Mythical Monsters (Paperback)

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Product Description

1884. This book was written approximately twenty-five years after Darwin published "Origin of the Species." Gould attempts to examine the connection between animals of various lands, ages and cultures, as well as the actual evidence of their existence. Contents: on some remarkable animal forms; extinction of species; antiquity of man; deluge not a myth; on the translation of myths between the Old and New World; the dragon; Chinese dragon; Japanese dragon; sea serpent; unicorn; Chinese phoenix. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Studio Editions Ltd (January 1, 1992)
• ISBN-10: 1851709444
• ISBN-13: 978-1851709441
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,459,554 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cryptozoology 70 years before Heuvelmans, August 17, 2000

By	Doug Wimberley (Hillsboro, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mythical Monsters (Secret doctrine reference series) (Hardcover)

This book was originally written in 1886 so parts of it are greatly outdated; however as a whole it is really not too bad for being as old as it is. The stated goal of finding fact in the myths and legends of people is consistent with the present day stated goals of cryptozoologists. Much of the book deals with the search for dragons in mythology and the texts he scrutinizes are 4000 years old and translated from Chinese. Much confusion results as some dragons are pythons, some crocodiles, some Iguanadon (for want of a better translation, probably actually referring to the Komodo dragon which was still undiscovered until about 25 years later) and some myth. The unicorn is also similarly treated however one passage mentions "in Tibet it is called serou" and later (1937?) a type of goat-antelope called the serow was discovered there. It did not have a single horn but was obviously the animal indicated. The sea serpent chapter deals with more recent sitings instead of texts several thousand years old and seem more strongly to indicate the prescence of an unknown animal compared to some of the other chapters. This book is one of the earliest works in the field of what would later be called cryptozoology and proves interesting in that context as the discoveries of the komodo dragon and serow are hinted at in this book.