Found a rock art of the Stone Age with images of strange creatures. Archaeologists called them therianthropes - hybrids of humans and animals. And they believe that ancient artists painted from life. Neighbors in mind
“At the dawn of civilization, hybrids, including centaurs, could well have lived next to primitive people. And even to be a kind of "neighbors in mind" - this is the opinion of rock art specialists Paul Tacon of the Australian Museum in Sydney and anthropologist of the University of Cambridge Christopher Chippindale. In Australia and South Africa, they not only found dozens of images of people with animal heads and, conversely, animals with human heads that are more than 32,000 years old, but also conducted the world's first detailed study of strange drawings. Having studied almost 5,000 works of stone art of our ancestors, scientists systematized the frequency of appearance and types of the depicted therianthropes, and also determined their age. And they came to the conclusion: in the distant past, beastmen really existed. After all, primitive man could not depict what he himself did not see.
They loved to drink
More modern stories from the myths of Ancient Greece and Rome also abound in beastmen. And centaurs are most often mentioned. These are creatures with a human torso that passes into the lower part of a horse or other animal, for example, a bull, donkey, ram, and even a goat. The word "centaur" itself is also compound: KEN (from "kenw") - "I kill" and TAUROS - "bull", this is associated with the astronomical knowledge of the ancients. When the constellation of Sagittarius (Shooting Centaur) rises in the night sky, Taurus (one of the symbols of the Sun) is no longer visible.
According to ancient legends, the centaurs came from the mountains of Greece, where their relationship with the locals was rather difficult. Since some centaurs were partial to wine, they quickly fell into a rage and fought with people more than once.
Another strange cave painting.
The shepherds are to blame
- Where could the beastmen come from? - I ask a specialist in mythology, candidate of historical sciences Alexander GURIEV.
- In ancient times, sodomy - an intimate relationship between people and animals - was considered a common thing, - says Alexander Nikolaevich. - Many peoples even believed that they descended from animals. For example, the Tibetans considered a monkey to be their ancestor, the Hindus - a horse, the inhabitants of Thailand - a dog.
There are also very strange legends. So, one ancient Greek myth tells that the future great conqueror Alexander the Great was conceived … from the snake, into which the god Zeus, the ruler of all gods and people, turned into. So he decided to seduce the daughter of the King of Macedonia, Olympia.
In general, the ancient Greeks and Romans, according to historical sources, could not live without sodomy. The Greek scientist Thales, according to legend, advised his master Periander not to trust sheep to unmarried shepherds if he wanted to avoid the birth of centaurs. The Roman poet-satirist Juvenal wrote that "Roman women often bared their buttocks in front of donkeys, luring them into sexual intercourse." In Egypt, such ties were part of a fertility cult ceremony.
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Warriors and sheep
It turns out that not even a single battle in those days was complete without a herd of small ruminants - sheep or goats. These uncomplaining animals served the warriors not only as food, but also as objects of love. There is not-so-old written evidence of how Italian soldiers in 1562, during the siege of Lyon by the Catholics, deserted in droves due to the lack of sheep to satisfy their passion! Therefore, the generals of the Spanish king Philip II, who fought with Holland, took care of a sufficient number of goats and sheep for the army. Satisfying soldiers with the help of animals was considered a lesser evil than using the services of prostitutes. Serious scientists - Paracelsus, Cardano, the famous Italian obstetrician of the 16th century Lyceti - several times recorded cases of the birth of human children by animals and women - animals or hybrids. This list includes horses, elephants, dogs and even lions.
Devil's Crossing
- But is it really possible to cross a human and an animal? - I wonder.
- Previously, science completely denied such a possibility, - explains Alexander Nikolaevich. - But recently in serious specialized publications, reports began to appear about the experiments of geneticists. In test tubes, they managed to obtain so-called chimeras - embryos in which some of the cells were human, and some of the animal cells were murine, sheep, monkey … From the point of view of genetics, by the way, we are not very different from these animals - by some few percent. And I am ready to believe that in rare cases spontaneous mutations are possible, as a result of which direct interbreeding is not excluded - by natural sexual means. And who knows, maybe people with such mutations have lived at all times? Scientists, on the other hand, did not and do not conduct a general genetic analysis.
The famous Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin wrote that he himself saw a woman who, after intercourse with a cat, gave birth to a child with a cat's head. Examples of the birth of animal people can be found in some medical books of the 19th - 20th centuries. For example, the famous theologian Setler in 1940 argued that freaks can be the result of the sexual union of man and beast. At the end of the last century, some British researchers described cases of cohabitation of black women with gorillas. Their children did simple housework and could even speak. But scientists did not manage to see these half-humans, half-gorillas, because the hybrids, feeling offended, left forever in the jungle.
- Do archaeologists have at least one skeleton of a centaur? - I ask at last.
- There are no whole skeletons, - the scientist admits. - But in parts - complete: separate lower, separate upper.