🌲⚔️ Larsagorn Elarsar 🌼 :mugicrest: on Nostr: Here's an example. Bigfoot is not a 'cryptid' (although to ASKCHUALLY myself, ...

Here's an example.

Bigfoot is not a 'cryptid' (although to ASKCHUALLY myself, cryptids are all technically folkloric figures until scientifically described). Bigfoot is a folkloric figure. A genuine piece of modern American folklore that is currently a living tradition of storytelling around encounters with this strange and otherworldly being nobody can really agree on what it is (compare the encounters with 'supernatural Bigfoot' with stories of trolls and faerie encounters).

So stepping over whether or not Bigfoot is real. How many of the Bigfoot encounter stories is just straight up bullshit? Half? More? Perhaps it's not intentional lying but just poorly told accounts where the teller doesn't really observe the Bigfoot well and their imagination fills in the gaps. Or perhaps its just misidentification with other animals. How much do you think that accounts for?

Now parse that through time and multiple people telling the same story. Oral traditions aren't quite Chinese whispers but they do change (as do written traditions btw, it's why we can point to multiple origins for Medusa in the Perseus and Medusa myth, for example). How much truth do you think is still contained there? A kernel? Ok, how do you know what it is? How do you know you're just not applying your own hermeneutic on it to make sense of something that you lack context for? Are you even sure you've translated the language properly and things haven't been lost during the process?

This is just scratching the surface of why the study of mythology and folklore is something the greatest scholars of the Western world has beaten themselves bloody trying to work out ever since they started noticing similar patterns to mythological tales in the mid-1800's.