The name of monster is usually given to any being composed or produced against the regular order of nature. Popularly it is also applied to being deformed, cruel, evil or perverse, although there is nothing irregular in his figure with respect to his own species. There are many myths in relation to monsters, which we will see in today’s article.
“The Dream Of Reason Produces Monsters” -Goya.
Likewise, it is common to call a large animal a monster, and even a small one, because of its exoticism or the instinctive repellency that it produces among people. This happens with fossil beasts like dinosaurs; with legendary animals, whose existence has not been confirmed by science such as the kraken, giant squid; and with reptiles that still live, such as the Gila monster, a lizard typical of the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.
The belief in monsters dates back to primitive times , when the human being lived immersed in a completely magical universe, as cave paintings have been found in the caves of Marsoulas and Altamira, in which grotesque faces are seen that perhaps represent evil demons or geniuses to which evils and calamities were surely attributed.
Other primitive figures, which are not very human, may represent the first monsters created by the imagination of the Stone Age man, because of the fear that certain animals caused him . It is also possible that he represented strange creatures that he saw in his dreams and nightmares.
In many Egyptian tombs monsters are painted in hideous shapes. Some seem to be related to those that each deceased believed to have seen in life or in dreams, but others represent the monsters that exist on the path that he has to cross until he reaches the side of the gods.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that the belief in certain monsters was born from the distortion of a story transmitted verbally , as well as the possibility of unnatural unions between beasts and human beings.
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