Cover art by Keith Parkinson for the role-playing game Rifts World Book 2: Atlantis

(15) ATLANTIS

“The time when the oceans drank Atlantis”

Atlantis – myth, allegory, Egyptian priestly gossip…?

Similarly to my special mention for legendary creatures (and A Dictionary of Fabulous Beasts, this special mention originates from the same source as my special mention in mythology books for The Dictionary of Imaginary Places – Atlantis earns special mention not just for its own mythos but as representative of all imaginary places or mythic lost or sunken continents, lands, and kingdoms, including phantom islands and even hollow earth or subterranean realms.

All of which could readily round out their own top ten – Lemuria or Mu, Hyperborea or Thule, Ys or Lyonesse, Agartha, Avalon or Tir Nan Og, Eldorado, Hy-Brasil, Shambhala or Shangri-La.

And they’re just the big names, although the biggest name of all in lost lands is course Atlantis itself, thanks to Plato. Ironically, Plato used Atlantis as a minor allegory (and counterpoint to Athens), set 9000 years or so before his time, one which concludes with “Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean”, but it subsequently assumed a mythic significance after him.

“Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction”. To its mythic archetype of lost continent or land, one might also add its fantasy role as sunken, submerged or submarine kingdom – with the Atlanteans adapting to their new marine habitat.

Foremost in Atlantean mythology, at least as my personal favorites, are the so-called “location hypotheses” – the historical (or pseudohistorical) speculations as to the location of Atlantis, if only as possible sources of inspiration for Plato’s allegory.

Although not as wild as they used to be – with modern understanding of continental drift and plate tectonics putting paid to any actual lost continent (foremost among them Ignatius Donelly’s nineteenth century revival of the Atlantis myth) – there are still some wild theories proposed for America or even Antarctica as Atlantis.

Personally, I’d like to see more speculation for the United States as Atlantis – not as an allegory by Plato but a premonition (or both, the United States kinda fits the Atlantis allegory as well). Not to mention the Atlantean cold war against Lemuria-Mu.

Seriously, however, I lean more towards Plato creating a mostly fictional account, from more plausible sources of inspiration from the Mediterranean – my favorite being the volcanic eruption on Thera and the fall of Minoan civilization on Crete, although close runner-up is more contemporary (and personal) events to Plato in Sicily.

And then there are the more literary influences or interpretations – from utopias (or dystopias), including the definitive Utopia of Thomas More, to the lost land of Atlantis as metaphor for something no longer obtainable

Or again, personally I’d like to see more speculation for Atlantis as premonition by Plato, not to the future but as deep atavistic memory to the distant prehistoric past, when we were all happy little trilobites in Pangaea, or Gondawana, or whatever prehistoric supercontinent it was back then.

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Several legendary creatures from a picture book for children between 1790 and 1822, by Friedrich Justin Bertuch – public domain image (used in Wikipedia “Legendary Creature”)

(13) LEGENDARY CREATURES

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

Except, you know, more like minotaurs and sphinxes and chimeras, oh my!

This special mention originates from the same source as my special mention in mythology books for A Dictionary of Fabulous Beasts – my love for one of the most fascinating aspects of mythology, its plethora of fabulous beasts or monsters, as reflected in the Wikipedia article for Legendary Creature (a title I obviously also used for this special mention) or the TV Tropes Index for Fictional Creatures and Our Monsters are Different (as well as its feature for Stock Monster Symbolism).

Obviously, I’ve already included a number of legendary creatures in previous special mention entries – notably Fairies, Dragons, Giants, Ghosts, Vampires and Lycanthropes, but arguably also Magic (extending to creatures created or summoned by magic) and Witchcraft (as for Magic but also extending to things like familiars, imps or even the witches themselves). They are arguably also encompassed by two special mentions subsequent to this one. This special mention is effectively for all the other legendary creatures (albeit some substantial overlap), including the really bizarre or weird ones (as encapsulated in the TV Tropes feature Our Monsters are Weird).

“A legendary creature is a type of extraordinary or supernatural being that is described in folklore (including myths and legends) and may be featured in historical accounts before modernity”.

Indeed, legendary creatures are so prolific that they exceed the capacity of any single top ten (although I’ll give it a try). The origins and classification or types of legendary creatures themselves could be the subject of their own top ten lists – as for fairies, even by broader classifications, let alone all the variations of individual types.

For origins, there’s legendary creatures as monstrous antagonists for heroes (in turn reflecting wild or chaotic forces in nature or other sources) and legendary creatures claimed in accounts of natural history as real animals – or alternatively (and my personal favorite), real animals thought to be mythical before they were confirmed or discovered as real such as the platypus. There’s legendary creatures as hybrid beasts, legendary creatures “based on real encounters or garbled accounts of travellers’ tales”, and legendary creatures as art or allegory.

As for classifications or types of legendary creatures, an interesting framework is that of the Wikipedia’s various lists of legendary creatures, particularly its list of legendary creatures by type – the various animal types (such as reptiles, serpents and worms overlapping with dragons) or plant types, artificial creatures, associations with body parts or abstract concepts, natural elements or time, natural or supernatural habitats, astronomical objects or even the Earth, humanoids, hybrids, shapeshifters, and undead.

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David and Goliath, 1888 lithograph by Osmar Schindler – public domain image

(9) GIANTS

“There were giants on the earth in those days” – Genesis 6:4

Giants, titans or cyclopes, oni or Fomorians. The archetypal fire and frost giants of Norse mythology – to which Dungeons and Dragons added hill, stone, cloud and storm giants. The Biblical Nephilim as well as Goliath. Overlapping with ogres and trolls.

If you’re picking up a parallel with my special mention for dragons, that’s because giants and ‘giant-kin’ (a term borrowed from Dungeons and Dragons) are similarly ubiquitous or near universal in myth and folklore, typically as monstrous antagonists to humanity or even the gods themselves. Indeed, giants loom larger (heh) as the latter than dragons – hence the Gigantomachy or Gigantomachia or war between the giants and the gods in classical mythology, escalating to giants as apocalyptic beings in Norse mythology.

“Legendary creatures that resemble human beings but super-sized and often incredibly strong…these creatures may range in size from around 7 feet (the average size of the tallest real life humans), to truly colossal proportions.”

Similarly to dragons, giants in myth or folklore could well be the subject of their own top ten list, including their various elements, tropes and types – not to mention the elements, tropes and types of those important divine and human interactions with them, divine gigantomachy and human giant-killers.

However, giants differ somewhat from dragons, with the latter’s broad dichotomy between ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ dragons, with the former tending towards malevolence or demonic entities, and the latter towards benevolence or divine entities. For giants, the dichotomy between benevolent and malevolent giants occurs within ‘western’ giants (and indeed I only have superficial knowledge of giants in non-western or eastern myth or folklore), albeit leaning heavily towards the latter.

And again as with dragons, even their theories for their origin and ubiquitous presence in myth and folklore are fascinating and diverse.

The usual psychological theory is that “the profusion of Giants in mythology is usually attributed to memories of childhood (when adults tower over you), to the rivalry between young men and old men, and to medical conditions like gigantism that cause unusually tall stature”.

The more mundane archaeological or paleontological theory is tracing their origins to explaining (or mistaking) the bones of extinct megafauna or dinosaurs as those of giant humanoids. Along those lines, there’s the Gigantopithecus, “an extinct cousin of the orangutan” and “the largest primate to ever exist” standing at three meters tall on its hind legs, which did actually coexist with early humans.

Perhaps related to the above, “it wasn’t uncommon for cultures to describe the imposing ruins of older civilizations as having been built by bygone giants” – as with monumental or megalithic structures, as with the legends of the Giant’s Dance for Stonehenge. And of course monumental structures were often sculpted or drawn as giant figures. Sometimes the same legendary logic was used for natural structures as shaped by or originating from giants.

Yet again like dragons, a less obvious source for giants is that of the symbolism of natural or elemental forces – “gigantic peoples often feature as primeval creatures associated with chaos and the wild”.

Of course, truly gigantic humanoids in real life “would fall victim to the Square-Cube Law”.

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