Mythical Creatures That Actually EXISTED!

imagine walking along a hill in ancient Greece and finding a human skull with only a single hole where the eyes should be or a skeleton with four legs and a sharp curved beak what sort of creatures could these be to many ancient Greeks these unfamiliar bones were proof of the existence of giants Cyclopes and Griffin's described in the popular stories and Travel accounts of the time [Music] number six Griffin's sif Ian's were nomads and warriors and some of the first people to master war on horseback over a thousand years ago they were searching for gold in the vast Gobi Desert of Central Asia in the heat of the desert while mining for gold the miners not only battled the Blazing Sun but also the mighty Griffin a fierce mythical creature that was half eagle half lion that guarded fantastic treasures of gold Greeks wrote down two stories of travelers who reported having heard of these great battles between the sippy ins and Griffin's and brought back evidence of these large beaks and bones that proved that this had to be true millions of years before humans arrived in the Gobi some parts of the desert were home to strange animals that seemed to combine body parts of eagles and lions but these animals weren't Griffin's they were dinosaurs certain areas in the Gobi are littered with dinosaur bones including those of the four-legged beaked Protoceratops for thousands of years Protoceratops fossils like the one pictured here could regularly be seen eroding out of hillsides ancient gold miners working in the desert may have seen these fossils and tried to come up with a rational explanation of what that animal must have looked like probably pretty terrifying number five Cyclops there's an enormous amount of stories with Cyclopes littered throughout mythology I also just learned the plural form of Cyclops with Cyclopes from getting their eyes jabbed by Odysseus to Hercules upper cutting them to the moon to the new God of War Games where Kratos tears out their eyes by the Dozen the point is Cyclopes are everywhere and the ancient Greeks are to blame ancient Greeks were unfamiliar with the idea of massive animals that no longer existed and many believe that the enormous bones they found were the remains of human-like giants any non-human traits and the bones were thought to be due to the grotesque anatomical features of giants those skulls that spawned the very myth of the one-eyed Giants warrent Cyclopes skulls at all they belonged to an ancient elephant like species known as de no theory Amjad antium and it looked like this if you see this skull what are you supposed to think if that's what the skull looks like what if you come across a live one the eye socket in its skull is really where its trunk was and it's hard to imagine something so simple being the reason that myths about the Cyclopes first started the ancient Greeks took the idea of these skulls and ran with it telling stories of giants describing them as flesh-and-blood creatures who lived and died and whose bones could be found coming out of the ground where they were buried long ago even today large and surprisingly human-like bones can be found in Greece modern scientists understand these bones to be the remains of mammoths mastodons and woolly rhinoceros that once lived in the region the long bones of elephant relatives and humans are similar enough to be confused geological events tend to destroy the skulls of prehistoric elephants leaving only enormous human-like long bones ribs and vertebrae ancient stories often reported finding the remains of giants hundreds of feet tall much bigger than an elephant or any animal these reports may represent attempts to reconstruct the bones of several animals found jumbled together as a single giant the people of tinges now modern-day Tangier Morocco once boasted that their city's founder was a giant named Antaeus who was buried in a mound south of town to test the claimed Roman soldiers dug into the mound in 81 BC much to their surprise an enormous skeleton surfaced which they then reburied with great honours modern scientists confirmed that it was an ancient elephant fossil number for unicorns these majestic creatures symbolize all that is pure and good in the world and possess magical power while no unicorn have been found in 1663 a German archaeologists decided to create a unicorn skeleton using mammoth and rhinoceros bones his work which he claimed was a true unicorn skeleton was eventually discovered to be false but stories of unicorn sightings persist to this day unicorns have been seen in Scotland and a unicorn layer has been reportedly found in North Korea while most admit unicorns to be a creature of pure fiction some continue to insist that they do or did exist both the pearly white unicorn of European and Asian folklore avoid contact with humans preferring to remain unseen when humans do encounter unicorns the creatures caused them no harm although countless stories tell of humans hunting unicorns to death these unicorn stories also began in ancient Greece more than 2,000 years ago Greek travelers told tales of unicorns living in far-off lands as the fabulous accounts spread around the Western world few people questions that unicorns actually existed around 300 BC scholars translating the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek concluded that the Hebrew term rim referred to a unicorn even early naturalist considered the unicorn to be a living animal several ancient catalogues of animals of the world include unicorns and described them as solitary beasts that often battled lions and elephants many stories of unicorns refer to the magical properties of their horns a claim first made by a Greek physician nearly two thousand years ago those lucky enough to possess a horn might take advantage of its wide range of healing properties from detecting and neutralizing poisons and curing fevers to prolong a youth and acting as an aphrodisiac is this a unicorn horn it sure looks like one it's a tusk of a male narwhal a small arctic whale from the icy channels of northern Canada and north western Greenland before Europeans became familiar with these tusks unicorns were often described as having horns in a variety of sizes shapes and colors but in the Middle Ages Danish sailors and other merchants from the north brought narwhal tusks to European markets where buyers consider them to be valuable magical remains of aloo of unicorns from then on nearly all descriptions of unicorn horns are consistent they are long white and spiraled just like this one number three dragons in legends and folk tales dragons are magical dangerous creatures and early naturalist often treated these creatures as part of the natural world biologists in Europe once wrote accounts of the behavior and habitat of dragons along with lizards and snakes Chinese scholars have classified the dragon as one of the 369 animal species with scales long before the development of paleontology people on earth fossilized bones in Asia and Europe and believed they had found the remains of dragons that had died it is extremely likely that the fossil remains of extinct animals have sometimes been taken for Dragon bones and helped perpetuate old dragons stories with their enormous size reptilian shape and threatening teeth and claws some dragons might easily be taken for cousins of the Tyrannosaurus Rex according to the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder a dragon could strangle an elephant with its tail perhaps Pliny had heard stories about pythons which can crush and devour large animals though elephants are beyond their capabilities and traditional Chinese medicine dragon bones are prescribed as a treatment for numerous ailments from madness to diarrhea and dysentery most fragments and powders sold in Chinese pharmacies as dragon bone come from fossil remains of extinct mammals the skull of a woolly rhinoceros was once kept in the Town Hall of Klagenfurt Austria and was said to be the remains of a dragon slain before the city was founded around 1250 ad number two The Rock The Rock was a huge dangerous bird found in many stories and legends not this rock in the Arabian Nights Sinbad shipmates discover an immense rocks egg about to hatch they kill the young rock and eat it but it's furious parents attack them they flee in their ship but the angry rocks follow carrying massive boulders which they drop on the ship smashing it to bits stories of the rock are similar to those of the Guru a bird-like creature founded Hindu stories dating back thousands of years in which Garuda's prey on giant snakes and elephants the rock is also said to eat both snakes and elephants suggesting the stories share a common origin many stories tell of giant birds that swooped down from the sky to seize animals sometimes even humans such stories are not entirely legend fossils show that thousands of years ago large birds preyed on people and some remote areas they remain a threat to small children and pets many mythical creatures have supernatural powers or combine features of different animals into one but all it really takes to turn a burden to a mythic monster is to make it larger 700 years ago Arab traders told of a bird so huge it could lift elephants into the sky Marco Polo and other explorers reported stories from sailors who said it lived on an island off the southern coast of Africa in fact a giant bird called the AAA poorness once lived on the island of Madagascar also known as the elephant bird it is now extinct but it was the largest bird that ever lived even though it didn't look very scary and couldn't even fly it was over ten feet tall and weighed about half a tonne their eggs were about two gallons each but it's large eggs helped fuel the legend of the mythical rock the extinct elephant bird lived until around the 1600s until it was hunted to death there is another giant bird that has also given rise to legends the Maori people have long told of a giant eagle that once lived in New Zealand evidence such as bones and talons have proved the giant bird now called Hass eagle was more than a myth and unlike the elephant bird it could fly it had a wingspan of nearly three meters and preyed on moas large flightless birds related to ostriches Hass Eagle lived until about the early 1500s until it also became extinct number one Bigfoot around the world people tell of mysterious beasts that are part human part ape typically large hairy creatures that walk on two legs but always seem to stay just out of sight whether it be the wild man of Borneo Bigfoot in North America or the Yeti also known as the abominable snowman from two but we seem to be fascinated by a half man/half primate combo reconstructed here is an extinct primate called Gigantopithecus black eye or something like that a very distant relative of humans this animal lived in Southeast Asia for almost a million years until about 300,000 years ago and it is possible that small groups of these Apes survived even longer if so early humans in the area could have encountered the creatures more recently people in China have collected the fossilized teeth and jaws of a Gigantopithecus what do you think started these legends of mythical creatures be sure to subscribe and if you want to learn more of legendary cities that were actually found underwater click on the left did you know there might be a mysterious ancient creature living at the bottom of the sea click on the right to learn more see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Origins Explained

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Keywords: mythical, creatures, actually, existed, mythical creatures, actually existed, mythical creates that actually existed, real mythical creatures, top mythical creatures, mythology, facts, animals, griffin, cyclops, unicorn, dragon, roc, big foot, alltime10s, dark5, therichest, santoro, watchmojo

Id: _5wStYZt3Tg

Length: 11min 36sec (696 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 10 2016