Hidden and mythical organisms Flashcards
(35 cards)
What is a sphinx?
body of a lion, wings and head of a woman (greek mythology) head of a king (Egypt)
what is a manticore?
body of a lion; face of a person; can shoot arrows from stinging tail; also a maneater
What is a basilisk?
the king of snakes; one glance at the basilisk brings death
What is a mandrake? Who was the first to describe it?
Root resembles a human figure; when pulled from earth, it emits a shriek that kills anyone who hears it
Josephus AD 1st century
What was the Apple of sodom?
grows at the site of the former towns of sodom and Gomorrah, which god destroyed in his righteous wrath over lustful behaviour. when an apple from the tree is picked, it turns to ashes and smoke in the hands
what is the Ziebra tree?
a tree full of bare-breasted mystics and philosophers
When was the first mention of the unicorn?
Ctesias, Greek historian 398 BC
he wrote of the unicorn living in India. It was larger than a hourse, had a horn half a meter long.
Filings from the Unicorn horn were used for what?
an antidote to poison
When was the unicorn mentioned for the second time in history? Why?
The old testament 3rd century BC
Alexandrian Scho;ars wanted to translate books of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek, and were stuck on the Hebrew re’em, they chose monokeros or unicorn.
What is the actual meaning if re-em?
Ancestor of domestic cattle
What story teller also told the story of the unicorn?
Pliny
What was the legend of the Unicorn in Arab, Jewish, and Christian mythology?
Arab - huge unicorn, could kill elephants
Jewish - unicorn was too big to fit on Noahs ark but survived by treading water
Christian: Unicorn could only be caught by virgins with a large net
Who discerned the source of the unicorn and what was it?
Marco polo, indian rhino
What was Alicorn (supposedly and actually)?
Claimed it was a medicinal unicorn horn and could cure poison, bur was actually a narwhal horn
What is the Upas tree?
Also known as a Javan Tree of death, and that name gave it biblical Credibility
Where was the Upas (javan) tree first mentioned ?
by Friar Oderich of Portenau and then Sir John Mandeville, in The Travels of Sir John Mandelville, who claimed that it made the deadliest poison in the word
Did Sir John Mandeville exist?
No, the book was concocted by an unidentified fraudster
What were the emelishments of the Java tree made by Dr. Englebert (1712), Rumphius (1741) and in the London Magazine (1783)?
Dr. Engelbert: Spoke about it in his book, Emoenitates exoticae, where criminals would collect sap and if they lived they would be free
Rumphius: Claimed a poisonous gas is emitted by the tree
London Magazine: Danger zone radius of the tree was 12-14 miles, where 700 criminals attepted to collect sap and only 70 returned
What literature did the story of Upas tree end up in?
Loves of Plants (Erasmus Darwin)
The Law of Java; of The Poision Tree (London play)
Anchar (Alexander Pushkin)
What could be an explanation for all the dead animals around the Java tree?
confounding of two phenomena; a poisonous tree, and deadly CO2 emmisions from a dormant volcano.
Who set out to confirm the truth about the Upas tree and what did he find?
Leschenault in 1804
He confirmed a poisonous latex from the tree that affects the heart (contains antiarin)
Who was the Piltdown man?
supposed human ancestor whose cranium, jaw and teeth were excavated in sussex, south London, in the period 1908-1915
Players of Piltdown
who was Charles dawson
Amateur fossil collector; collected for the British museum; made most of the Piltdown discoveries
Players of Piltdown
Sir arthur Smith Woodward was who?
chief of the department of Natural History at the British museum; paleoichthyologist; Dawsons ally, helped with excavation
