Cyclopes - one-eyed giants

This skull was found in a cave in Texas. After a thorough examination of the entire skeleton, the confused experts were forced to admit that the bones really belonged to the Cyclops. Not so long ago, researchers discovered similar remains giant size and in the Philippines. But aren't the Cyclopes the mythical heroes of Antiquity? It seems that the legends of many peoples of the world were completely real basis. Who were the one-eyed people, and where did they disappear to? - And again we almost got into trouble: they exist today. But this story begins in prehistoric times - from there we will begin to "dig".

In the epics of many peoples, researchers find the most amazing descriptions: flying machines that were controlled by Atlanteans, Egyptian or Indian deities. We still cannot determine exactly who and how built the pyramids at Giza and on Mars. The teachings of many ancient cultures tell us that we are not the first round of evolution, but already the sixth civilization on this planet, which began its journey virtually from scratch. It is very likely that the events described as a great flood are the result of a giant meteorite falling. But in last years scientists find many scientific evidence that the Earth actually survived a global nuclear war. For example, on the ruins of prehistoric cities in India, Turkey, Scotland and many other countries of the world, clear traces of the effects of radiation on buildings were found. The Mahabharata contains descriptions of the use of nuclear weapons as we know them today. The times the epic poem speaks of ancient india, hundreds of thousands of years away from us. According to the epic, this was the era of the asuras - the predecessors of present-day mankind.

We have preserved the memory of the lost organ - and this is not an abstract philosophy at all: the tritium eye appears at a certain stage of development in the embryo, and then turns into the epiphysis, or pineal gland. We are accustomed to associate the third eye with intellect, will, creativity and intuition, and not by chance - today even completely blind people can learn to read freely, look through objects and walls. And also at modern man the genetic memory of a 36-hour day has been preserved, the duration of which has changed due to the catastrophe (the Earth now rotates an order of magnitude faster and at a different angle). This is confirmed by the Mayan calendars, and experiments with people in a room without windows and clocks: a person sleeps to his heart's content, and then is actively awake for the next 20-22 hours).

Due to the powerful radiation and the ensuing nuclear winter, the surviving asuras had to move to underground shelters. In addition, it was impossible to avoid various genetic mutations. Perhaps the skull found in Texas belongs to one of the descendants of a warlike civilization who lost two eyes as a result of a genetic anomaly. Another part of the post-Asurians, on the contrary, probably retained the other two eyes and gradually replaced the Cyclopes. However, their memory remained alive for a long time.

The ancient Greeks called the Cyclopes, or rather, the Cyclopes of these humanoids (from κύκλος - “round” and όψις - “eye”). According to ancient mythology, three one-eyed giants - Arg ("shining"), Bront ("Thunder") and Sterop ("sparkling") - were the sons of Uranus and Gaia. When the angry father noticed the deformity of the newborns, he tied them up and threw them into Tartarus. When Zeus began to fight for power on Olympus, the loving mother Gaia begged him to release her children, which the young god did. Fortunately for him, because it was thanks to the Cyclopes that Zeus became the “Thunderer” - they forged lightning bolts for him, with the help of which the Olympian defeated the titans. They also forged a trident for Poseidon and a helmet for Hades, nursed little goddesses and transferred their blacksmithing skills to Hephaestus.

Later, the Cyclopes began to be rethought in a gloomy light - as ferocious cannibal giants with chicken brains. In Homer's Odyssey, a whole people of the Cyclopes is mentioned. And Odysseus himself lost several of his companions, having been captured by the one-gas Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, but managed to escape in a herd of sheep, depriving the monster of sight. Orientalists admit that Polyphemus was only a Greek interpretation of the Turkic myth about the one-eyed monster Tepegoz, some of whose events are similar to the Odyssey. But, whatever one may say, there is no smoke without fire, and for the Cyclops to become an epic character, he had to really exist!

About the harsh reality: today medicine knows the disease cyclocephaly (Cyclopia), also called cyclopia. But it is impossible to explain the find in the American cave with it, since newborn cyclocephals live only a few hours or days, being unsuitable for independent existence, and the Texas skull belonged to an adult cyclops. As for the modern disease, it can be called, fortunately, one of the rarest (about one case in a million). Chromosomal mutations, the use of certain drugs (with teratogenic substances) in early pregnancy, lack of cholesterol or diabetes in the mother can lead to malformation of the brain and eyes in the fetus. As a result, the skull, brain and eyeballs are formed incorrectly - they can be partially fused and are located in one eye socket along the midline of the face. The nose itself is not formed - instead, a muscular proboscis appears above the eye of the Cyclops, through which the baby can breathe. Of course, the brain of such newborns has a huge number of defects and is like a vegetable.

This baby was born in India in August 2006, and doctors noticed serious abnormalities in the development of the fetus too late to terminate the pregnancy. The girl's parents could not have a child for six long years, and turned to a private clinic for infertility. It is not known what drugs the mother of the newborn was taking, but soon after the "medication" she managed to get pregnant. The girl lived only a day. Strange, but in the same month a similar story happened in St. Petersburg.

And this is Cy (English "Cy", from the abbreviated "Cyclopes"), a one-eyed white kitten, which can now be seen in the Kunstkammer in the city of Phoenix. Sai is a grim confirmation of the existence of Christmas miracles - he was born on New Year's Eve, December 28, 2005, in Redmond, Oregon (USA). During the day that the fluffy lived, the hostess managed to take several pictures. And the second kitten from the same litter is absolutely healthy and has no abnormalities.

This tiny cyclops shark was caught by a Mexican fisherman. He did not allow to seize prey for the benefit of science, but scientists managed to conduct research right on the spot.

The picture is not a mutant and not a victim of radiation. This is an ordinary copepod, aka cyclops (Copepoda), which is part of zooplankton in fresh and salty waters planets. He has only one eye - that's what nature ordered.

And now the interest in such extraordinary creatures is constantly fueled by directors and animators who have already given the audience a lot of funny one-eyed characters: Mike and his girlfriend from Monsters, Inc., Agent Pleakley from Lilo and Stitch and Plankton from SpongeBob, the heroine of Futurama and the blue Velcro from Monsters vs. Aliens… and the list goes on.

P.S.- Favorite demotivator :)

Antiquity in general, and ancient Greek mythology in particular, we are accustomed to represent as the realm of perfect beauty. Next to the beautiful Aphrodite, the ideal hero Hercules and other no less perfect characters, we meet there with such bizarre creatures that one involuntarily wonders what kind of perverted fantasy could give birth to them? These include the Cyclopes, or Cyclopes - if we call them in Greek, and not in the Latinized form, as we are used to.

Huge, strong giants with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads ... initially there were three of them - Bont (which means "thunderous"), Sterop (sparkling) and Arg (shining). They were born at the time of the youth of the world from Uranus and Gaia (ie Heaven and Earth, thus representing the original natural forces). As we remember, the power of the Greek mythological characters passed from father to son through murder - and each time during the next "divine revolution" the fate of the Cyclopes made a sharp turn: Father Uranus imprisoned him in Tratarus, the titans who overthrew him freed him, Kronos chained him again, and finally Zeus - at the suggestion of Gaia - freed and attached to the case. The Cyclopes turned out to be wonderful craftsmen - even Hephaestus and Athena learned their crafts from them - and the Cyclopes themselves worked for the benefit of the Olympic gods: Hades was made a helmet, Poseidon - a trident, and Zeus was supplied with lightning, being Hephaestus's henchmen - until they were interrupted by Apollo, taking revenge for the murder of his son Asclepius (strictly speaking, it was Zeus who had to take revenge, and not those who made the murder weapon ... but Greek gods always had its own logic, we, mortals, are not quite clear).

However, the history of the Cyclopes does not end there. Homer in his Odyssey tells of a whole tribe of Cyclopes! Whether these Cyclopes are somehow connected with those three - one can only guess, but if these are their streams, then they are definitely degraded: they live in caves, they do not know any crafts (as opposed to the three sons of Uranus and Gaia), they also do not engage in agriculture - they eat something that the earth itself will give birth, however, they are engaged in cattle breeding (cattle breeding in general is often associated with primordial "savagery" - either idealized (Arcadian shepherds), or - as in this case - awesome). They also have no laws, no worship of the gods ... in general, only their appearance is related to those Cyclopes.

However, some representatives of this people may even be related to the gods. So, the Cyclops Polyphemus turns out to be the son of Poseidon himself. However, the beautiful nymph Galatea, with whom Polyphemus fell in love, was not impressed by his origin, she preferred the son of Pan Akida. Enraged, Polyphemus crushed the happy rival with a piece of rock - and Galatea turned the blood of her lover into the Akid River (now Atsi). According to another version, the lovers managed to escape by turning into fish, according to the third - the nymph generally answered Polyphemus in return and gave birth to Galat, Celt and Illyria from him, which gave rise to the corresponding peoples ... But the most famous history from the life of Polyphemus is, of course, a meeting with Odysseus. The Cyclops took him prisoner along with all his companions and began to devour one after another, but Odysseus managed to save himself and his surviving comrades by gouging out the eyes of the sleeping giant.

Where could such an image come from? one-eyed giants? On the one hand, everything is quite consistent with the logic of the myth: gigantic growth is always associated with the elemental forces of nature, before which ancient man at first he felt small and defenseless - like a dwarf in front of a giant. One-eyedness is typical for many characters of different mythologies as a "mark" of connection with the other world... initially, such a connection was attributed to one-eyed people: after all, such a person has one "dead" eye, which means he can see the other world... But it is quite possible that this myth also had more realistic basis.

Once upon a time on the islands mediterranean sea- in particular, in Cyprus, Sardinia, Crete - pygmy elephants lived. On the islands, this is a common thing: there is less food than on the mainland, so those who need less of it survive - i.e. individuals of a smaller size, this is how dwarf populations are formed on the islands ... however, these elephants were dwarf in relation to their ancestors, but a person who met them would not call them dwarfs! True, the ancient Greeks could no longer meet with them, but the skulls of these elephants were probably found - and they wondered: who did this very impressive skull belong to? Probably, some giant ... at the same time, they might not pay attention to the relatively small eye sockets, and the huge nasal opening in the middle of the skull could be mistaken for the only huge eye socket. Here's the one-eyed giant!

However, one-eyed creatures do exist, but you can’t call them giants: the size of these crustaceans does not exceed 5.5 mm, and they were called cyclops because of their single eye.

They are full of stories about immortal chthonic monsters that inhabited the world even before the Olympic gods began to rule over the world.

Mother Earth Gaia gave birth to them in great numbers. Titans, hundred-armed giants, hecatoncheirs, sea giants, cyclops.

Little is known about the latter, despite being mentioned in Homer's greatest work, The Odyssey. And all because numerous sources give different versions of the origin of these ferocious one-eyed giants.

The name Cyclops comes from ancient Greek and means "round-eyed", since the giants were distinguished by a feature - they had only one spherical eye in the middle of the face.

Cyclopes - children of Gaia

According to Hesiod, the immortal giants of the Cyclopes, or Cyclopes, gave birth to Gaia, their father was Uranus. There were three brothers - Arg ("shining"), Bront ("thunder") and Sterop ("sparkling").

Uranus, seeing the ugly appearance of his children, got angry and threw them into Tartarus, from where they were released by Kron to fight with their common father. But he also imprisoned them in underworld after the overthrow of Uranus, from where he released them already on the advice of Gaia.

The Cyclopes were not like the mindless, cruel and greedy for flesh giants described by Homer.

The children of Gaia possessed blacksmithing skills, had dexterity, strength and power sufficient to forge Zeus an invincible weapon for the battle with Kron and the titans - lightning, thunder and thunderbolts.

Also, according to legend, they created a trident, Hades - an invisibility helmet, and Artemis, the patroness of hunting, a silver bow and arrows.

Hephaestus and they taught crafts, the patrons of which these gods later became.

After the Olympian gods came to power over the earth, these titans remained to serve the new gods, worked in the forge of Hephaestus, helped the god of fire, forged the weapons of the gods.

According to the most popular legend, he killed them, being upset by the death of his son Asclepius.

After all, it was with the thunderbolt created by the Cyclopes that Zeus struck down the future god of medicine.

Cyclopes in the Odyssey

Despite the similarity in appearance, the Homeric Cyclopes are not similar to their divine counterparts, first of all, in character traits and way of life.

Homer describes whole island, inhabited by greedy, rude and ferocious one-eyed monsters. He also had a divine origin, Polyphemus was the son of Poseidon and the nymph Phoosa.

A whole people lived on the island, but the round-eyed giants did not communicate with each other, they lived in deep, dark, scary caves and engaged in sheep breeding.

Their whole life on the island revolves around getting their own food. They are not interested in world events, so Polyphemus is not aware of a major ten-year war with, they do not comply with the laws of hospitality, seeing in visitors only a means of subsistence.

They have no aspirations for knowledge and development, no culture, they are not interested in sciences and arts.

Thus, Homer contrasts the educated, flexible mind Odysseus with the stupid, striving only for enrichment, inert Polyphemus, showing that such creatures have no future, they will always be deceived by those who strive for something more - for fame, for education, for love. .

And the fact that Polyphemus is of divine origin and incredibly superior in bodily power to the hero only enhances this contrast.

Homer shows that heroes can defy the divine, at the expense of powerful mental strength.

Polyphemus, in a fit of blind rage, kills the young man, and Galatea turns him into a river. beautiful legend, but even here the Cyclops acts as an antagonist, as an evil creature, contrary to the bright feeling of love.

Children of Poseidon

There is a version that the Cyclopes were born together with Gaia by her son Poseidon, wanting to remove Zeus from the throne, who was inferior to the god of the seas in the right to inherit the throne.

He did not want to know that the other gods supported the wiser Zeus, did not want to see Poseidon on the throne because of his violent temper and impatience.

While Poseidon was waiting for the birth of his children, Zeus arranged the world, including creating people together. And when the Cyclopes appeared, powerful, ferocious, unprincipled and not striving for good, who only know how to destroy and kill, Poseidon compared them with the world created by Zeus.

I saw beautiful people herding horses and cows, loving friend friend building beautiful dwellings. And then the god of the seas realized that he could not be compared in creativity with his brother.

He sent the Cyclopes to small island, where he left them to live, and he himself went into the depths of the seas.

Cyclopes symbolize the extreme degree of unreasonableness of the forces of nature, capable of destroying everything for no reason. But there is no creativity in them, and therefore there is no future.

This skull was found in a cave in Texas. After a thorough examination of the entire skeleton, the confused experts were forced to admit that the bones really belonged to the Cyclops. Not so long ago, researchers discovered similar giant-sized remains in the Philippines. But aren't the Cyclopes the mythical heroes of Antiquity? It seems that the legends of many peoples of the world had a very real basis. Who were the one-eyed people, and where did they disappear to? - And again we almost got into a mess: they exist today. But this story begins in prehistoric times - from there we will begin to "dig".

In the epics of many peoples, researchers find the most amazing descriptions: flying machines that were controlled by the Atlanteans, Egyptian or Indian deities. We still cannot determine exactly who and how built the pyramids at Giza and on Mars. The teachings of many ancient cultures tell us that we are not the first round of evolution, but already the sixth civilization on this planet, which began its journey virtually from scratch. It is very likely that the events described as a great flood are the result of a giant meteorite falling. But in recent years, scientists have found plenty of scientific evidence that the Earth actually survived a global nuclear war. For example, on the ruins of prehistoric cities in India, Turkey, Scotland and many other countries of the world, clear traces of the effects of radiation on buildings were found. The Mahabharata contains descriptions of the use of nuclear weapons as we know them today. The times of which the epic poem of ancient India speaks are hundreds of thousands of years away from us. According to the epic, this was the era of the asuras - the predecessors of present-day humanity.

Asuras were strong, warlike, full of pride and lust for power. They envied the gods, with difficulty restraining their rage, and were looking only for an excuse to join the battle. Scientists believe that the asuras possessed knowledge and technologies that are inaccessible to us to this day. Ancient people had a third eye approximately at the level of the bridge of the nose. Looking closely at the statues of the Buddha, one can discern his image, and every self-respecting Hindu marks the place between the eyebrows with a speck of paint - after all, this is the "ajana chakra", a key energy center. We have preserved the memory of the lost organ - and this is not an abstract philosophy at all: the third eye appears at a certain stage of development in the embryo, and then turns into the epiphysis, or pineal gland. We are accustomed to associate the third eye with intellect, will, creativity and intuition, and not by chance - today even completely blind people can learn to read freely, look through objects and walls. And modern man has preserved the genetic memory of a 36-hour day, the duration of which has changed due to the catastrophe (the Earth now rotates an order of magnitude faster and at a different angle). This is confirmed by the Mayan calendars, and experiments with people in a room without windows and clocks: a person sleeps to his heart's content, and then is actively awake for the next 20-22 hours).

And this is Cy (English "Cy", short for "Cyclopes"), a one-eyed white kitten, which can now be seen in the Phoenix City Kunstkamera. Sai is a grim confirmation of the existence of Christmas miracles - he was born on New Year's Eve, December 28, 2005, in Redmond, Oregon (USA). During the day that the fluffy lived, the hostess managed to take several pictures. And the second kitten from the same litter is absolutely healthy and has no abnormalities.

This tiny cyclops shark was caught by a Mexican fisherman. He did not allow to seize prey for the benefit of science, but scientists managed to conduct research right on the spot.

And this is not a mutant and not a victim of radiation. This is an ordinary copepod, also known as the cyclops (Copepoda), which is part of the zooplankton in the fresh and salt waters of the planet. He has only one eye - that's what nature ordered.

We do not yet know for sure all the answers that interest us, but scientists will not leave the secrets of the past to fall into dust - white spots in the history of the Cyclopes will disappear sooner or later. And now the interest in such extraordinary creatures is constantly fueled by directors and animators who have already given the audience a lot of funny one-eyed characters: Mike and his girlfriend from Monsters, Inc., Agent Pleakley from Lilo and Stitch and Plankton from SpongeBob, the heroine of Futurama and the blue Velcro from Monsters vs. Aliens… and the list goes on.

Cyclops- a typical representative of anomalous creatures designed to instill fear and horror in the minds of others. Traditionally, these are endowed with huge growth, a disproportionate body and remarkable strength. Their main distinguishing feature is the presence of a single large eye located in the center of the frontal part. Like many ugly creations, the Cyclopes are considered individuals not endowed with special mental inclinations.

The origins of the appearance of one-eyed giants can be traced in the mythology of Greece. In the most ancient version, they were called cyclops, which from the Greek language literally means “round-eyed”. Thanks to Latin writing, the usual name, Cyclops, has come down to modern times.

Exactly ancient Greek mythology talking about high birth three giants: Arga, Bront and Steropa. Ugly children appeared in the divine couple of Gaia and Uranus. For monstrous physical defects, the father brutally dealt with the children, sending them to Tartarus. Only thanks to the prayers of a caring mother, they were released by Zeus from a terrible prison.

Despite the bodily ugliness, the Cyclopes possessed skillful skills in blacksmithing. It is to them that young Zeus owes his victory over the Titans, which he won with the help of lightning forged by one-eyed monsters. In addition, the well-known trident of Poseidon and the helmet of Hades are the work of the same Cyclopes. Later, the three brothers transferred all their skills to Hephaestus. Their outcome was tragic. They died from the punishing hand of Apollo, who took revenge on Zeus for the death of his son, Asclepius.

In the later interpretation of Homer's Odyssey, the Cyclopes are presented in a slightly different role. Common features undoubtedly preserved in its original form. But we are talking about a whole settlement of giants that lived on the island of Sicily.

According to legend, one of the Cyclopes was a cannibal, the most ferocious, had no family and lived apart from other brothers. Poseidon himself was called his father. He was engaged in tending his flocks. Once on the island of the Cyclopes, Odysseus and his team experienced the full power and wildness of the one-eyed monster on themselves. They were locked in the cave of the evil Polyphemus, who could not allow foreigners to interfere in his life. With terrifying cruelty, the Cyclops destroyed half of the uninvited guests, tearing them to pieces and eating them in front of their comrades. Odysseus managed to outwit the monster and deprive him of his only eye. Thanks to this, the surviving travelers managed to escape and leave the shelter, hiding under the rams emerging from the cave. Odysseus and his friends miraculously escaped the island unscathed.

These, of course, are legends and myths, but the folk epic often had a basis on real events. In modern medicine, there is such a thing as cyclocephaly or cyclopia. These are certain genetic mutations in the fetus caused by various factors, such as the mother taking certain medications during pregnancy or serious illnesses. The result is the fusion of the eyeballs into one with the location along the central axis of the child's face. Unlike mythical characters, children born with such a pathology do not live very long: from several hours to several days. And, of course, the power of the legendary characters do not possess. However, these are not fairy tales from the depths of centuries, but real cases.