A Field Guide to Bizarre Medieval Monsters

Thank you Curiosity Stream for sponsoring this video.

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Medieval zoology is bizarre. Mostly because half of the creatures don’t even exist. And those that do look very, very strange!

In this handy field guide, we'll be exploring some of the weirdest and wildest mythical beasts and legendary creatures of the European Middle Ages. From basilisks to blemmyes, and everywhere in between. It's a world where biology and mythology blend together.

We'll be looking at these three unusual documents in particular:
- The Aberdeen Bestiary
- Carta marina (by Olaus Magnus)
- The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
- Luttrell Psalter

This video was a blast to make, I hope that you enjoy it! It also marks the start of Season III, go get ready for more obscure topics. Oh, and thank you all for 521k subscribers, I am so grateful to all of you!

H.

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro
00:51 The Tarasque
01:46 Bestiaries
02:25 Goose Trees?
03:07 Griffin "Claws" & Unicorn "Horns"
04:05 Curiosity Stream
05:11 Sea Monsters
05:54 Blemmyes
06:54 Cynocephali
08:05 Grotesques
08:48 Concluding Thoughts
09:42 Outro

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Sources & Further Reading

Online Bestiary (Alphabetic):

List of Bestiaries – Wiki:

The Curious Myth of the Origin Barnacle Geese:

Carta marina – Wiki:

The Headless Blemmyes – JustHistoryPosts:

The Grotesques of the Luttrell Psalter:

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Music:

Intro - Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumerian by Peter Pringle

Celtic Impulse by Kevin MacLeod

Teller of the Tales by Kevin MacLeod

Pippin the Hunchback by Kevin MacLeod

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#Monsters #Medieval #Myth

[neilangelopalquiza]

Imagine how people during medieval times reacted to these creatures when they first heard about them. They must've thought the other side of the world is like a different dimension

[aerosma]

How amazing it must have been to be born in an era without cameras, and you'd hear tales of wondrous creatures and locations in far off lands.

[paolofranciscopavan]

The Sir David Attemborough impression was top notch

[chloepainter]

There’s a kind of goose called a barnacle goose that nest high up on cliffs and tree hollows near water, and when the chicks hatch, they launch themselves down, and that’s how they learn to fly. Maybe that’s the origin of the goose tree?

[reaperzeero]

I love how imaginative the "Grotesques" were. It is interesting to see what the imagination of someone not tainted by modern sensibilities could produce.

[CuriousArchive]

So glad to see you covering medieval creatures. Incredible video as always!

[gustavor.canezini]

You have to be one of the few to make a video about this without treating medieval people as stupid morons. They simply didn't have all the knowledge we have today and worked around what they knew and travellers told them. Maybe a few centuries forward people will look back at our civilization and think we were also dumbasses. Great video as always!

[jinglesify]

Being a scholar in ancient times must've been really fun. You can literally make shit up and everyone will believe you

[thelordnaevis]

I wonder how it felt to live during those times, when there were still places that weren’t “discovered” yet, and all you could do was hear tales and legends about them

[mjr_schneider]

One of my favourite medieval creatures, which is similar to the goose tree, is the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. This was a plant that supposedly grew a sheep as its fruit and it would eat the surrounding vegetation while still attached to its stem. Apparently this was a garbled account of the origin of cotton, which is native to Asia. Educated people continued to believe it was real until the 1700s.

[herodotoots]

To be fair, to someone without any background a narwhal is about as fantastical as a unicorn

[andreassandi]

I was always wondering how similar the depictions of Bosch are compared to Buddhist representation of hell for example in Wat Tham Ta Pan Temple in Thailand. Seems to be some imagination all humans share. That would be an awesome video btw.

[acesniped]

We studied these bestiaries in one of my humanities classes. Some bestiaries came with written descriptions; my favorite is the claim that lion cubs were born dead, and had life breathed into them three days after their stillbirth by their fathers. Fun biblical connection!

[regrettablestitches]

You can see the same thing happening with art in early Japan -- my favourite are the tigers drawn by people who had clearly NEVER seen one, lol.

[friend_trilobot]

I've heard that the cockatrice and basalisk are probably just a misunderstanding of the king cobra - people heard there was a deadly serpent with a crown on its head and that translated into a dragon that had a cock's comb that killed you by staring

[krzysztofczarnecki]

A big part of why goose trees were a thing is the existence of the goose barnacles. They live in groups, and they have similar coloring to a barnacle goose's body and neck (and the shell looks like wings), and people didn't have much anatomical knowledge, so even if they cut one open, they'd see it's made of meat like a goose, and is probably a goose that isn't fully grown yet.

[userequaltoNull]

I think it's important to note that the depictions of Elephants with castles on their backs are 100% accurate. They are called Howdahs, and were wooden structures mounted on top of their backs, used for carrying Elephant Riders (archers, trainer, and possibly pikemen) and Royalty.

So, they are actually very accurate, at least for War Elephants.

[jeremygreen]

It's like a medieval version of Pokemon! Someday, thousands of years in the future people will pick through the relics and ruins of our society and be convinced that we believed in electrical mice and lizards with bulbs growing off their backs.

[purplehaze]

"The lovechild of the biblical leviathan and a creature known as a bonnacon"
I really don't want to know how that union happened. It's like trying to think how small dogs could breed with big ones, but on at least 1000 times the scale.

[ovtirc]

It’s funny to me that every time historians depict illustrations from the past they’re always taken with a serious tone like people didn’t had a sense of humor back then 😂😅 but I love this videos!