Many times we try to indulge in the discussion with our friends of mystical and strange creatures, whose existence are considered as myths. Those creatures we probably have seen in movies like a flying horse or a dragon.
While discussing about these creatures, there is one beast we mostly come across and that is a Griffin.
What is a Griffin?
According to the old legends, A griffin is a mythological creature deriving its origin from the old folk tales as being regal and savage. It has the body of a lion; the head and wings of an eagle; and sometimes an eagle’s talons as its front feet.
Lion considered as the king of the beast and eagle as the king of the bird and so this work of fiction was made in past. It is named from Greek word γρυψ (gryps) meaning hooked beak.
Origin of a Griffin
We are not sure whether these beasts really existed or not or where this creature was first represented in classical antiquity.
Some place the griffin’s origin in Ethiopia or India. Other stories place the griffin’s origins in the Persian Empire, particularly the Scythia region.
While griffins are most common in the art and mythology of Ancient Greece, there is evidence of representations of griffins in ancient Persia and ancient Egypt dating back to as early as the 4th millennium BC.
Ancient Egyptians carved animal-themed gargoyles whose forms were often based on lions and included griffins and sphinxes
Further as you go back in history you will find plenty of such types of mythical and strange creatures carved or painted on the walls of ancient cities that rest in ruins.
Of course these theories and artistries does not give any prove to their existence but rather how people believed they may have thought they were.
Historian accounts of Griffin
In the past, Greeks believed griffins to inhabit Scythia (old region of central Eurasia) and guard its gold. An ancient Greek historian Herodotus depicts its existence in the following words :
But in the north of Europe there is by far the most gold. In this matter again I cannot say with assurance how the gold is produced, but it is said that one-eyed men called Arimaspians steal it from griffins. But I do not believe this, that there are one-eyed men who have a nature otherwise the same as other men… (Herodotus, The Histories , 3.116)
Herodotus narrates that the north of Europe boasted “the most gold”. A group of one-eyed men, which he calls arimaspians stole the gold from griffins.
What made them so nobel?
In the Middle Ages, griffin claws were believed to have medicinal properties. Griffin eggs were also thought to possess magical powers. Bartholomew Anglicus claimed the egg could repel poison in his 13th-century account (Wood 2018: 101)
In European legend of this period, it was believed that griffins mated for life, and that when one partner died, the other would live the rest of his/her without seeking another partner (perhaps due to the fact that there weren’t many griffins around).
Did griffins really existed ?
Its well said that the humans are the crown jewels of all creation and a piece of art like this can be due to their astonishing imagination as such creatures like griffin are combination of two animals can be considered nothing more than art of fiction.
In 2000, Adrienne Mayor, a historian at Stanford University, published the ground-breaking book The First Fossile Hunters, stating that Scythian nomads, who were mining gold in the Central Asian area in the first millennium BC, told stories about the mythical creature griffin, a fierce, eagle beaked, lion sized animal that wondered around in their mines, guarding the gold.
She states that these Scythian miners must have found skeletons of the Protoceratops dinosaur
But the existence of these animals cannot be denied as according to some of the stories, these creatures were extremely rare so there might be only few places were the fossils of such beasts could be found.
It might be possible these creatures existed in Antarctica as some of really strange creature were found in Antarctica which never been discovered before for example fossilized remains of a real lockness monster, elasmosour was found in Antarctica and fossils of many such creatures tend to exist that have never been found before .
