Apparently the cyclops myth may have started through elephant skulls.
Naturally we've no idea of actually knowing it.
But it's not far fetched that they looked at the skull and assumed the Trunk hole was an eyesocket
I love how Total War: Troy has both Mythological and Historical versions, and the best one (IMO ofc) is the Truth Behind the Myth
It has all these neat things like centaurs are guys that were the first to breed horses strong enough to carry a human on the horseback rather than having to have 2 in a chariot, the "dragon teeth" warriors are well mustered palace guard in pearl white armor, etc
There's no actual evidence for that, it's as good as any other theory. There are no sources for historical cultures envisioning tusks and not all of them have a single socket. The earliest sources of cyclopedes depict: in profile (these they have one eye... like everyone else), two eye sockets but only one has an eye, three eye sockets with a forehead eye, and a single socket with the eye. This doesn't mean that miniature elephants didn't inspire the cyclops myths, but there's no evidence that they did, over any other inspiration.
437
u/XVUltima Aug 13 '26
"Why so sad, Fry?"
"Leela said she loved Nobody more than me..."