Centaurs - Believe them or not

I personally think the concept of centaurs, although fascinating, is also grotesque to say the least. Just imagine yourself possessing animal parts.

The current research involving chimeras may or may not be a reflection of the possibility.

Researchers insist that centaurs actually existed. Archeologists have discovered rock paintings depicting strange creatures and called them teriantrops, hybrids of humans and animals. Researchers believe that ancient artists made the painting from life.

They have had the first in history detailed study of the strange drawings. The study covered about 5,000 rock paintings of our ancestors; the researchers systematized the frequency and the types of depicted teriantrops and determined their ages. They arrived at a conclusion that animal men actually existed in the remote past. They believe that primitives could hardly draw what they never saw.

Alexander Guryev says that some time ago the official science would not recognize the possibility of interbreeding of humans and animals. But recently relaiable scientific sources have published results of genetic experiments as a result of which researchers got chimeras in test-tubes, germs having part of human and part of animal cells. From the genetics point of view, the difference between humans and animals makes just several per cent. It is not ruled out that spontaneous mutations may take place in rare instances, and natural interbreeding is quite possible in this case. May it be so that humans with such mutations lived in all epochs?

english.pravda.ru...

they believe that primitives could hardly draw what they never saw

Personally i feel any "scientist" that had made that assumption is extremely limiting them selves.

Of course they could draw things they had never seen, we can can't we?

It's called imagination.

I'm not sure how I feel about creating chimeras for medical research. But I suppose if you have a desperate medical condition with limited options, you could be ok with anything that might help.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Secret of Nimh, anyone?

The hope in certain circles is that this research will get to the point where humans may be given useable animal parts (tails, ears, etc.). It's a very interesting case, to say the least.

As for centaurs existing? No. I very, very seriously doubt it. I think the drawings of centaurs sprang from the idea that a horseman could become so attuned with his mount that he could actually become fused with it. Though I know drawings of centaurs date back far beyond the fourth and fifth centuries, the Huns in Europe were known far and wide for their expert horsemanship and their skill with a peculiar weapon called the reflex bow (many centaurs are portrayed with a bow and arrow). It was said that they ate, drank, slept, negotiated, and even made love on horseback. The Huns were a nomadic people for some time, and later they relied on pillaging to supply their people, so the need for horses was a very lasting and important necessity.

I'm sure they had nomads with such skilled horsemanship way back when these drawings were made. After all, the Huns had to inherit it somewhere.

The article also mentions other human-animal hybrids--animals with human heads, or humans with animal heads. I think these stem from, as Burgess mentioned, imagination. Man has associated certain qualities of self with qualities of animals for some time. Look at the berserkers of Norse fame--men who used the idea of a bear's (or wolf's) strength and ferocity to fuel their battle prowess. Look at the Native American tribes, who believe in totemism and revere certain qualities defined by certain animals.

For a more modern example, look at therianthropes.

I can't believe those scientists would think that these drawings were made from life. Until they dig up a centaur's skeleton, this is jumping to conclusions on a cosmic scale.

Scientist????
Alexander Guryev is a "Mythology expert" (read Literature). He has no scientific background either listed in the article nor after doing a rather exhaustive web search. Infact other than the Pravda article, the only thing that comes up when searching for Alexander Guryev brings up an international dancer from the Ukraine.

For whatever its worth, Edgar Cayce said centaurs and sphinx's etc are part of the human souls past. Man's souls inhabited these things until the 'perfected human body' was finally created and encouraged. Once that happened the 'perfected humans' in atlantis started using the chimera humans as slaves.

He says the last ones died around 10,000 BC when the final remnants of atlantis sank.

Originally posted by Questor
I personally think the concept of centaurs, although fascinating, is also grotesque to say the least. Just imagine yourself possessing animal parts.

The current research involving chimeras may or may not be a reflection of the possibility.

Researchers insist that centaurs actually existed. Archeologists have discovered rock paintings depicting strange creatures and called them teriantrops, hybrids of humans and animals. Researchers believe that ancient artists made the painting from life.

They have had the first in history detailed study of the strange drawings. The study covered about 5,000 rock paintings of our ancestors; the researchers systematized the frequency and the types of depicted teriantrops and determined their ages. They arrived at a conclusion that animal men actually existed in the remote past. They believe that primitives could hardly draw what they never saw.

Alexander Guryev says that some time ago the official science would not recognize the possibility of interbreeding of humans and animals. But recently relaiable scientific sources have published results of genetic experiments as a result of which researchers got chimeras in test-tubes, germs having part of human and part of animal cells. From the genetics point of view, the difference between humans and animals makes just several per cent. It is not ruled out that spontaneous mutations may take place in rare instances, and natural interbreeding is quite possible in this case. May it be so that humans with such mutations lived in all epochs?

english.pravda.ru...

I do believe that I heard somewhere that centaurs were simply the depiction of people who were horse-back-riding by people who were unfamiliar with this idea...

Although as has been said by Burgess, it's quite possible that these drawings were simply of the imagination...

Originally posted by Burgess

they believe that primitives could hardly draw what they never saw

Personally i feel any "scientist" that had made that assumption is extremely limiting them selves.

Of course they could draw things they had never seen, we can can't we?

It's called imagination.

You would be surprised at how pervasive this belief is, even after many decades of archaeological research demonstrating the capabilities of our prehistoric ancestors. It can be very easy for people to assume that, simply because prehistoric humans were not as technologically advanced as ourselves, that they were also less advanced in terms of mental faculties or creative capabilities. This is, of course, pure nonsense.

Sadly, the notion of prehistoric Man as "primitive" is still quite widespread. I personally think it would be interesting to put a group of thirty or so modern people in a cave in a dense forest with absolutely nothing but what their environment provided them and see how well they fared in comparision to prehistoric Man. People would, I think, quickly learn that it takes ingenuity and adaptability to survive and that any truly primitive people would have long since become extinct.

all my misgivings concern the physiology of the alledged ` centaur ` , namely :

cardio vascular system : one heart or 2 ? and if one , where ? a heart in the human torso could not hope to service the equime lower body

pulonary system : were would the lunks be ? would the trachea be able to support the required air flow ?

digestive tract : could a human sized mouth , esophegus injest enough food to fuel an equine lower body ?

can the dentistry in a human sized mouth chew roughage fast enough ?

the human torso is over 75% " internal organs " if these are rendered unescesary - what would the forso contain

the spine and musclature would require a torso < 1/2 the diameter - why are centaur torsos depected as claaically proporioned humans ?

geonome : how would a centaur evolve to have hominid and equid characteristics ? cross breeding is highly unlikley

lastly the " where are they now? " question . if they are a viable proposition - why are " hybrid " creaturs so glarinngly absent from the real world ?

although the whole idea of interbreeding species is nowadays "somehow" possible (chimeras) eventhough not viable , i have to admit that i am highly sceptical about the actual existence of such creatures, even more when reading articles from that source that has proven to be quite unreliable (a woman who gives birth to a cat/human hybrid , have you ever seen a cat penis , it wouldn't even pass the labia , not even getting into the genome problem), ignorant_ape definitely makes good points , but i still think the torso was used a s storage area , now i know some people tend to come up with the alien intervention theory (e.g. Erich von Daeniken) but then again one could come up with just about anything to explain the existence og hybrids (and just to stop a conversation before it starts ,yes i know the bible is full of these examples but it still doesn't make it reality )

I do believe that I heard somewhere that centaurs were simply the depiction of people who were horse-back-riding

It can be said though that it is the skeptics immediate response.

I will say that up till recently we believed that it was impossible for inter-species birth to take place. In modern society the concept is grotesque, like you say, but in the past it may have been acceptable.

Of course we then discovered that the diffecrence between humans and say, donkeys, or gorillas, or cats, is only a few percent, on the genetic level.

We come into this conversation with preconcieved ideas that this phenomena is impossible. Why? because it has been drilled into our brains not only by scientists but by religious groups

After all, no one has tried it for hundreds of years. And the scientists just recently didn't seem to have much trouble at all, combining animal and human sex cells, interesting......

Originally posted by Shadow88

I do believe that I heard somewhere that centaurs were simply the depiction of people who were horse-back-riding

It can be said though that it is the skeptics immediate response.

I will say that up till recently we believed that it was impossible for inter-species birth to take place. In modern society the concept is grotesque, like you say, but in the past it may have been acceptable.

Of course we then discovered that the diffecrence between humans and say, donkeys, or gorillas, or cats, is only a few percent, on the genetic level.

We come into this conversation with preconcieved ideas that this phenomena is impossible. Why? because it has been drilled into our brains not only by scientists but by religious groups

After all, no one has tried it for hundreds of years. And the scientists just recently didn't seem to have much trouble at all, combining animal and human sex cells, interesting......

Yes, but at the same time, I agree with ignorant-ape that the physiology behind the construction of a centaur is nearly impossible. The animal would practically have to have a double set of organs - one of which would be completely unnaturally useless. Not to mention that the animal would also be unbalanced - a human torso weighs alot more than a horse's head, and most gene combinations between species end up in something stillborn because the cells just have trouble working with each other. If the creature did survive, it would be severely retarded, and probably die long before reproduction even became an option.

Obviously you are completely correct and i agree. I was merely giving the other side, as for an unbiased opinion. Yes it would seem impossible, but we dont know 100%.

Originally posted by Shadow88
Obviously you are completely correct and i agree. I was merely giving the other side, as for an unbiased opinion. Yes it would seem impossible, but we dont know 100%.

It's appreciated that you made counter-arguments even for a side that you don't agree with.
Although we don't know 100%, I would have to land this one in the "if it did happen, it probably wouldn't be common enough occurence for them to reproduce, thus disabling the argument of them being a 'race' by any means" category.

How many of something does there have to be before a hybrid/cross breed/mutation has to be classed as a separate race?

When the Native American Indians first saw settlers on their land, they thought that the Europeans were gods. This was because their skin was much lighter, their attire was different, and because they were riding horses which were never seen before on American soil. The myth is that the Indians thought the men were half man/half animal, so this could attribute to the centaur myth.



The bottoms of centaurs usually resemble a horse. eh....

Originally posted by Shadow88
How many of something does there have to be before a hybrid/cross breed/mutation has to be classed as a separate race?

Well for starters, you definately need more than one as the typical definition of species is "a taxonomic group whose members can interbreed." Seeing as how I speculate that even if you had enough to interbreed, they wouldn't live to the lifestage in which breeding occurs, I seriously have my doubts that you could consider them a species.

Originally posted by TheBlueSoldier
When the Native American Indians first saw settlers on their land, they thought that the Europeans were gods. This was because their skin was much lighter, their attire was different, and because they were riding horses which were never seen before on American soil. The myth is that the Indians thought the men were half man/half animal, so this could attribute to the centaur myth.



The bottoms of centaurs usually resemble a horse. eh....

That's pretty much exactly what I'd heard - only applied to Europe, since not all Europeans were familiar with the idea of horse back riding back in the day.

Actually, you're all wrong. It was infact an alien riding on a dog that accounts for the interpretation of the centaur. The dog does look similar to a horse, and the aliens are usually only a few feet tall. I believe it was an ancestor to the great dane. The alien death ray could only be interpreted as the bow and arrow, being recognized CLEARLY as a weapon. No indian had ever rode a dog, so thus the horse feet were put under the image of a human.


C'mon guys, it's all about interpretation.

uh... yeah sure... i stand corrected atmoica_26. Well, I still believe that the many sightings of centuars are nothing but stories of people who saw horsemen. Just think about it, how would an animal with a horse's torsoe and a man's head function? Humans eat more food than most animals because of the large amount of protein that our brains demand, and a horse's body is filled with muscles, making it an extremely agile grazer. How could a centaur possibly get enough food if:

A) It cannot eat vegetation because for one, the head woud not be able to reach the ground for grass and the upper torsoe of the man's stomach is not capable of digesting cellulose.

B) A centaur would surprisingly be very slow because of it's balance issue. Notice the way that horse runs, it constantly thrusts it's head back and forth in order to act as a ballist and momentum increasing thingy(there's no word for it!!). If instead of a horse's head, there was a freakin human torsoe there, the balance would be completely tipped towards the front. The centaur would not be able to run, let alone sprint after prey without constantly falling!

C) If, for all intent and reasons, the centaur actually captured its prey.... What would the centaur do?!?! Would the centaur just strangle the poor creature with it's weak, barely used hands... Or maybe it would attempt to bite it with it's extremely fragile jaw. A human's mouth is designed to speak and to chew food, unlike most animals which are designed to capture and break bones of prey. The mouth of the strongest human biter is weaker than a common domesticated dog.

I'm sorry guys, but I just don't believe that a centaur could possibly function in the wild. And I covered all grounds of argument, but knowing you guys I will receive an angry post ranting on about the possibilties of centaurs developing bows and arrows and tools and such... Well I'm happy if you do because I shall make a fool of you once more! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!