Message #29587

[Bianca]

To be able to judge the truth of the story—to consider the evidence for the story—a person needs to know a few elements of Chinese history, beginning with a look at the Shan Hai King. This book containing a wide variety of descriptions and stories is called the world’s oldest geography. (3) It is also one of the earliest works of Chinese literature. In addition to geographical descriptions, it speaks of monsters and weird beasts, myths and wild tales; and it includes enough of these to cause many scholars either to brand the work nonsense or to ignore it completely. (4)



European ideas of New World monsters:
fanciful drawings of animals supposedly encountered
by Amerigo Vespucci.
Ogilby, John. America, London, 1671.
Institute of Texan Cultures, 84-137



 Monsters from the European tradition. Land and
sea monsters from Sabastian Munster's
Cosmographia universalis, 1550.
Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-233



However, it contains no more wonders than other records accepted as generally true by later critical readers. Many European works regarded as classics are laced with metaphor (or outright lies), but these works are not therefore condemned. (5) Sir Walter Raleigh speaks of headless warriors; Marco Polo writes of the Orc, a bird so big it could fly off with an elephant in its talons; Herodotus, one of the greatest Greek historians, includes winged serpents and ants as large as oxen; and even the level-headed conqueror Julius Caesar, in his account of northwestern Europe, speaks of the unicorn and of elk which never lie down to rest. Much of what they say, not all, can be confirmed in other sources. Thus, the basic reliability of these writers is not questioned.