The one-eyed giant you know and love has dominated popular imagination for thousands of years. The cyclops combines two monstrous elements into one, a humanoid of massive stature and a physical malformation that only rarely occurs in real life. The most famous cyclops, the cannibalistic shepherd of the ancient Greek Homeric myth, isn't the only one. He's one of many that turn up not just in Greek mythology, but in other cultures throughout the world. So why is this? Why a one-eyed monster in the first place? Does paleontology play a part in this? To help us out, we asked our friends from Eons for some insight into the possible origins of this giant, who, did I mention, only has one eye?

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I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is "Monstrum."

(Describer) On a card hanging over an old stage, title: Monstrum.

The cyclops is not a singular creature that always looks the same or comes from the same place. The word means "round-eye" and can apply to all kinds of monsters. Chances are the one you've encountered is some variation from Homer's famous text "The Odyssey."

(Describer) In artwork, men ride in a ship.

The hero Odysseus and his men sail to the land of the cyclops, an island home to a people described as arrogant, lawless folk. While exploring the island, they find a remote cave and see a monstrous man named Polyphemus living apart from the others, tending to his large flock of sheep. In ancient Greece, only primeval or faraway peoples were attributed to living in caves. So those hearing this tale would know straightaway that Odysseus was about to encounter something very different from the sophisticated Greeks. While Polyphemus is away, they secretly enter the monster's cave and help themselves to the giant's food while waiting for him to return. When the immense shepherd finally arrives, he seals the door with a huge stone before spotting the humans. When questioning how they arrived at his land, Odysseus lies and tells the creature their ship crashed. In a sudden wild fit of rage, Polyphemus snatches two of the men, violently throwing their bodies to the ground before cutting them limb from limb. While the others watch on in horror, he eats them raw. Odysseus and his friends are understandably horrified and begin plotting their escape while the giant sleeps. More men are eaten the next day, but Odysseus manages to sharpen a large stake from the giant's own massive club and begins to execute his master plan of getting Polyphemus drunk. With the wine in full effect, the buzzed giant asks his drinking buddy's name. Odysseus responds with "Noman." While the giant is asleep, Odysseus and four men hold the stake in a fire until it glows red hot. They thrust this into his eye, blinding the giant. When the other cyclops on the island hear his cries of agony and rush to come see what's wrong, the injured Polyphemus can only say he was hurt by "no man." The next morning, the now blind giant opens his cave to graze his sheep, and Odysseus and his men escape, clinging beneath the bellies of the woolly animals. As the crew sails away, with some of the giant sheep in tow, I might add, Polyphemus hurls massive rocks at the boat when Odysseus taunts him. Legend has it you can even see these rocks today. The unique formation of the Faraglioni of Aci Trezza are called the Islands of the Cyclops. OK, I have to say it. I just have to say it. Odysseus is actually a huge [BLEEP]. I mean, the dude goes to this guy's home, eats his cheese, steals his pets, and blinds him. He's a terrible guest to have. I wouldn't want to have him at my party. Despite the popularity of this story, Homer never actually says Polyphemus or any of the other cyclops have only one eye. It's only assumed from other events of the story, which might be why a lot of art from ancient Greece takes some artistic liberties and shows the enormous figure with one, two, and even three eyes. But there is another Greek myth with creatures also named cyclops who are specifically described as only having one eye. So that author clearly stole from Homer, right? Well, not exactly. Scholars still argue today about which text came first. In his Theogony, written around the same time as Homer, famous Greek poet Hesiod tells of a trio of smiths. These three brothers were said to be born from the union of the gods Gaia and Uranus, each with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads. They are called cyclops after their appearance. Each brother is given their own name, and in Greek, they translate to Thunder, Lightning, and Flash. These one-eyed children of gods gifted Zeus with his thunderbolt, much more sophisticated and powerful than the simple violent shepherds of Homer's story. Hesiod details that strength and might and craft were in their works. The cyclops here are portrayed as blacksmiths. And according to one ancient Greek historian, they are even credited with the invention of bronze weapons. Let's think about this association for a second. The ability to forge iron, the job of a blacksmith, requires immense physical strength. It's not really hard to see how such figures would be considered giants in mythology. Smiths were important in antiquity, but they were often seen as outsiders given that they did not labor in the fields or hunt like most other people of the time. And if you've watched an episode of this show before, you'll know by now marginality often equals monstrosity. So whichever story came first, we have two Greek traditions of the cyclops. One is a society of sheep-herding giants and the other as one-eyed children of gods. But why giants with only one eye in the first place? Well, there's a pretty popular theory involving skull fossils. Now, I'm definitely not a paleontology expert, but luckily for me I do know a few cool ones. Blake, could dinosaur bones help explain the cyclops myths? Now, according to an Austrian paleontologist

(Describer) Blake DiPastino:

named Othenio Abel, it was elephant fossils, not dinosaur bones, that inspired the original cyclops myths. Elephants and their relatives belonged to a group known as the proboscideans. And while these amazing animals don't live in Southern Europe today, they show up a lot in the fossil record of the Mediterranean. One of the first species to arrive in Europe was gomphotherium, a bizarre mammal with tusks on both its upper and lower jaws. Scientists think gomphotherium made it to Europe about 18 and a half million years ago, and its remains have been found in Spain and Turkey. And it wasn't the last of its kind to roam the Mediterranean coasts. Mammoths, mastodons, extinct elephants, and a behemoth named deinotherium lived there too. Deinotherium, whose name means "terrible beast," had downward-curving tusks anchored to its chin. And did I mention that it was big, like, really, super duper big? A full-grown deinotherium stood 4 meters tall at their shoulder and may have tipped the scales at 12 metric tons, making it twice as heavy as a modern African elephant. But these ancient proboscideans weren't always giants.

(Describer) Kallie Moore:

On Cyprus, Crete, and many other Mediterranean islands, paleontologists have found remains of dwarf elephants. And Sardinia, an island near Eastern Italy, once even had miniature mammoths. And of these smaller proboscideans, among the very smallest was palaeoloxodon falconeri, standing no more than 1.2 meters tall. And much like Odysseus's cyclops, its remains are often found inside of caves on Sicily and Malta. In fact, Spinagallo Cave in Southwestern Sicily has yielded over 2,000 dwarf elephant bones to date. So what explains these shrunken giants? Well, in biology, there's a concept called Foster's rule. In a nutshell, it states that on isolated islands the descendants of small mammals, like rats, frequently get larger, especially if there's a lack of predators. And the reverse is often true too. When big-bodied mammals like elephants populate an island, natural selection can favor smaller body sizes because there are fewer resources. Big or small though, a proboscidean skeleton might look downright bizarre to anybody who's never seen a live elephant. In 1914, Othenio Abel proposed that when the ancient Greeks came across these fossils, they mistook them for the remains of one-eyed humanoid giants. The reason for the misunderstanding, he said, was the one feature that most proboscideans share-- the large nasal cavity high up on the forehead. Abel reasoned that if you saw an elephant's skull and had no idea what its owner looked like, you might not know that this hole had once been connected to a fleshy trunk. Instead, you might think it was a single extra-large eye socket in the middle of the animal's face. Sound familiar? While giants are present in the midst of almost all ancient civilizations,

(Describer) Emily:

Homer's version has dominated in the modern period. Variants of the Homeric cyclops have been found in France, Turkey, and Estonia among other places, and there's even a version in a famous collection of Arabian folk tales, "1,001 Nights." In the 16th century, a Turkish manuscript showed the myth existed outside of Greece. In this version, a cyclops-like figure demands to be fed two people and 500 sheep a day. He is ultimately defeated with a spit to the eye, and the hero escapes under the skin of a ram. Later in the 19th century, Wilhelm Grimm-- yes, he's one of those brothers-- published a book collecting ten folkloric versions of the blinded ogre story. Grimm is widely considered the first folklorist to investigate the various global versions of Homer's Polyphemus. In the book he states that all versions of the myth had ancient origins. Maybe those fossils we were talking about? In 1904, German scholar Oskar Hackman published a collection of 221 versions of the blinding-of- the-ogre myth taken from 25 different nations. Take that, Brother Grimm. The number has only expanded since then. We still see the Greek versions of the cyclops myth appearing in literature class and a few popular instances-- Wrath of the Titans, Disney's Hercules, Percy Jackson,

(Describer) In Sea of Monsters, a boy and adult with a tattooed face.

and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

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And today, the figure has evolved into lovable monsters, mutant aliens, and the famous X-Men character Cyclops. You may have heard of him. Despite these examples, overall, the image of the one-eyed giant as a monster has largely faded. If you take a look at modern visual depictions of cyclops, they aren't really scary. Even the violent cannibals of ancient mythologies seem laughable now, in part because they are often shown as being oafish, gullible, and, well, easy to defeat. All you need is a simple plan and a pointy stick. That doesn't exactly inspire terror. But that doesn't mean the stories about them are any less significant. They show us how modern paleontology can sometimes help explain the beliefs of the past and give us a unique insight into ancient cultures.