Hero, Beast, or Both? The Complex Lore of the Centaur | Monstrum



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Humans have domesticated animals as beasts of burden for thousands of years and the vital role horses play in the evolution of culture in particular has inspired countless equine folklore, but none are quite like the centaur.

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30 thoughts on “Hero, Beast, or Both? The Complex Lore of the Centaur | Monstrum”

  1. In the Philippines, we have a mythical creature called the "tikbalang" which is basically a reverse centaur (head of a horse, body of a man). They are known to kidnap women and do away with them and have been used to explain "unexplained" pregnancies especially by landed and "conservative" families who can't accept that their lovely daughters have hidden promiscuities.

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  2. You always do some nice points and show me some new things and facts.Ilove that about the channel. Centaurs for me were basically based on the greek mythology and Chiron. I had never heard about the Babylonion roots.Which was really awesome to find out. I noticed how you used the word chimera about Chiron. That was clever. Perfectly used. You've have presented me with a new thing: centauromachy. I had never heard about that. Which for me, a passionate of mythology is like a sin. I should have found out about that way sooner.

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  3. if centuar in opposite version, it will be censored the toot-toot beep-beep body part…
    that's why to tell mythical story about sex power , uhmmm just add animal into it.

    replacement needed

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  4. This made me think of Irish mythology's tribes of people that settled on the Emerald Isle; one of those was the Fir Bolg. It's said that the tribe of people who became the Fir Bolg traveled eastward, were the most popular theory on where they went is mythic Greece, and were captured by the peoples in that land forced into servitude (made into enslaved people), and were forced to use their power to manipulate earth and stone to transform the land into land suitable for farming, they later escaped many generations later after become the Fir Bolg, the "Men of the Bag" or "People of the Bag" depending on who you ask, as a reference to the leather bags they either carried during their time of servitude or the leather bags they had with them when they escaped their time of servitude; they brought back with them all the excess soil they had left over from reshaping the land in the place they forced into servitude and used it to cover the Irish countryside with soil that was far more fertile than the rocky ground that covered most of the land of Ireland.

    Although, if we're talking about how other cultures were demonized as monsters, chances are the people in Irish lore called the Fir Bolg were depicted as savage giants who possessed the power to impact the shape of the land by the Greeks as a way of rationalizing the horrible things they did to that particular group of people.

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  5. 12:22 I remember that scene clearly from Order of the Phoenix, serves Umbridge right! Also, Dr.Z, where would Centaur Man from the video game "Mega Man 6" fit into the centaur mythology, given that he's a robot and not a creature of flesh and blood?

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  6. The shock of seeing a human riding on a horse for the first time is EXACTLY what led to the stories of centaurs. When people first encounter something theu don't understand, they often end up misinterpreting their senses into very interesting stories. Legends, myths, folktales, etc, have some basis in reality, but are usually warped a bit by the shock of seeing the unfamiliar.

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