Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures: The Ultimate A–Z of Fantastic Beings from Myth and Magic - John Matthews - Страница 8

According to Darwinian theories of evolution, it is logical to consider animals as the forerunners of human life, to see all creatures as part of a huge family tree of living beings. Such scientific theories are seen as being at odds with the traditional stories and myths told about the creating creatures who take an active part in the formation of life, but the mythic imagination allows intelligence and wisdom to animals in ways that science discounts or ignores.

Darwin’s evolutionary pronouncements encouraged people to see themselves as descendants of a long tree of life, but when he made his discoveries public in the 19th century some people were astounded and distressed to find that they might have ape forebears, or that they might themselves be ‘monkey’s uncles’. In our own time, in 21st-century USA, the gap between received scientific history and religious tradition still jars the pedestrian foot on the pavement of scientific progress. In that country, and elsewhere, some fundamentalist Christians doggedly deny the Darwinian theory of evolution of our descent through a chain of creatures, and continue to assert that human beings are the result of nothing less than a direct and discrete creation by God. What they make of the discovery of early hominids and other fossils is unknown to us, but this must be highly inconvenient evidence to such believers at the very least. (See ‘Epilogue’, page 645.)

Natural historians tell us that our bodies bear the mark of our animal origins from the serpentine scales of our skins, the bovine horn of our nails and the animal hair that grows on our bodies, among a variety of other physiological and cellular similarities. But the link between people and animals is not merely an evolutionary connection. It is a fundamental mythic understanding that is shared by traditional societies: we are part of a sacred continuum of life that cannot be severed without supreme loss of meaning.

In traditional reckoning, the passing of time is frequently marked by the listing of a sequence of living beings, including a succession of animals. A traditional Irish reckoning of lifetimes, goes like this:

‘Three fields to a tree

Three trees to a hound

Three hounds to a horse

Three horses to a human being

Three human beings to a deer

Three deer to an eagle

Three eagles to a salmon

Three salmon to a yew

Three yews to an age of the world.’

This is not a measure of literal commensuration but a measurement of myth and memory. What is so salutary in this particular list is that human beings are located between horses and deer in mythic longevity.