On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears by Stephen T. Asma Read Free Book Online

much like the eye socket of a giant creature.
    In a world relatively unexplored and so much larger than it is now, it would be quite reasonable to conclude that dinosaur-like creatures were living in India and other far-off, mysterious places. In fact, naturalists as late as the eighteenth century assumed that the giants whose remains we regularly unearth were still alive in the unexplored regions of the world. Thomas Jefferson, for example, introduced a strange fossil to the scientific community at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in the 1790s; 11 he called it Megalonyx, or “Great Claw.” Jefferson believed that the enormous claw, discovered in a cave in Virginia, must have belonged to a monstrous cat-like creature; modern researchers have identified it as the giant ground sloth. The interesting point for our purpose is that Jefferson did not think the creature was extinct, but rather living somewhere in the uncharted frontier. “In the present interior of our continent,” he suggests, “there is surely space and range enough for elephants and lions, if in that climate they could subsist; and the mammoths [mastodons] and megalonyxes who may subsist there. Our entire ignorance of the immense country to the West and North-West, and of its contents, does not authorise us to say what it does not contain.” When he sent Lewis and Clark westward, Jefferson encouraged them to keep a lookout for giant living creatures. Suffice it to say that the ancients were no clearer on this issue than was Jefferson.
NATURAL HISTORY AND CREDULITY
     
    The issue is not whether the ancients were more credulous than we are today, but what theories are available and reasonable in a given age. Even today cryptozoology, the study or search for legendary creatures (e.g., the Loch Ness Monster, yeti, chupacabra), is a reasonable venture, albeit marginal and easily lampooned. How much more reasonable and widespread would belief in cryptids be in the ancient world? Wouldn’t monsters qualify as an odious subgroup inside this larger taxon of marvelous beings? Unlike much of today’s science, ancient natural history, together with travelers’ tales, often increased the credibility of monsters. More accurately, natural history, both ancient and modern, tends to live on the boundary line between the credible and the incredible.
    Aristotle, a notable skeptic, was
not
particularly skeptical about the existence of a large hairy quadruped called a Bolinthus that fought its enemiesby spraying acid-like excrement great distances. 12 He describes a beast that is bigger and stronger than an ox, with a long shaggy mane, that “defends itself by kicking and voiding excrement over a distance of about twenty-four feet.” The excretion is so pungent that it burns the hair off dogs. 13 The animal appears to be an embellished version of the European bison. Even a beacon of rationality like Aristotle can seriously entertain marvelous stories from faraway lands.
    One of the most important characters in the history of monsterology, Pliny the Elder, also waffled between reflective skepticism and gullibility. As the historian Margaret Robinson puts it, “It was Pliny’s
Natural History
that persisted as the ultimate authority on the subject [of marvelous beasts] for fifteen hundred years.” 14 His natural history transmitted the ancient beliefs about exotica into the medieval world; St. Augustine referred to him as “a man of great learning.” 15 But today Pliny is considered more of a scrivener, an unreliable inventory taker, rather than a systematic synthesizer like Aristotle. With a little effort, however, reading his passages reveals some important cultural undercurrents.
    As a general rule, Pliny accepted almost everything that was reported to him. He informs us, for example, that eels living in the Ganges River in India grow to be three hundred feet long, and that “King Pyrrhus’ big toe on his right foot cured an inflamed