Oct 25, 2024
just for a little bit of context: it is widely believed that the extinct mini-elephants were the inspiration for the cyclops myth (this is an elephant skeleton from manchester museum not one of the sicilian ones). the skulls in isolation have negligibly sized eye sockets on either side of the head and a glaringly obvious socket for the trunk - without the context of alive elephants or the rest of the skeleton, the greeks did what they could to imagine what creature the skulls came from
