A Field Guide to Bizarre Medieval Monsters
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- For a limited time only, go to curiositystream.com/hochelaga or use code hochelaga at checkout to get 40% off your annual subscription to Curiosity Stream!
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):
bestiary.ca/beasts/beastalphas...
List of Bestiaries - Wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
The Curious Myth of the Origin Barnacle Geese:
ztevetevans.wordpress.com/202...
Carta marina - Wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carta_m...
The Headless Blemmyes - JustHistoryPosts:
justhistoryposts.com/2020/04/...
The Grotesques of the Luttrell Psalter:
groteskology.blogspot.com/2013...
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Music:
Intro - Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumerian by Peter Pringle
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTs...
Celtic Impulse by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Teller of the Tales by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
Pippin the Hunchback by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
License: filmmusic.io/standard-license
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Find me on Social Media:
Twitter:
/ hochelaga_yt
Instagram:
/ hochelaga_yt
Discord:
/ discord
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Email me:
hochelagaenquiries@outlook.com
#Monsters #Medieval #Myth
Hey! For a limited time only, go to curiositystream.com/hochelaga or use code hochelaga at checkout to get 40% off your annual subscription to Curiosity Stream!
Hey! Can you make a video about the meaning of hochelaga please?
Dude your videos are the best
School of Life voice?
I still love the literal cartoon strips of rabbits & snails with swords and knights and people farting into horns. The monks & scribes were hilarious and perversely fun!
dam hommie sold out .......... :p. jk
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
i don't know, they also believed trolls lived in the hill past town and that you shouldn't cross the stream to the west because faeries would get you
@@sejemandhaha trolls originated with neanderthals (so the speculation goes). Faeries on the other hand idk bout that.
Japan is like a different dimension
Now we know that the other side of the world just has normal creatures, like platypuses and kangaroos
Like Australia
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.
Think on the bright side. Now, we are born in an era of photoshop and deepfake.
@@kugelblitzingularity304 and sworn testimonies!
@@kugelblitzingularity304 plus clickbait, sensationalization and misinformation (at a viral rate tho)
And die due to simple cuts and be treated by bleeding and use poisonous substances as medicines
At the same time, now we can see pictures of wondrous creates and locations, and even travel there. I mean just think about how amazing an elephant, for example, really is.
The Sir David Attemborough impression was top notch
Sounds like chris broad
it was
@@spencer.eccles the guy in Japan? With a certain Anime Person and a Welsh man?
@@exudeku yeah
Spot on!
Being a scholar in ancient times must've been really fun. You can literally make shit up and everyone will believe you
Kina like CNN
@@TMCommentator And the right says *we* make everything political...
@@dannydevito7000 both sides make everything political, the right comes up with a stupid idea and the left copies it while claiming it's completely original and the complete opposite of the right. Meanwhile the people in the middle are just checking their watches, waiting for the nuclear hellfire that will hopefully put an end to the argument over who can be the bigger morons...
@@theapexsurvivor9538 Enlightened apolitical centrist
I mean people do that now
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?
Yes, that's exactly the one. The goose tree was also called the barnacle tree. The video mentions "Branta leucopsis", which is the scientific name of the barnacle goose. It was believed that goose barnacles, a kind of sea creature, grew on the goose tree, and were where the geese emerged from. The goose barnacle is a real animal. But in reality, it of course doesn't grow on a tree or give rise to geese 🤣
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose#/media/File:Barnacle_Geese_Fac_simile_of_an_Engraving_on_Wood_from_the_Cosmographie_Universelle_of_Munster_folio_Basle_1552.png
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose_myth
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose_barnacle, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose_barnacle#/media/File:PSM_V04_D585_The_goose_tree.jpg
Wait a minute. Is that the goose where the baby chick jumped over a cliff?
@@Miguel92398 ok
@@Miguel92398 yep
@@forestswaras I finally got an answer on the ridiculous confusion of the barnacle goose and the goose barnacle - both are tied to the same false preconception.
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!
What people who denigrate the Middle Ages always seem to forget is that medieval people got most of their knowledge about the world from classical texts, so most of these myths were not medieval inventions but originated in ancient Greece and Rome. Yet they seldom call the ancient Greeks and Romans dumbasses for believing in them.
The folks from the Enlightenment seemed to popularize the trend in the first place, if not started it.
@@mjr_schneider Well, up until you read Aristotle's highly accurate Historia Animalium. While medieval man was not stupid, they were highly platonic due to the influences of both the Stoics on Roma and St. Augustine on the Church. They were *rationalistic*, so they had good logic, but with no firm basis in reality.
It wasn't until the rediscovery and reintroduction of Aristotle to the West by St. Thomas Aquinas that the Renaissance was able to happen.
Aristotle is what was lost, not the classics in general. His influence on the world cannot be understated. It was through his tutelage that Alexander the Great was able to Hellenize the entire Middle East, including Judea. Who knows what would have happened if Alexander had lived longer, or if the Library of Alexandria had not been destroyed (and with it much of Aristotle's works, which then became lost to the West.)
@@brutusthebear9050 I'm not sure where you got the idea that the loss of Aristotle's works was caused by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The Library of Alexandria wasn't even destroyed in a single event, but gradually declined over the course of centuries, and knowledge of Aristotle survived more or less intact in the Byzantine and Arabic worlds throughout the so-called Dark Ages before being translated into Latin in the 12th century, well before the Renaissance.
Most of the strange details found in medieval bestiaries come from the Physiologus and Pliny the Elder, but Aristotle's biology would have been one of the main sources of information in these bestiaries during the High Middle Ages.
They definitely will think we're dumbasses.
I love how imaginative the "Grotesques" were. It is interesting to see what the imagination of someone not tainted by modern sensibilities could produce.
My favorite are how angry the animals look! Especially that clam 😂 idk why I think it's so funny
To be fair, to someone without any background a narwhal is about as fantastical as a unicorn
*UNICORN FISH*
*UNICORN FISH*
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
Pretty bad probably
Think about all of the things that you are not sure of, and multiply that by about one thousand.
Why do people get sick?
What are stars?
Why does fire burn?
Why does my lord own me?
How do people read squiggles on a page?
That is what it was like to live in less enlightened times.
Probably the same that you know today about what can you really find at the north pole Artic and the opposite ant Artic.
Why did you use quots?
@@Justin-pe9cl Because people already lived in the places
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.
Make it
Oh! I think I went to that temple as a child. That is a awesome video Idea.
What if it's actually there and it's extreme complex lifeforms? Joking aside, I am really curious as to the unknown lifeforms living in our own caves
Very Jungian concept. Would love to see Hochelaga bring in the "universal unconscious" in a video about myths across the world
Scary big teethed monster. Pretty normal evolution instinct.
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.
There's noway "educated " people believed that into the 1700s
@@shadymcnasty5920 Why not? The extent of the education of many could simply not include any semblance of modern biology, and having never been out of their home province they couldn’t see for themselves.
Heard it was also inspired by the look of a certain tree fern.
@@shadymcnasty5920 There is educated people right now that think vaccines are mind control devices that work with 5G. Ironically, research shows that educated people are more susceptible to fake news and conspiracy theories
I still believe it’s real
So glad to see you covering medieval creatures. Incredible video as always!
The headless people being chimpanzees really blew my mind.
My favorite channels supporting each other, such a fine day.
Awesome to see you!
you people should do a collab
@@DaimyoD0 most likely it's just that the tribe painted faces on their shields, and they saw them from a distance.
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
I've never heard that interpretation, fascinating
The depiction is so dinosaur looking. Man if only these people knew their imaginations weren’t far off from the truth at one point.
And the staring aspect maybe be due to a mistranslation of it blinding you (kills your eyes).
@@theapexsurvivor9538 Probably spitting cobra, which tend to spit on eyes.
Quite the stretch, but so is every illustration in this video so you never know
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.
I wonder if that was the same case with Baku
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.
Bonnacon casts corrosive dung! It's super effective!!
Leviathan has fainted.
I'd totally play medieval Pokemon
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!
I bet they read like a Pokedex.
@@whitelasagna6786 "And here is the 'Tarasque'. Tarasque is local to the mountainous regions and can often be heard squealing in the distance in order to lure groups of human prey who might believe this noise to be a fellow human in danger."
*tarasque bitcrushed pokemon screech*
lol. I remember it was written in one snakes were tree branches come to life, this since mozes's tree branch staff was turned into a snake.
Lol that’s amazing.
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.
"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.
Love wins i guess lmao
Dr. Bright is that you?
And how that giant hitbox would be able to avoid incineration from flamethrower farts
This is a certified Donkey moment
@@giboi03 Calling the reproductive organ Hitbox is comedy gold
But Its simple,The hitbox has a Ranged attack
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.
The "castle" on the elephant's back must actually be a howdah, a kind of box or carriage that was placed on the backs of elephants for the purpose of riding them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howdah These are still used in tourism in places, and are now criticized for being instruments of animal cruelty.
Also war elephants back in the day sometimes had small fortifications built atop them
@@friggathefrightening4498 Oh! Any references for this?
In which regions was this practiced?
@@forestswaras take a look at some pictures of Carthaginian war elephants
@@doublxhelix5014 Those look like howdahs as well. But quite huge. The poor elephants!
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!
Exactly, like the monsters at the borders of the pages, the writers would be bored to death after copying the 100th book if they didn't at least have fun with it and run wild with the imagination.
8:00 still, the question remains:
“Do the dog-headed men have souls?!”
5:30
Lmao dude was dabbing top of the whale 😆😆😆😆
I love how medieval maps don’t actually show like places but symbols and would be absolute rubbish as a “map”. It shows how differently people thought back then
The Blemmyes also appear in the Ancient Indian Mythological Book 'Ramayana' where the hero god Rama and his brother encounter a creature called 'Kabandha' who has a description that is exactly the same as the Blemmyes.
The creature is a cursed demigod who is cursed to look this way till Rama kills him and only then will he be freed and regain his orginal demigod form.
That's cool! Maybe a bit of Proto-Indo-European culture getting passed down there.
That's so odd like 4 separate civilizations thought of the same exact thing
Yes, similar descriptions in Chinese folklore.
@@notatruck2640 always thought that with dragons too
The most fascinating drawings in medieval manuscripts tend to be early depictions of real animals
Yoda spotted at 8:50.
the goose tree absolutely killed me, i love the weird stories humans make up when we don't know the reason for something
I think the goose tree is the one that gets me the most.
You can easily justify most creatures in the bestiaries with the lack of knowledge for foreign creatures and countries as a whole, but migrating birds are a part of the known environment! It‘s so bizzarre for me to imagine not knowing about migrations, it‘s so engrained in our modern day understanding of basic animal facts. But when you think about it, with the tools and movement available at the time, migrations wouldn‘t have been so obvious.
It still feels so uncanny to me.
cut these guys some slack mate. they lived their entire lives thinking the earth was flat most likely
@@user-tu4ft1zh5l Surely they would have noticed that every single other bird they had ever seen lays eggs. But because they had never seen geese laying eggs, they immediately jump to “Well they must grow on trees!” How did they come to that conclusion??
@@user-tu4ft1zh5l that´s victorian period revisionism. Europeans have known the earth is round since antiquity.
@@user-tu4ft1zh5l People knew Earth was a sphere in medieval times. Eratosthenes had even calculated Earth's circumference in 240 BCE
@@Lenn869 my bad
I still can't believe people in the past actually thought geese grew on trees
Im almost certain thats just a depiction of a weird figure of speech.
People thought there was a plant that sprouted sheep as an explanation for cotton
@@molotera8789 that is just stupid we have been hearding and breeding sheep since we got them
@@thewildcardperson cotton plants
People believe anything called v@cc 1 ne its good and not discern from letal Inyección. Is not hard to understand they believed all this crap.
There's a variant of the goose tree that grows sheep called the Barometz or the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. It also appears in The Travels of John Mandeville. It would seem migratory patterns can't explain that one. I wonder to what extent these weird creatures were things people believed actually existed and to what extent they were just thought exercises attempting to explain parts of the animal kingdom which weren't very well understood, like the difference between plants and animals. There's a rather sad creature called a Myrmecoleon which is bound to die because its head (a lion) craves meat but its body (an ant) can't digest it. (The Aberdeen Bestiary mentions a "Mermecoleon" but it appears to be something completely different.)
Keep up the obscure and delightfully weird content, Hochelaga! I love every video!
The Mouros, a humanoid often stated to exist underground in Portuguese and Spanish mountains particularly around Galicia also were Barometz level of cognitive dissonance. As in some of them believed they lived amongst the Mouros when in reality, they lived amongst pre-Roman ruins made by the Castro Culture of Gallaecians dating back to as far as 1000 BCE. There were no people living underground at all, just technology that was lost from Gallaecians and Romans.
In my city there is mural in wich an angel is killing the devil in the form of a roosted chicken. I think its much newer than this kind of drawings and possibly a joke from the artist, but its so funny to me.
Could be a cockatrice?
@@irondolphin no
I've always found it interesting how basilisks seem to have a lot in common with therapod dinosaurs. Gotta be a link there.
7:13 Medieval furries
When you think about it, basilisks are nothing short but a fantastical interpretation made by the Ancients about some specimens of fossilized dinosaur remains they might have dug out during the Antiquity.
History UA-cam has been booming these past few years. It's a beautiful thing. But Hochelaga holds a special place in my heart for his specificity, presentation, and style. It just scratches that perfect itch. Anyone else?
anyone curious about those grotesques might be interested in reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. The first victim there was a painter of these images and there are some discussions in the book about his art and its purpose.
In India it is a common sight to see elephants with 'castles' on their backs, to carry multiple soldiers or celebreties either in war-time or during festivities. Probably the painter heard a story from an India traveller and created the drawing with a mindset of his own world.
0:43 > "and why this Christian saint has the head of a dog."
Powerwolf.
Love your channel! Make a movie about polish/slavic monsters and I’m not talking about our politics this time;)
I second this suggestion, I wish I knew more about balkan and Slavic myth!
Yeah, it would be nice if other people know more about our Polish/Slavic mythical creatures. Some of them can be disturbing.
Kiedy odcinek zDupy: 10 rzeczy które wkurwiają w średniowieczu???
although an appendix to the monsters of polish government wouldn't be amiss
Didn’t Medieval French also paint giant snails in a lot of their work and no-one knows why? I just find it bizarre how something that isn’t real was so prevalent (much like everything in this video)
The snails were a symbol of cowardice
The French love their snails
Bro I love your content so much, not enough UA-camrs post about these amazingly obscure topics! Thanks for the amazing uploads :)
So amazing to know how the Medieval Taxonomy were believed by many. Especially that it is I think the "standard" at that time. And again, who knows if these exaggerated creatures might have or is now existing. To think there are still spots on this planet that are still covered by the deep blue or lush greens.
Shout out to all the Mandeville readers out there! That book is a great window onto the weirdness medieval Europe attributed to the rest of the (then known) world!
Thanks for another great video!
Haven't read it but I stopped the vid so I could add it to my want list.
I would love to see you cover more of the weird illustrations on the margins of medieval manuscript ❤️
this contents are sooooo GOOD its like studying but sooooo fun and exciting at the same time :D
An elephant with a castle on its back sounds like a "telephone game" description of an elephant with a howdah.
so amazing to see Yoda at 8:50
I’ve always liked to think about the time when we couldn’t cross the ocean and how people would’ve wondered what was on the other side of it ever ended or not
So that's how you pronounce it 4:55, good to know
A fun thing I'd like to point out I don't have full context for, one of the 'elephant' illustrations that gets shown a few times in this video was in fact intended to be a giraffe.
2:21 the one with hooves, a mane, long tail, and comically massive and angry looking eyes
We really need some sort of CGI crossover where Planet Earth makes a film on medieval monsters as they are in the wild.
About the griffins mate. I recently heard a theory talking about how the legend from them comes from dinosaur bones. Essentially in the Gobi desert there's tons of dinosaurs bones and even intact nests. People who lived in the region such as the Scythians spread their legend to the west where the Romans picked it up. Cool stuff.
Very cool video idea!!! Love seeing people’s bizarre interpretations mixed with a intercontinental game of telephone.
Besides the amazing research and excellent production value, your voice tone and manner match your subject perfectly. Thanks for another great video. Congrats on the half million.
I love the topic about weird map sea monsters, strange medieval creatures, and mythical creatures in general! Thanks for talking about this, this video will definitely be another rewatch!
Kinda sad you didn't mention the dungeons and dragons Tarrasque
The dog people could have just been a tribe that wore wolf heads and the tale got distorted through word of mouth.
I'm glad I'm this early to one of your videos.
I truly love your videos! I watch videos from many different channels on UA-cam but yours are definitely my favorite.
8:18 a ballchinian
Saw that outta the corner of my eye jyst as the scene changed, lol
Maybe the grotesques are just medieval memes.
Thank you for uploading, I have almost binged all of your channel's videos and was scared I won't have any more hochelaga to watch! :)
One of the few channels I subscribe to and actually look to see if there are new videos in anticipation. Great channel and keep it up!
I recently discovered your channel and it is a delight. Binging all of it this week!
Amazing video. I just laid in bed with a cup of tea and ive been watching your videos. So relaxing yet informative. Love it
I'm so glad I found your channel. You always find such interesting topics to explore!
Been waiting for that new hochelaga video! Now I can actually enjoy my weekend lol
Always happy for more content! Thanks for another wonderful video!
Hey, I'm a huge fan of Medieval illustrations and paintings, so I really enjoyed this video. Thank you! Been following you for a while, and love the consistent quality. Keep it up, man!
These are always so fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent, really love your work and congratulations on passing half a million subscribers.
This really shows how creative people were (and still are),, like they probobly just had a random thought and drew it and boom it became some weird (but understandable) creature who we all talk about today
Always love the effort you put into here vids Hoch, keep it up!
I really happy for you. I've been watching your content for a while now and I'm thrilled you have attracted so many subscribers and advertisers. Keep up the great work.
I just want to say that not only the quality of your videos is just rising and rising, I also love the different editing styles you used over time
I am following you since the angel video that went a bit viral :D really awesome that your Channel is doing so well
2:16 They didn't _think_ elephants had castles on their backs, they were simply depicting the waring elephants of antiquity; Which were very real and very awesome.
Every time one of your videos come out I get SO exited. I love your videos.
always glad to see your videos !!
It's actually funny how many of these descriptions were back there
High-key my favourite UA-cam creator. You’re videos are so fascinating dude.
I could have watched/listened to this for hours! Very interesting and entertaining!
Absolutely love this. With the rebranding of many monsters throught D&D, I get into many discussions about what a monster actually is. D&D is in the process of rewriting the whole of bestiairies throughout time. I like that you delve into the origins of these things. And there are actually a few I hadn´t heard of.
This was really informative and kept me interested the whole way through, good work!
Medieval man: it’s weird we never see geese reproduce, i wonder why?
Medieval zoologist: oh don’t you know? They come from the
*g e e s e t r e e s*
1:10 why he SMILING THO
So excited by this new video! You’ve quickly become one of my most anticipated UA-cam channels.
As usual great video. I hope you start making more and longer ones
Your videos are always soo captivating and interesting! Can't wait for the next one!
Yay! A new channel to binge. Theses videos are outrageously good.
keep it up man, i extremely love all of your contents!
Am glad to see you uploaded another video, hochelaga. Brilliant content, as always! Thanks you for this!
Thanks man, your content is just the best for me :)
This is such a fascinating subject, great video!
you keep making bangers I'm always excited to see you upload!!
This was so insightful! I love fantasy and can only imagine what it would’ve been like to live through these ages
Really like your channel ! You do incredible work !
Twas fascinating x thank you 💝
Remember the times when magical Turtle-Human-Hybrid-Warriors, metal Giants who are half wagons, and a tribe of Crime Fighting Spider-people roamed the streets? That must have been magical times.