Werewolves are thousands of years old
Posted by markfox on Thu 29 Nov 2001 - 09:15
The therianthropes among us are in good company: Stone Age man's terrors still stalk modern nightmares from the Guardian Unlimited Observer reports "animal-human hybrids" in human art go back ten thousand years. Link via Plastic.
'We looked at art that goes back to the dawn of humanity and found it had one common feature: animal-human hybrids,' said Dr Christopher Chippindale, of Cambridge University's museum of archaeology and anthropology. 'Werewolves and vampires are as old as art, in other words. These composite beings, from a world between humans and animals, are a common theme from the beginning of painting.'
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This article is no real surprise; scientists have been noticing this for decades now. Monstrous half-human/half-animal beings are at least as old as humanity proper. The earliest examples are, I believe, at Lascaux (the 'Dancing Sorcerer', a man with the head of a stag and the tail of a wolf along with other animalistic features). And I recall looking at some of the oldest art in Scandinavia, both cave art and Iron Age metalworking, and finding human-animal figures (wolves and bears, usually) attacking/terrifying the humans.
What I wouldn't mind seeing, though, is for someone with the right training (a psychologist or cultural anthropologist) to look into this and discover exactly why theriomorphs are such a powerful figure in the human psyche. Anyone on this list have any ideas?
Ardashir
Well... I don't have a clue to WHERE they CAME from, but I can say THIS: H. G. Wells probably SEEN this coming about our future when he wrote "The Island of Dr. Moreau", considering the issue of genetic tampering with fusing human and animal DNA. But online furrydom is a subject that's HERE TO STAY.
The wallaroo turns and bounds away into the darkness.
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