The oldest legends of the Mediterranean tell us about gigantic beings with one eye in the center of their forehead, they are known as ciclopes .Homero, Esidodo and other authors Classics tell us about this race of giants in their works.Historians have wondered where they got the idea of the Ciclopes and if these could really exist in a prehistoric stage and have found two possible answers .
The Ciclopes
The best known of the cyclopes is Polyphemus .He was the son of Poseidon and the nymph Toosa and lived in a cave on an island in the Mediterranean. Ulysses the dwarf and blinds him to escape and not be devoured by the fearsome giant.Historians believe that the myth of the cyclops can come from the discovery in the antiquity of some giant giant skulls with a huge hole in the center.

On islands like Sicily, Crete, Cyprus or Malta, fossil skulls of a size that doubles that of a human being and that have a large cavity in the forehead can be found.It is believed that these remains could induce the ancient Greeks to believe in the existence of a race of giants with one eye .
Actually, these skulls correspond to a dwarf mammoth called "Elephas falconeri" that I inhabit in those islands in the upper Pleistocene.The central hole they took for the place where the huge eye would go, is actually the cavity corresponding to the tube .

The second explanation possible is based on the sad reality of existence ia of a malformation known as cyclopia .Some teratologists (scientists studying zoological abnormalities) point out that the existence of this anomaly could be the cause of the cyclope myth .In this congenital malformation a single facial orbit is observed and this occurs because the division into two of the orbital cavity fails when the embryo is developing.In addition to presenting a single eye, frequently the nose is very small or non-existent and is out of its usual place. One in every two hundred human miscarriages has cyclopia .If the baby manages to survive the birth, it usually dies shortly time to be born, since the cyclopia presents other serious malformations that affect among other organs the heart .

If you have been interested in this article, you may want to read the post:
-4 creatures of Greek mythology that you wish existed
Images: MUSE-Science Museum, Polyphemus
Comments
Post a Comment