No wonder our brains are wired to make us dread this awful fate, and that the stories we tell ourselves reflect this dread and attempt to express it - press it out. Myth after myth confronts the stark facts of being consumed by a larger creature, obsessively depicting in graphic detail what both monsters and animal predators naturally do - turn humans into excrement.Įvery day over the course of several million years, our ancestors saw (and heard) living creatures being torn apart and devoured by hungry animals - with some victims still kicking as they were eviscerated and dismembered. This shameful fate of those who are eaten is confronted in an African myth in which a giant predatory bird swallows the hero whole day after day and then excretes him. Whatever else they may do for us psychologically, monsters express - and ex-press - our dread of being torn apart, eviscerated, chewed, swallowed, and then shit out. Regardless of their different sizes, features, and forms, monsters have one trait in common - they eat humans. ![]() ![]() In Greek myth, one finds Polyphemus, the one-eyed cannibal giant the Minotaur, a monstrous human-bull hybrid that consumes sacrificial victims in the "bowels" of the subterranean Labyrinth and Scylla, the six-headed serpent who wears a belt of dogs' heads ravenously braying for meat. In South American myth, there is the were-jaguar in Native American myth, there are flying heads, human-devouring eagles, predatory owl-men, water-cannibals, horned snakes, giant turtles, monster bats, and even a human-eating leech as large as a house. In Aboriginal myth, there is a creature with the body of a human, the head of a snake, and the suckers of an octopus. ![]() In Hawaiian myth, there is a human with a "shark-mouth" in the middle of his back. This article was adapted from the new book "Deadly Powers," from Prometheus Books.
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