Show us your Fantasy Figures

Thankyou !!! Very interesting

SUSANNE wrote:

Thankyou !!! Very interesting

Thank you but I'm not quite finished; the rest of unicorn history will be added soon.

I only have 2 fantasy figures,both from ELC
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Very nice, congrats.

THIS CENTAUR IS MAGNIFICIENT!!!

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So, the unicorns travellers saw were goats with their horns artificially joined together, just like these magnificient specimens.

But I know you'll ask me this question: why are unicorns represented like large horses today?

The answer to this comes from the narwhal tusks Vikings sold to celtic kings around the year 1000. Those tusks were sold to them at high prices as @unicorns horns@. So, when the kings and their court people saw those loooooonng tusks, they said to themselves: but if unicorn horns are so long, unicorns must be extremely large animals to grow them! And the representations of unicorns went from goat-sized to horse-sized. For many centuries, unicorns were represented as half-horse, half-goat animals with a narwhal tusk on their heads. We can see many of those superb unicorns everywhere in Scotland, while the unicorn is Scotland's Official Animal.

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While the unicorns were as large as horses, their features, in popular art, went less and less goat-like to become more and more horse-like animals. Today, the goat characteristics (beard, curved tail and cloven hooves) are forgotten and unicorns today are represented as white horses with a torsad horn. Not only that, but in the 20th century, we saw the emergence of unicorns with rainbow manes and tails, and even in coats of pastel colors.

Very interesting as always, Valérie! I enjoy to know it all about unicorns although I Will keep the image of an elasmotherium as their representative. I know it is somewhat fantasious but I like it.

Roger wrote:

Very interesting as always, Valérie! I enjoy to know it all about unicorns although I Will keep the image of an elasmotherium as their representative. I know it is somewhat fantasious but I like it.

As their representative… where?

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Well, you now know the Elasmotherium corresponds more to the MONOCEROS!

Bowhead Whale wrote:

Roger wrote:

Very interesting as always, Valérie! I enjoy to know it all about unicorns although I Will keep the image of an elasmotherium as their representative. I know it is somewhat fantasious but I like it.

As their representative… where?

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Well, you now know the Elasmotherium corresponds more to the MONOCEROS!

Where? In my head! However, it is not hard to find information about Russian people relating the unicorn with the elasmotherium. It may be the Monoceros instead. You are the real expert on it.

Roger wrote:

Bowhead Whale wrote:

Roger wrote:

Very interesting as always, Valérie! I enjoy to know it all about unicorns although I Will keep the image of an elasmotherium as their representative. I know it is somewhat fantasious but I like it.

As their representative… where?

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Well, you now know the Elasmotherium corresponds more to the MONOCEROS!

Where? In my head! However, it is not hard to find information about Russian people relating the unicorn with the elasmotherium. It may be the Monoceros instead. You are the real expert on it.

It's OK for your head! I often imagine my cinema idols as centaurs; fantasies are without limits!

As for Russian people relating the Elasmotherium with unicorns, I'm not surprised: as I explained earlier, Pliny the Elder called the rhinoceros @Unicornis@, which lead to the lexical confusion we know.  As I said earlier, the rhinoceros-unicorn relation is lexical, since most people totally forget about the ELEPHANT FEET Pliny the Elder gave to his description of the animal being totally different from the GOAT FEET drawn on the unicorn a millenium ago. And you are a boy, and boys do prefer bulky and muscular rhinoceroses to delicate and poetic unicorns!

 I am not surprised, though I'm always disappointed to see the lack of OBSERVATION most people show today. How come almost nobody notices the difference between the description from Pliny the Elder and the representation of unicorns in medieval paintings? Don't they see the ENORMOUS DIFFERENCE? Don't they see there is obviously a SECOND ANIMAL BEHIND THE LEGEND!!??? Do they think Medieval people were so stupid they couldn't even remember what they actually saw? Do they think Medieval people were constantly on LSD!!??? The fact the there were a lot less ways back then to know about exotic animals does not mean those people were stupid. In the Medieval times, people were just as smart and clever as we are today and were just as aware of what they encountered as we are today. The only thing is, the only way to know about the outside world was to TRAVEL or LISTEN TO THE TRAVELLERS' STORIES. And if that travellers saw little fluffy white animals with one horn, in the Hymalayas, they sure didn't invent it. Just like they didn't invent having seen dragon bones (dinosaur bones), dog-headed humanoids (lemurs) and blemmyes (african people wearing masks covering both the face and the chest).

As a matter of fact, it is a way too common opinion among people today that people of ancient times were stupid, totally unaware of their surroundings and full of superstitions. Let me tell you that if that opinion was right, WE WOULD NOT BE HERE TODAY. Why? BECAUSE PEOPLE BACK THEN SIMPLY WOULDN'T HAVE SURVIVED TO REPRODUCE. Did you know a computer was discovered in an ancient greek shipwreck? Yup! A complex mechanical object visually used to calculate the movements of the planets known back then. Not only that, but what seems to be the very first electric battery (a piece of copper surrounded by hardened clay) was discovered in the ruins of Babylon (or was it Ur?). Not convinced? Consider it: in South America, precolumbian statues were sculpted in a way that magnetic pieces in the carved stone fitted with the emplacement of the temples and the navel of the statue. How is it for a proof of intelligence, knowledge and awareness of those ancient people? See what I mean? Mesopotamians made experiences on electricity, Greeks were able to build planet-movement-calculating machines and Precolumbian tribes were aware of magnetic phenomenons. So, who can still claim those people were stupid?

I surely don't claim them as stupid and I find their cultural legacy very interesting. Being a boy i surely find a elasmotherium an impressive animal but I also like delicate creatures. I even enjoy insects and other animals. I was not disputing the concepts of fantasy or legendary creatures. I find them very interesting but they are not defintely my collecting subject. You have surely contributed a lot to increase my little knowledge about it although I keep just confortably as an observer layperson.

Roger wrote:

I surely don't claim them as stupid and I find their cultural legacy very interesting. Being a boy i surely find a elasmotherium an impressive animal but I also like delicate creatures. I even enjoy insects and other animals. I was not disputing the concepts of fantasy or legendary creatures. I find them very interesting but they are not defintely my collecting subject. You have surely contributed a lot to increase my little knowledge about it although I keep just confortably as an observer layperson.

I wasn't talking about you, of course! I was talking about what I hear and see most of the time. Ancient people have a very bad reputation in many people's minds, convinced they were not smarter than a four-year-old. "They didn't have the capacity to make computers like today", I hear quite often. And this is claimed by people who can barely hold a hammer straight... They tend to forget that back then, most people had to build manually their own tools, ways of transport and clothes. Today, most people don't even know how to hold a needle, just going in the store for clothes... made by other people or even machines. At those times, without machines, they made buildings, clothes, artworks, without any machines. Today, we all use computers, but let's be honest here: who is truly able to actually build one? Not many. We simply use things other people, hard-working, smart people build for us. Most of the time, smarter and harder-working than most of us who use those products...