The Science of Myths

So, our local Museum of Nature and Science recently opened a new traveling exhibit entitled Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids.

I’m going to let that soak in for a minute. Our museum of nature and science has an exhibit on mythic creatures.

Now, admittedly, our museum has had non-science or nature related exhibits before. In fifth grade we had a field trip to a Star Trek exhibit (I bought a tribble). Also, our museum seems to be a little confused as to its purpose; when I was little, it was the museum of natural history.

But, aside from that, let’s focus on this exhibit. Does this not sound like the best exhibit ever? I do love to pull from myths, so my interest was piqued, especially when the newspaper article on the exhibit opening included the phrase “room entirely devoted to dragons.”

So, last Friday, me and the family headed to the museum to take a look. (We also went through the evolution/dinosaur exhibit for the wee one, who is obsessed with t-rexs to an unhealthy degree, and the silk road exhibit for my husband, which was a little boring for the wee one but smelled quite nice.)

And there was actually a lot of science in the exhibit, so go figure. (Better that way, really.) The exhibit would introduce a mythical creature like, say, the kraken, and then go on to explain where the stories had likely come from in a cultural or scientific point of view. The kraken was based off of recovered giant squid tentacles (giant squids not actually being seen whole until 2004). Things like griffins and cyclops were improperly assembled dinosaur or mammoth skeletons. (The exhibit even had a display where you could take the bones of a protoceratops and rearrange it–quite easily, it turned out–into a griffin.)

I took a ton of story notes, including:

• Early naturalists often treated dragons as part of the natural world.
• Why do mythic creatures come in pairs?
• Use of mythic creatures in cultural displays
• Remains (such as dinosaur bones) taken in the wrong context
• The Nasca whale (found on artwork but context has been lost)
• The yawkyawk (an Australian kind-of mermaid creature)

It should be fun to do more research and incorporate my newfound (and somewhat scientific) knowledge into some story ideas.

Seen any awesome or creativity-driving exhibits lately?