like dogs and that the word hippopotamus comes from Greek words meaning "river horse" its easy to see how a Greek traveler would describe a rhino as a one horned horse.

There's linguistic evidence for this idea. 400 years ago it was believed that there were two types of rhinos. Ones with two horns were called "rhinoceros" and ones with a single horn were called "unicorn". So the word unicorn was used to describe both real rhinos and the mythical one horned horse. It wasn't until zoology advanced as a science that 'unicorn' came to refer purely to the mythical creature. There are still remnants of the original usage though. The genus of the scientific names for Asian rhinos (which have one horn) is 'unicornus'.

HypersonicHarpist

The Kraken. The mythological and terrifying creature that lived on the Nordic seas. The legend never clarified if it was a giant squid or anything else, but its the most accurate thing. The legend may have been created by people devising the bodies of Giant Squids, 16m long, and they supposed it was a deadly monster. The Kraken was born.

carleslaorden

The mythical kingdom of prestor John probably did exist, it’s likely Ethiopia, but since information was passed slowly and through hundreds of retellings back in the 14th to 17th centuries. It’s likely the story of Ethiopia was miss-told after some period of time and respun into the story of the kingdom of prestor john.

sciencemann

Beowulf, who is featured in one of the most important texts written in Old English, may very well have been real. The epic details what people Beowulf belonged to (the Geats, who resided in modern Götaland), and IIRC, battles which have taken place according to historians (particularly between the Geats and the Swedes).

Most intriguing to me are the facts that the location of Beowulf's burial mound is included in the epic - and that there is what looks like a hill at that location in modern Sweden that has never been excavated.

smygartofflor

Alright as a historian, giants. They exist in some form over many cultures in history. My favorite story is about a Native American tribe that told the story of the giants that killed them to near extinction generations upon generations ago and how they were a horrible beast and quite large- all the characteristics of giant.

Truth be told, and this is probably true of most legends/accounts of giants that it’s just a height relative thing. A majority of a population was quite small back in the day-besides being easier to hide and run, less body mass meant less food needed and more chances of survival. But I digress, people were quite small like average 5 footers and less. Anyone who was taller was probably a considered a giant, and all whole tribe a giant people- 5’10 and above must have been especially terrifying when they were a warring tribe or just in conflict with you. So the generational story was just about a smaller height wise tribe that encountered a taller height wise tribe and they fought... the story of the giants.

The natives have a lot of stories of supernatural creatures that were just “odd to them” humans. The pale face beasts were probably Vikings. Vikings caused a whole migration of a tribe as well. It’s really interesting in my field of work to just put things in perspective. You gain so much.

Edit, some grammar. But a lot of you seem to lump the idea that all "Giants" were baby elephant skulls. No, this story I referenced actually had archaeological evidence that one tribe versus another in a small area existed with a disaportionate height difference. I am still looking for the story I am referencing.

ALSO, the vikings were a difference story. When the vikings settled in Newfoundland for that short time span, they encountered a hostile native tribe. Some diseases were spread, some fighting happened- the usual. And this native tribe warned their daughter tribe of the "White/Pale Beasts" (not verbatim) were coming and they needed to leave the area. This begins the Migration of the Anishinaabe--- that traveled the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and settled as the Ojibwe, the Potowatmi, and the Ottawa tribes. (This is a condensed bastardized version of the whole story please keep in mind and tribe names might be wrong)

saintofbacchus

I believe that Bigfoot probably does exist. Or at least did until very recently. But....I doubt that it was a unique species. My theory is that what people see is a mundane animal, probably a large brown bear, with serious genetic deformities.

Encountering a 7 foot bear with mange, maybe a deformed cranium, possible scars from fights with other bears, and other such traits would certainly trigger a "fight or flight" response. You see something like that you haul ass in the other direction. When you stop you're not 100% certain of what you saw so your brain fills in the details. So you take a deformed animal and mix it with an imaginative mind that knows what the popular version of Bigfoot looks like and you get a bonafide Bigfoot sighting.

EDIT | u/Nixie9 linked this video in a reply which perfectly illustrates what I'm referring to. If you see a bear like that in the video and that bear is suffering from one or more malady's that make it look different than a normal bear (patches of hair missing, malformed head or limbs, etc.) a persons brain might jump to the conclusion that what that person saw was Bigfoot. And since most, if not all, Americans know what Bigfoot looks like this would probably be a normal conclusion to jump to and in no way indicate that the person is wrong, lying or otherwise purposely misleading.

And I didn't mention it before but I'm pretty sure that the entire concept of Bigfoot can trace its origins directly to Gigantopithecus. Without Gigantopithecus there probably wouldn't be Bigfoot. But in the other hand who can say that the story didn't come from some other source? Perhaps ancient peoples saw a bear like I described and embellished the tale. Either way I'm convinced that most, if not all, Bigfoot sightings that aren't outright hoaxes are just people seeing a mundane animal and their brain interprets it as somethig else. Happens all the time with things that aren't mysterious cryptids.

PunchBeard

Environmental scientist here to mention Steller's Sea Ape. Steller is a highly respected name in botany, zoology, etc. to this day, responsible for naming and/or discovering a lot of charismatic Russian and Alaskan creatures such as Steller's sea cow, Steller's sea lion, sea otters, and many more.

Everything he described was fully legitimate and confirmed despite concerns that he was making things up (iirc, people did not believe in a sea cow so large and docile as he described, or in otters at sea with thicker fur). There is only one exception, that being the sea ape. This was a creature that he reported to be smaller than the men on the ship, furred, and ape-like, which swam around his ship in an almost mocking fashion, supposedly juggling and playing with kelp before dodging every bullet the crew shot at it and swimming off.

Many different ideas exist as to what this actually was - some think Steller was mocking the captain of the ship who he had a contentious relationship with, referring to him as an "ape of the sea", while others think that this may actually have been an edit put into Steller's original works by a rival scientist. However, others still think that this may have been a real, observed incident with a malformed sea lion. Personally, from what I have read, I think there is a decent chance that the sea ape was a unique animal, not an ape, but either a specific species or subspecies of otter, or other marine or semi aquatic mammal. Sea mink were likely still alive on the opposite coast of the States at the time of this reported sighting - who's to say that a larger, similar animal couldn't have also frolicked through the waters of Alaska?

As for the "juggling", I am no expert in German, but I know his original manuscripts were translated and then back translated before their initial publication (when the potential rivals could have inserted this story to harm his credibility), but my guess is the term for "tossing around playfully" and "juggling" are similar, and that the kelp may not have been actually tossed like a circus performance but rather spun around in the water playfully. Regardless, it doesn't really make sense to me that one of the most respected names in science, known specifically for not telling the tall tales that his colleagues often did, would invent such a creature just to mock a coworker or gain fame. I don't think this was really an ape, but I totally buy its existence.

Quick mini one with way less evidence by its nature, but it's hard to discuss Steller's Sea Ape without also mentioning the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, the idea that humans were the failed evolutionary experiment of a marine mammal ape. This purports to explain why our noses are more telescoped than other species of ape, why we lost much of our body hair, why we have more webbing between digits, and various other commonalities seen in the evolutionary history of marine mammals. There is no way to test this hypothesis, but it's a fun thought to entertain

benpaco