Thursday Things: Griffins & Faces Edition
27 June 2024. Vol 6 No 26. By Dan McGirt. #255
It’s Thursday Things! This week we visit the Pantheon, face off with robots, and gripe about griffins.
If you enjoy this edition, please click the heart icon in the header or at the end of the post to let me know.
“Built by Marcus Agrippa, the son of Lucius, third consul.” Marcus was not shy about getting credit for his work. Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash
The Pantheon is awesome
My favorite structure in Rome is not the Colosseum, the Forum, the Trevi Fountain, St. Peter’s, or the Spanish Steps — it’s the Pantheon.
This post on the Engineer Brain substack shares a few fascinating Pantheon facts:
First, let’s just look at what we do know: the building as it stands was constructed sometime between 110 and 140 AD (CE for those who do not want to acknowledge what makes this era so common). The walls are 20 feet thick, the dome on the inside is a perfect hemisphere, and the distance from the floor to the top of the dome is the same as the diameter of the dome at its widest.
Click on over there for more about the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.
Griffin origins
What is a griffin, you ask?
A griffin (sometimes spelled gryphon) is a mashup of a lion and an eagle. Basically a lion with the wings of an eagle, and sometimes an eagle’s head and/or foreclaws.
Accounts vary.
Whatever the look, they’re mythological creatures. Meaning — so far as we know — griffins never existed.
And yet this article tells us:
We’re (probably) wrong about origin of griffins
With the majestic wings of a bird of prey and the fierce body of a lion, the mythological griffin was a staple in ancient Middle Eastern and European cultures. For over 30 years, the general consensus that the legend of this creature associated with strength and protection originated with dinosaur fossils. However, a study published June 20 in the journal Interdisciplinary Science Reviews is challenging this idea.
Let me say up front that I was never wrong about the origin of griffins because I have never before heard of this supposed general consensus. And if anyone had asked me I’d have told them it sounds stupid.
Before we get to the griffin consensus and its debunking, I learned a new word in this article, and that’s always fun!
Fossils and other natural phenomena that inspire folklore are called “geomyths.” Some speculative examples include dragons and dinosaurs and fossil elephants and cyclopes.
If I’d had to guess what a geomyth was I’d have thought it referred to imaginary places that people believed to be real: El Dorado, Atlantis, the kingdom of Prester John, Hy-Brasil, that sort of thing. But no! I’d have guessed wrong.
Geomythology: Geological origins of myths and legends
Myths and geology are related in several ways. Some myths are the result of man's attempts to explain noteworthy features of his environment, such as striking landforms or unusual smaller features, whereas others try to account for conspicuous natural processes, such as earthquakes, volcanic phenomena, and floods. Local myths have sometimes proved helpful in solving geological problems, and even the geological nomenclature is indebted to mythology. Examples of each kind of relationship are given.
What do we say to time-consuming rabbit holes that combine mythology, geology, anthropology, and ancient religion?
Not today!1
Let’s get back to the griffins.
Apparently the reigning theory was that tales of griffins were inspired by dinosaur bones:
A series of papers and books written by folklorist Adrienne Mayor first published about 30 years ago called for collaboration between classicists and cryptozoologists to decipher origins of mythological creatures. Mayor’s landmark 2000 book The First Fossil Hunters suggested that Protoceratops was behind the griffin’s legend. The theory goes that this early horned dinosaur was discovered by ancient nomads who were prospecting for gold throughout Central Asia. The stories of Protoceratops bones eventually traveled southwest via various trade routes, where they inspired or influenced art and stories featuring the griffin.
However, a new study questions this explanation, pointing out that Protoceratops fossils aren’t typically found near Central Asian gold deposits and that even if they were, ancient nomads probably wouldn’t have found them:
“There is an assumption that dinosaur skeletons are discovered half-exposed, lying around almost like the remains of recently-deceased animals,” said Witton. “But generally speaking, just a fraction of an eroding dinosaur skeleton will be visible to the naked eye, unnoticed to all except for sharp-eyed fossil hunters. That’s almost certainly how ancient peoples wandering around Mongolia encountered Protoceratops.”
… “It seems more probable that Protoceratops remains, by and large, went unnoticed—if the gold prospectors were even there to see them,” said Witton.
So there.
But wait - there’s more!
The team also found that the historical geographic spread of griffin art doesn’t align with the scenario of griffin lore starting with some fossils in Central Asia and spreading west. They also couldn’t find any unambiguous reference to Protoceratops fossils in ancient literature. Protoceratops’ only similarity to the griffin is that it was a four-limbed animal with a beak.
Four-limbed animal with a beak? That could be anything! Like a hippogriff.
Is the Proceratops-griffin connection so much hooey and wishful thinking?
Decide for yourself.
You can read the full paper here: Did the horned dinosaur Protoceratops inspire the griffin? (“We regard the Protoceratops–griffin link as an ‘ex post facto geomyth’: an effort to find significance in superficial, inconsequential readings of geological phenomena and mythology.”)
To me it seems far more likely that the griffin resulted from some ancient artist or storyteller mixing features of existing creatures to make up a fanciful monster. Not everything has to be a geomyth.
Or could it be that griffins entered our world through a magical portal from the World of Greyhawk? Equally likely.
Do I look like a dinosaur to you? Image: Designer Powered by DALL-E 3
Funny faces
Who thought this was a good idea?
Were scientists sitting around watching Terminator and their takeaway was: “We should creating artificial skin that can help robots pass as human!”
Apparently.
Lab-grown, self-healing human skin designed to cover robot faces
As detailed in a study published on June 25 in Cell Reports Physical Science, engineers at the University of Tokyo have developed a method to adhere bioengineered skin grown from human cells onto any surface shape. Existing approaches often rely on miniature anchors and hooks to attach similar tissues to surfaces, which limit their utility and make them easily susceptible to damage during movement.
Yay scientists?
To demonstrate their novel technique, the team attached their living skin layers to a 3D facial model of a human, as well as a small, 2D “face” with robotic actuators. Not only did the skin effectively adhere to the rounded features of a human head, but it withstood manipulation using the actuators as they formed a rudimentary, smiling face.
Whatever you do, don’t click this link to the article to see a picture of this ‘face’.2
Trust me. It’s nightmare fuel. I looked so you don’t have to.
Of course, the research team is not only thinking of helping robots look more like humans:
By Takeuichi’s own admission, the slick skin only “managed to replicate human appearance to some extent,” but that’s not the main point of their team’s design. Likening their technique to creating an organ-on-a-chip, a future face-on-a-chip may offer new avenues for researching skin aging, plastic and reconstructive surgery, as well as cosmetics.
Fair enough. Even so … Skynet thanks you.
Get all the details here: Perforation-type anchors inspired by skin ligament for robotic face covered with living skin
Thank you for reading!
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But if you want to go down the rabbit hole, here’s a start: https://brewminate.com/geomythology-dinosaurs-griffins-volcanoes-and-gods-ancient-stories-seeking-scientific-truth/
Geomythology (Kindle | Hardcover | Paperback)
Gold-guarding griffins, Cyclopes, killer lakes, man-eating birds, and "fire devils" from the sky―such wonders have long been dismissed as fictional. Now, thanks to the richly interdisciplinary field of geomythology, researchers are taking a second look. It turns out that these and similar tales, which originated in pre-literate societies, contain surprisingly accurate, pre-scientific intuitions about startling or catastrophic earth-based phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the unearthing of bizarre animal bones. Geomythology: How Common Stories Reflect Earth Events provides an accessible, engaging overview of this hybrid discipline.
Did you look? If you did, here’s my idea — the Japanese lab should make a whole series of these little faces giving the expressions of the emojis (another product of Japan), put them on a live feed, and release images as gifs. You’re welcome.