The actual origin of the Cyclops?
What would it look like if you dug one of these mammoth skeletons up a few thousand years later?
I’m sure you’ve heard the stories, or at least know what a cyclops is. Do you ever wonder where the actual idea of a giant one eyed humanoid came from? This may seem like a strange and useless question, but I find it interesting.
Let’s first go back to the ice age, when mammoths ruled. Primitive man hunted them for meat, pelt, and probably bone. The generally accepted narrative is that these people utilized everything they could, and wasted little. To a certain extent that's probably true. But, after a while, you would have to imagine that they were probably drowning in these massive bones.
If you're unfamiliar with elephant bone characteristics, their bones, and skull actually look somewhat like ours, except the skull has one big horizontal eight shaped hole right in the middle for their trunks. This is where our eyes and nose typically are. Their eyes were smaller and more on the sides. The tusks come out of the bottom, or, under their chin if it was a human skull.
This part is a little unclear to me at the moment as to why, but it’s been suggested that the bones of these prehistoric beasts were sometimes arranged as if they were a human, and then given some type of burial ritual. Maybe out of some spiritual respect. Lets also assume that the tusks were removed from the skeleton because of their value. After years in the ground, that eight shaped trunk hole might start to degrade and round out.
Now we come forward to the Greeks. What would it look like if you dug one of these skeletons up years later? It would appear like a giant human with one big eye in the center of its face. Without any type of historical evidence on what the bone structure of a mammoth was, or that these rituals were preformed, you can’t really draw any other conclusion. From there, the human mind and its propensity for story telling did the the rest.
I'm not going to take credit for coming up with this. When we were kids, my brother and I would binge watch the History Channel on regular TV. One program we found talked about the possible true origins of biblical, or other ancient stories. I have tried to figure out what program that was, but never could... This is the only one that really stuck with me. It does make a ton of sense though.
I really hope there aren’t a lot of people out there who still believe the cyclops was real, and that I didn’t spoil someone’s Christmas. What inspires people to be creative is almost as interesting as what that inspiration creates.
Mike
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