The dinosaurs’ loss of variety is much more characteristic of the loss of variety in species we are seeing today—by unnatural selection—at the hand of man.

Who Lies Sleeping?

The Case of S T Nikos

Ancient Myths

It was typical of Nikos not to answer directly. In his reply he gave me a brief tutorial on certain unusual aspects of ancient mythology, picking up on my phrase God�s intelligent creation.

Nikos informed me that the serpent of The Garden of Eden which led to Adam’s fall in the Jewish Scriptures, was not a snake.

"God punished the creature, for tempting Eve, with the command crawl on your belly. Previously it must have had limbs to support it, but thenceforth it became a snake. The Scriptures described the tempter of Eden as the most cunning animal God had made! Thus even before the Garden of Eden there had been men on earth. On the sixth day of creation God created human beings, making them like himself�note the plural, Miss Griffiths. The human ancestor, Adam, the first true man, was only made in the Biblical creation story after God had created men!

"What then were these men? Perhaps we can get clues from other myths.

"In Greek mythology, Gaia, the great mother goddess, an earth goddess of the primitive Greeks was represented by a serpent. They believed she was the mother of the Gods by Uranus, but she also gave birth to serpents and dragons by Tartarus, the god of the Underworld. When the gods of Olympus defeated her favourite offspring, the Titans, she sent a terrible snaky monster, one of her brood by Tartarus, the Typhon, against them. Typhon was a veritable nest of snakes, with multiple heads, vipers sprouting everywhere and darting tongues. It scared off the Olympians anyway, until Zeus subdued it with his thunderbolts and imprisoned it beneath Etna where it still rages, giving vent to eruptions and earthquakes. Typhon�s sister was Echidna who had incestuously mated with her brother to produce Cerberus, the hydra, the serpent, Ladon and the chimaera, amongst others. Echidna had a serpent’s body; Typhon (as I have said) had a hundred serpents’ heads; Cerberus was a three headed dog but had a snake’s tale and a row of serpents’ heads along his back; the Chimaera had a snake’s tale; Hydra was a water serpent.

"Observe, Miss Griffiths, the many snake-like characteristics of all these creatures. Do you imagine it must mean something?"

He continued: "In Mesopotamia, the role of Gaia was played by Tiamat. Her first brood were gods but they became rather delinquent and their father determined to get rid of them. Tiamat favoured the children until they, hearing of their father’s displeasure, pre-empted his actions by killing him. This upset mother Tiamat who had a second brood of dragons and serpents to punish her former favorites. The strongest and cleverest of the gods, Marduk, slew the dragons (and his mother for good measure) thus making the world safe for him to create his servant man.

"Note that in this legend�the equivalent of the Greek one�there is a clear implication that a race of dragons and serpents had to be destroyed before the earth was safe for mankind. Do you imagine there might be something in this, Miss Griffiths?"

Nikos could be quite patronising, but it was really the nearest he got to humour. He proceeded.

"In Norse mythology three monsters fathered by Loki, a sort of fallen angel, are shut away by Thor, but the legend has it that, in time, the three will escape and return to the earth. Cataclysmic earthquakes, volcanoes, poisonous gases, tidal waves and even an ice age are predicted, as a result of which mankind will become extinct until they are restored in a new Garden of Eden and the cycle continues.

"This myth suggests the prospect that these monsters will re-emerge amidst cataclysm and pollution, destroying mankind and reclaiming the earth. There is food for thought here, Miss Griffiths. Have we created the conditions for the primordial captives to escape Thor’s prison?

Nikos was effectively explaining his opening gambit�his quotation from Prometheus Unbound. He believed these legends suggested that men had been preceded on earth by other intelligent creatures, dragons or serpents, one the most cunning animals God had made and evidently sufficiently human in appearance to merit being called �men� in the Scriptures. They lived upon earth before mankind but fell from grace allowing men to become the supreme animal of the world.

In most ways it sounded crazy but in other ways convincing. I was not yet ready to write Nikos off. And in any case he did not speak only of snakes and gods. He generally related some anecdote or fact with which I was not familiar about some strange occurrence he had seen reported, or had read about in some book or other. He it was who told me the story about Albert Bender.

Michaela Magi Griffiths, Bloomsbury, September, 1993
© Copyright AskWhy! Publications 1997. Quote by all means but credit this source.