6 ms·

Evolution of the elephant depiction throughout the middle ages

161 points by robalicious 5y ago

sischoel 5y ago
The page is from 2008 - unfortunately a lot of links to the original pictures do not work anymore.
- alister 5y ago
  > a lot of links to the original pictures do not work anymore When I research something that's important to me, I take screenshots or save the source code because I know that the referenced web page is likely to disappear within a few years. And it'd be nice to have a tool to automatically replace broken links with copies of your saved screenshots.
- aasasd 5y ago
  Perhaps the Web Archive can help in some cases.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  The linkrot is definitely sad to see, especially since (at least some of) these images are line art based upon originals that were a lot more textured
sockpuppet69 5y ago
How many of these artists had seen an elephant in real life. How many were drawing it from descriptions (e.g. fan like ears. ribbed long arm like nose, large feet could describe some early drawings)
gehwartzen 5y ago
Some of these are pretty wild. Makes me wonder if similar mischaracterized/illustrated of animal depictions were the source for the belief in dragons and other monsters
- wincy 5y ago
  I’ve heard that the idea of dragons sleeping in caves arose because cave bears lived in well, caves throughout Europe and it’s quite possible their skeletons would be mistaken for a dragons.
  - omarhaneef 5y ago
    Dinosaur bones!
- danparsonson 5y ago
  This one is my personal favourite: https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/jpgs/1313.jpg https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan...
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Who drew that one? The 3 year old prince or court jester?
- Aunche 5y ago
  There is a theory that elephant skulls inspired the myth of cyclops. http://www.strangehistory.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/dwarf-elephant.jpg http://www.strangehistory.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/0...
- posterboy 5y ago
  I convinced myself that Mushu on the Ishtar gat must be a horse because horses are said to have come from the north and mare, a Germanic-Celtic isogloss would somewhat match the description if rhotacism was involved. Then I went on about Amazons and Mars just because their origin may be uncertain. So no, here be dragons. The domestication of the horse keeps being challenged anyhow.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
I'm curious on the approach taken. Are the arrows based on known derivation/influences, or based on perceived similarity? It's a master's thesis. This here: https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/1475-1500.html https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan... Does not seem to be an elephant to me. Maybe a vomiting deer, or with a bad case of worms of serpentitis. (:
- burkaman 5y ago
  http://corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=257528 http://corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=257528 > Notes: The text refers to elephants; the miniature may be a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the standard Bestiary image of the elephant battling a dragon. Seems to be speculation that the artist saw an image like https://64.media.tumblr.com/07d4ec88f9250ff97d244dd316bd5e2e/tumblr_p51419Xocc1qm6vs3o1_500.jpg https://64.media.tumblr.com/07d4ec88f9250ff97d244dd316bd5e2e... or had it described to them, and didn't really understand it but knew it was called an elephant.
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    Ah! Interesting. The color plate makes it quite clear that the "trunk" is actually another creature (a snake). I wonder if the motif of elephants battling dragons comes out as a kind of origin story of how the elephant got its trunk.
blululu 5y ago
Really a cool project. Thinking about how to describe and elephant: like a giant ox but with big ears a long protruding nose and tusks (not not for female Asian elephants). Can easily see how that game of telephone would go sideways.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Assumes the receiver of the description knows what an ox and tusks looks like.
  - blululu 5y ago
    Yes. I assumed basic knowledge of the fauna of Northern Europe which includes oxen and walruses.
peteradio 5y ago
This one looks like a dragon: https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/jpgs/1479.jpg https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan...
- nosianu 5y ago
  So I immediately googled "dragophant" as the name that immediately came into my mind after seeing this, and there are quite a few interesting links and images Only a few examples: - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/87/31/778731af0a982a047e7a281ea6693ebd.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/87/31/778731af0a982a047e7a... - https://i.redd.it/3c9mii0uc1b51.jpg https://i.redd.it/3c9mii0uc1b51.jpg - https://www.deviantart.com/tag/dragophant https://www.deviantart.com/tag/dragophant
Little_Fish 5y ago
This is like the gif where everyone draws a picture on the back of the person in front and the end result is nothing like the original. Chinese whispers in art form!
- dvsfish 5y ago
  gartic phone!
- airstrike 5y ago
  I've never seen that, would love a link
- koboll 5y ago
  You can almost hear the not-quite-accurate descriptions that inspired these. Like the (many) images that are almost accurate, except the tusks grow upward: probably the description called them "horns" and mentioned where on the head they grew from, but not the direction, so the artists simply inferred the horn-growth direction they were familiar with from other large mammals.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  How long is the Emporer's nose? https://imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm https://imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm
distribot 5y ago
I wish there was context for the pictures. Where they came from, who drew them
sneeds 5y ago
this one is just a meme shitpost https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/jpgs/~1400.jpg https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan...
menacingly 5y ago
Years ago I read a fascinating article (that I cannot locate again) about the wildly inaccurate illustrations of animals available in old books, often drawn by artists who had never seen the animal, but drew one from verbal descriptions by people who had. Something like a visual game of telephone.
29athrowaway 5y ago
The early drawings remind me of the "Yee" video art direction. https://youtu.be/q6EoRBvdVPQ https://youtu.be/q6EoRBvdVPQ
questiondev 5y ago
it would be fun to animate them and put them in a game about elephants
- Hithredin 5y ago
  https://sketch.metademolab.com/canvas https://sketch.metademolab.com/canvas Let's try
jbjbjbjb 5y ago
Makes me wonder how far off are our modern depictions of dinosaurs
xg15 5y ago
So, I know the meme that the European middle ages were some time of great civilizational downfall ("dark ages") is itself pretty much debunked by now. But there must have been some kind of change between antiquity and middle ages that caused so much knowledge and international exchange to simply vanish. I really wonder what exactly went on there.
- dnautics 5y ago
  I recommend David Hackett fishers "the great wave" for one take
  - xg15 5y ago
    Sounds interesting. Thanks!
- manoDev 5y ago
  Doesn't the fall of the Roman Empire explain it? At its peak it was a huge unified empire, it should be expected a lot of commerce and knowledge would move freely within its borders. The (slow) fall of the Roman Empire would be like watching the end of civilisation, a dystopian fiction of the survivor-apocalyptic kind. The following centuries, all the way to our modern age, rulers tried to claim the title of Cæsar (Kaiser, Czar, ...), tried to claim a continuity of the empire (e.g. Nazi's III Reich) or even invoked past roman imagery (the roman eagle ["aquila"] is also present as a symbol of power in the USA [american eagle], in Russia [romanov coat of arms], in Germany [both the nazi's eagle and the bundestag's eagle]). It's as if the world is still trying to "get over" the end of the Roman Empire.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > even invoked past roman imagery (the roman eagle ["aquila"] is also present as a symbol of power in the USA Perhaps even more clearly than the adoption of the American bald eagle echoing the Roman eagle is the bronze fasces in the House rostrum, a direct replication of the Roman symbol of authority from which, also, Italian fascism derives its name.
  - 5y ago
dublin 5y ago
One thing is certain - We can be pretty sure that MOST of our depictions and ideas of long ago extinct animals are scarcely any better than these. Even with the highest scientific rigor intended, they almost always do a better job of reflecting the preconceptions and biases of the artists than the reality of the animal itself...
aasasd 5y ago
The author also has a page with text descriptions for various animals in a similar vein: https://www.uliwestphal.de/retrozoology/index.html https://www.uliwestphal.de/retrozoology/index.html > The octopus as a rule does not live the year out. It has a natural tendency to run off into liquid; for, if beaten and squeezed, it keeps losing substance and at last disappears. Well, can't say that I won't do about the same if beaten and squeezed. Also, another animal with plenty of wild depictions is the tiger. East-Asian paintings especially walk between hilarious and cool, and it's often clear that the artists didn't particularly want to see a real tiger close. Itō Jakuchū: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/63/f8/1463f891232e00f9165d05809828138a.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/63/f8/1463f891232e00f9165d05809... Marked as ‘Meiji’, so fairly recent, but I like it: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9e/d1/6a/9ed16aad46e17fcbe521d68e0f67edec--tiger-art-tiger-tiger.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9e/d1/6a/9ed16aad46e17fcbe521d68e0...
irrational 5y ago
What was going on in the mid to late 1400s? They had some crazy psychedlic drawings of elephants. Even more so than most earlier times. Though, maybe that is the answer. Maybe people in earlier times had actually seen a Roman elephant. Then maybe people in later times had actually seen a real elephant. Then in the middle (1400s) you have people that are hundreds of years removed from anyone actually seeing one.

161 points by robalicious 5y ago

sischoel 5y ago

The page is from 2008 - unfortunately a lot of links to the original pictures do not work anymore.

alister 5y ago
> a lot of links to the original pictures do not work anymore When I research something that's important to me, I take screenshots or save the source code because I know that the referenced web page is likely to disappear within a few years. And it'd be nice to have a tool to automatically replace broken links with copies of your saved screenshots.
aasasd 5y ago
Perhaps the Web Archive can help in some cases.
Rebelgecko 5y ago
The linkrot is definitely sad to see, especially since (at least some of) these images are line art based upon originals that were a lot more textured

sockpuppet69 5y ago

How many of these artists had seen an elephant in real life. How many were drawing it from descriptions (e.g. fan like ears. ribbed long arm like nose, large feet could describe some early drawings)

gehwartzen 5y ago

Some of these are pretty wild. Makes me wonder if similar mischaracterized/illustrated of animal depictions were the source for the belief in dragons and other monsters

wincy 5y ago
I’ve heard that the idea of dragons sleeping in caves arose because cave bears lived in well, caves throughout Europe and it’s quite possible their skeletons would be mistaken for a dragons.
- omarhaneef 5y ago
  Dinosaur bones!
danparsonson 5y ago
This one is my personal favourite: https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/jpgs/1313.jpg https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan...
- peteradio 5y ago
  Who drew that one? The 3 year old prince or court jester?
Aunche 5y ago
There is a theory that elephant skulls inspired the myth of cyclops. http://www.strangehistory.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/dwarf-elephant.jpg http://www.strangehistory.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/0...
posterboy 5y ago
I convinced myself that Mushu on the Ishtar gat must be a horse because horses are said to have come from the north and mare, a Germanic-Celtic isogloss would somewhat match the description if rhotacism was involved. Then I went on about Amazons and Mars just because their origin may be uncertain. So no, here be dragons. The domestication of the horse keeps being challenged anyhow.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

I'm curious on the approach taken. Are the arrows based on known derivation/influences, or based on perceived similarity? It's a master's thesis. This here: https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/1475-1500.html https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan... Does not seem to be an elephant to me. Maybe a vomiting deer, or with a bad case of worms of serpentitis. (:

burkaman 5y ago
http://corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=257528 http://corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=257528 > Notes: The text refers to elephants; the miniature may be a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the standard Bestiary image of the elephant battling a dragon. Seems to be speculation that the artist saw an image like https://64.media.tumblr.com/07d4ec88f9250ff97d244dd316bd5e2e/tumblr_p51419Xocc1qm6vs3o1_500.jpg https://64.media.tumblr.com/07d4ec88f9250ff97d244dd316bd5e2e... or had it described to them, and didn't really understand it but knew it was called an elephant.
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Ah! Interesting. The color plate makes it quite clear that the "trunk" is actually another creature (a snake). I wonder if the motif of elephants battling dragons comes out as a kind of origin story of how the elephant got its trunk.

blululu 5y ago

Really a cool project. Thinking about how to describe and elephant: like a giant ox but with big ears a long protruding nose and tusks (not not for female Asian elephants). Can easily see how that game of telephone would go sideways.

capableweb 5y ago
Assumes the receiver of the description knows what an ox and tusks looks like.
- blululu 5y ago
  Yes. I assumed basic knowledge of the fauna of Northern Europe which includes oxen and walruses.

peteradio 5y ago

This one looks like a dragon: https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/jpgs/1479.jpg https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan...

nosianu 5y ago
So I immediately googled "dragophant" as the name that immediately came into my mind after seeing this, and there are quite a few interesting links and images Only a few examples: - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/87/31/778731af0a982a047e7a281ea6693ebd.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/87/31/778731af0a982a047e7a... - https://i.redd.it/3c9mii0uc1b51.jpg https://i.redd.it/3c9mii0uc1b51.jpg - https://www.deviantart.com/tag/dragophant https://www.deviantart.com/tag/dragophant

Little_Fish 5y ago

This is like the gif where everyone draws a picture on the back of the person in front and the end result is nothing like the original. Chinese whispers in art form!

dvsfish 5y ago
gartic phone!
airstrike 5y ago
I've never seen that, would love a link
koboll 5y ago
You can almost hear the not-quite-accurate descriptions that inspired these. Like the (many) images that are almost accurate, except the tusks grow upward: probably the description called them "horns" and mentioned where on the head they grew from, but not the direction, so the artists simply inferred the horn-growth direction they were familiar with from other large mammals.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
How long is the Emporer's nose? https://imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm https://imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm

distribot 5y ago

I wish there was context for the pictures. Where they came from, who drew them

sneeds 5y ago

this one is just a meme shitpost https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephants/jpgs/~1400.jpg https://www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anthropogenus/soloelephan...

menacingly 5y ago

Years ago I read a fascinating article (that I cannot locate again) about the wildly inaccurate illustrations of animals available in old books, often drawn by artists who had never seen the animal, but drew one from verbal descriptions by people who had. Something like a visual game of telephone.

29athrowaway 5y ago

The early drawings remind me of the "Yee" video art direction. https://youtu.be/q6EoRBvdVPQ https://youtu.be/q6EoRBvdVPQ

questiondev 5y ago

it would be fun to animate them and put them in a game about elephants

Hithredin 5y ago
https://sketch.metademolab.com/canvas https://sketch.metademolab.com/canvas Let's try

jbjbjbjb 5y ago

Makes me wonder how far off are our modern depictions of dinosaurs

xg15 5y ago

So, I know the meme that the European middle ages were some time of great civilizational downfall ("dark ages") is itself pretty much debunked by now. But there must have been some kind of change between antiquity and middle ages that caused so much knowledge and international exchange to simply vanish. I really wonder what exactly went on there.

dnautics 5y ago
I recommend David Hackett fishers "the great wave" for one take
- xg15 5y ago
  Sounds interesting. Thanks!
manoDev 5y ago
Doesn't the fall of the Roman Empire explain it? At its peak it was a huge unified empire, it should be expected a lot of commerce and knowledge would move freely within its borders. The (slow) fall of the Roman Empire would be like watching the end of civilisation, a dystopian fiction of the survivor-apocalyptic kind. The following centuries, all the way to our modern age, rulers tried to claim the title of Cæsar (Kaiser, Czar, ...), tried to claim a continuity of the empire (e.g. Nazi's III Reich) or even invoked past roman imagery (the roman eagle ["aquila"] is also present as a symbol of power in the USA [american eagle], in Russia [romanov coat of arms], in Germany [both the nazi's eagle and the bundestag's eagle]). It's as if the world is still trying to "get over" the end of the Roman Empire.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > even invoked past roman imagery (the roman eagle ["aquila"] is also present as a symbol of power in the USA Perhaps even more clearly than the adoption of the American bald eagle echoing the Roman eagle is the bronze fasces in the House rostrum, a direct replication of the Roman symbol of authority from which, also, Italian fascism derives its name.
- 5y ago

dublin 5y ago

One thing is certain - We can be pretty sure that MOST of our depictions and ideas of long ago extinct animals are scarcely any better than these. Even with the highest scientific rigor intended, they almost always do a better job of reflecting the preconceptions and biases of the artists than the reality of the animal itself...

aasasd 5y ago

The author also has a page with text descriptions for various animals in a similar vein: https://www.uliwestphal.de/retrozoology/index.html https://www.uliwestphal.de/retrozoology/index.html > The octopus as a rule does not live the year out. It has a natural tendency to run off into liquid; for, if beaten and squeezed, it keeps losing substance and at last disappears. Well, can't say that I won't do about the same if beaten and squeezed. Also, another animal with plenty of wild depictions is the tiger. East-Asian paintings especially walk between hilarious and cool, and it's often clear that the artists didn't particularly want to see a real tiger close. Itō Jakuchū: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/63/f8/1463f891232e00f9165d05809828138a.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/63/f8/1463f891232e00f9165d05809... Marked as ‘Meiji’, so fairly recent, but I like it: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9e/d1/6a/9ed16aad46e17fcbe521d68e0f67edec--tiger-art-tiger-tiger.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9e/d1/6a/9ed16aad46e17fcbe521d68e0...

irrational 5y ago

What was going on in the mid to late 1400s? They had some crazy psychedlic drawings of elephants. Even more so than most earlier times. Though, maybe that is the answer. Maybe people in earlier times had actually seen a Roman elephant. Then maybe people in later times had actually seen a real elephant. Then in the middle (1400s) you have people that are hundreds of years removed from anyone actually seeing one.