New York City’s American Museum of Natural History has a special exhibit running now through 6 January 2008. “Mythic Creatures” is subtitled “Dragons, Unicorns, & Mermaids,” and broken up into four main sections: “Water—Creatures of the Deep,” “Land—Creatures of the Earth,” “Air—Creatures of the Sky,” and “Dragons—Creatures of Power.” Within each section, they have bold displays on various creatures from mythology—sometimes with models, others with pictures—and, in many cases, attempts to find the real-world explanations for them. Many, however, are pure fantasy, little attempt is made to explain them, but the descriptions were lush and told interesting stories (humans, after all, need to explain things to themselves).
One of the films running describes a possible source of theories about giants. A researcher in the film shows how, by simply rearranging the bones in a model of a mammoth, one might construct a skeleton that looks remarkably human, but three times larger.
Many of the creatures captured my attention and imagination. For instance, in the Water section was a description of the kappa, a creature from Japanese myth which sat by a pond, pretending to be human. It would ask unsuspecting people to pull its finger, and then grab them, pull them into the pond, and drown them. Kappas, however, have evolved into cute, beloved creatures, appearing on key chains, as plush toys, and everything for the loving little child. Indeed, many of the old, scary things in the exhibit have evolved into cute, cuddly, friendly beings.
The “Land” section included an impressive reconstruction of Gigantopithecus blacki, a huge ape-like creature that lived in southeast Asia between 1 million and 300 thousand years ago. He certainly looked like the inspiration for various forms of Bigfoot. Next to him is a wonderful Mongolian tapestry depicting the story “Son of an Almas.” The tapestry dates from 1992 (many of the artifacts in the exhibition are fairly new, although they don’t neglect the ancient, including coins dating to Imperial Rome). The story of the Son of an Almas tells of a man’s encounter with a female bigfoot creature, the almas, and of their son, who grew to be a great scholar.
One of my companions at the exhibit, who has a somewhat dark nature, was particularly taken with the story of the yeren, a Chinese legend. In the story, when the yeren encounters a human, it grabs him or her tightly by the arms and faints, overwhelmed with joy. Still holding on, the yeren awakes and then eats its victim.
The museum employs “explainers,” who are there to do precisely that. The fellow we ran into, Jonathan White, is an anthropology student who was very helpful and knowledgeable. He told us that he gets lots of questions about werewolves, but there are none here because the werewolf is more legendary than mythological, and the exhibit is trying to focus on the anthropology, rather than merely fictional creatures. White told me about the chupacabra, the Puerto Rican “goat sucker,” which seems to have come into existence in the 1980s. New myths can be just as powerful as the old, and the chupacabra has grown very popular very quickly.
While most of the films (4-6 minutes each) featured scientists of various stripes, the film in the Dragon section was different. The focus of this film was Christopher Paolini (author of Eragon) and several artists from Industrial Light & Magic (which brought Paolini’s creations to the big screen). The dragon exhibits themselves were just as inspiring. There was a “dragon skull” (actually that of a wooly rhinoceros) and “dragon’s blood” (Dracaena cinnabari resin from the Socotra Islands in the Arabian Sea).
All of the creatures were interestingly displayed, many with slices of their “native environment.” From the carved unicorn standing atop a rock outcrop in the Land exhibit to the elephant bird standing guard over its egg, the largest laid by any bird, and probably the source of the myth of the Roc, they really brought these mythic creatures to life.
The final feature is a “build your own dragon” interactive exhibit, which talks about the various forms of dragons from myth, and let’s you combine the pieces to make your own myth, which then appears on a monitor for all to see.
The museum’s web site has a full description (with pictures) of the exhibition at this link. After wandering through the web site, you’ll want to see the real thing. And don’t forget to visit the gift shop: there are some really neat things there, as well as a display of dinosaur bone discovery (the gift shop leads into the hall of dinosaurs with the Tyrannosaur’s skeleton).
[Edited 22 January 2008 to note that the exhibit reviewed here is moving to the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. For details, see this article.]