Very Old, Very Scary Things

Do you ever get that feeling when you’re reading about something old, very very old, older than the Latins ever were, and you feel that what you’re reading is somehow dangerous? Like you might come across a secret that is too old, and that you don’t necessarily want to know, and you feel like you might wake something ancient and terrible, but you also can’t stop reading. You might take one too many steps into the woods and you won’t be able to find your way back. And you realize, as you think it, that you are not in fact in the woods: you are in your own chair in your own house in the broad daylight. But if you weren’t in such a safe, well lit place, the words you’re reading, the secrets you’re hearing might not fit in the book, and maybe these words should not darken this room. The vague fear is enough to quicken your heart and freeze your body as though you’re hiding, and you hardly breathe except to turn the page. Let me demonstrate. 

There was once such a creature as a hornless rhino, with a thick grey hide, kind soft eyes, and elephantine legs, whose hocks would come up to your shoulders. He wandered the breadth of Eurasia before there was a line to break it. 

Hippos once swam in the Rhine. Hyenas hunted great shaggy rhinos who ran like horses across Russia and whose pelts dragged the ground, and women painted them both into magic caves hidden deep in French forests that we still greet with whispers. 

Europe’s lions were bigger than a tiger, and could touch their nose to yours. They were maneless, and their coats were blonde, or gray. The elk of Germany and the British isles had twisted mantles of horn wider than a car is long, and their withers would clear your head. 

Sloths grew tall as streetlamps. They were behemoths with hides so thick spears bounced off their sides, and they had claws as long as your foot. And they would meander across the plains and forests of Texas. 

Some sloths lived in the depths of the sea, dripping with seaweed and ancient eyes, bigger than an elephant and heavier than a sea cow. 

A sea cow, by the way, is not a manatee; it is the size of a semi truck. They’ve been extinct since 1760, but a fisherman in the fifties thought he saw one. 

There were elephants that had four tusks.

And two trunks. 

Or a jaw that looked like a trunk. 

America’s lions were cinnamon red with paws the size of dinner plates. Armadillos were not much bigger than a car. (Did you know modern armadillos can be 5' long?) America’s zebras had brown stripes, and the bears would dwarf a grizzly. 

There were once hogs, ugly as sin, who were as big and as fast as a horse. They’re called “Hell pigs”

There were people in Europe before the people we know as Europeans came. Some say the modern Europeans killed them. Others say the modern Europeans moved in quietly and married them. Still others say that they were a quiet, gentle people who moved into the shadows until they died out. The Finns and the Hungarians and a handful of scattered people of Russia may still speak a descendant of their language. They may speak something else entirely. 

Do you know what Old English sounded like? It had letters you’ve never heard of, and fourteen vowels. Do you know what tongue the ancient kings of Scotland used? Have you ever met an old Irish farmer who speaks no English, but a tongue older than we can even know? 

When you read the story of the Exodus, do you ever think about what words they are speaking? We can’t even today tell you how they are pronounced. If you heard them, would you know?

Do you know that there are stars that move at near the speed of light? There are stars thousands upon thousands of times the size of ours. There are stars so small, so bright, spinning so fast, that one can keep time to the millisecond on them, and a tablespoon of the stuff they’re made of weighs more than the human race. 

Why is this knowledge dangerous?

If it isn't, why does it feel like it is?