Throughout the existence of the human race, myths, legends, and the fantastic have played as big a role in our mental development as has reality. Such tales, and the fantastic beasts and heroes in them provided ancient cultures with subjects for folklore, songs, art, and religion; but the lands and lore created in these ancient myths are not forgotten, even as science gradually disproved them. Although fantastic legends have been traditionally scoffed at by the scientific world, more and more evidence is coming to light that there may, in fact, be some element of truth behind much of what has for so long been deemed fantastic.

Of all the ancient fantastic beings, specifically animals, that are prevalent in our Norse-based fantasy, it is uncanny how a selective few of them recurred in other world mythology and were portrayed similarly, even by some of the most isolated cultures. The dragon, for example, occurs in some form in nearly every culture’s mythology, as does, to a lesser extent, the unicorn as well as fairies/elves/little people. Such similarities in such otherwise different cultures cannot be overlooked when evaluating the basis and origins of our modern fantasy.

It is highly unlikely that any creature of traditional fantasy could ever have existed as a whole. We are, unfortunately, left with little evidence excluding lore, artwork, and an occasional personal account. Taking into account how little the ancients knew about the workings of the world from a scientific standpoint, as well as outside influence and the immense stylistic exaggerations in their artwork that could bias personal accounts, these beings must instead be looked at from a realistic and anatomical view point. There are some, however, who believe these creatures exist as a whole and as pictured in aforementioned art in an alternate and idealistic world, one the ancients knew of but we have yet to discover. It is also possible, however, that these creatures are merely the creations of clever storytellers that have stayed with us, moving from story into folklore, and from folklore into legend. It is also entirely possible, however, that a mix of the former two possibilities has resulted in the creature,people and lands that we know today, are actually existing things exaggerated and twisted by story tellers into things far more impressive than they truly are. It is likely something that will never be completely understood, but rather left up to the individual to decide.

There are a great many spiritualists who insist that all of which we consider fantastic and unreal is existant on an alternate plane of reality. This theory is, unfortunately, incredibly hard to either prove or disprove, as discovering alternate planes of reality is beyond our current mathematical and scientific grasp; however, if alternate dimensions could somehow be contacted using only the power of the human mind, it would explain why such isolated cultures could arrive at some of the same myths known today. This conclusion holds little promise scientifically, however, as do all paranormal, psychic and metaphysical-related theories.

Yet there are just as many people, however, who say that fantasy has no basis in reality whatsoever, other than to show good and evil metaphorically by having them take a very specific form. But let us consider also those who would be responsible for the creation of fantastic lore; not likely kings or sages wishing to send a message of morality, but bards and storytellers wishing only to captivate an audience. Yet many creatures may have resulted from a trick of nature that could result in a person seeing something completely different. Griffins, for example, are now thought to have been conceived by merchants, who saw the beak of the now-extinct protoceratops and thought it belonged to a massive bird. Often, bards might also play upon a person's fear of the unknown, by claiming that monstrous beasts haunt the already suspicious dark swamps and forests. Such tales would keep frightened people coming back to learn more about these evil phantoms and how to protect themselves . . . where else but from an imaginative, if not desperate, storyteller or writer could one hear that garlic wards off vampires or that a werewolf could be killed by a silver bullet? Obviously for some, if not all fantastic legends, this is most likely their origin, and it fits also those creatures that seem to have no basis in cultural meaning without evidence to back up their existence, other than being just two creatures melded together into one. Whereas many fantastic beasts have a well-defined mythic purpose and origin, many more-or-less modern creations were undoubtedly concieved by bards and clever authors.

Perhaps the most grounded theory to explain the origins of fantastic figures suggests that they are merely exaggerations of existing - or once-existing - creatures. For example, most species of deer and several species of antelope are known to shed their antlers or horns annually; usually one before the other, leaving them, for a time, one-horned. It is easy to see how a temporarily one-horned deer or antelope could give rise to the legend of the unicorn.

Yet there are several mythic creatures, the dragon in particular, that are so widespread with so little supporting evidence as to consider the existence of, perhaps, a now-extinct creature. Of course, no six-limbed winged reptile could ever have evolved and disappeared so suddenly and without any evidence except in lore. It is known to science, however, that dragon-like creatures – the extinct dinosaurs - did live millions of years ago, and that many now-extinct animals evolved to survive far longer than ever thought. Mammoth skeletons, for example, have been found on an island near Scandinavia dating to a time well within the lifetime of humans. Dinosaurs, however, would be much harder pressed to survive. Yet even following the most widely-accepted theory, (that an expansive global winter was caused by a meteor impact which caused temperatures to drop so dramatically and in very little time as to drive nearly every large living thing to extinction,) not every area of the earth became cold enough to completely destroy its large residents. In fact, some species of bird-like dinosaurs were known to have survived far beyond the life span of its kin. Why, then, could not a dinosaur-like animal have done the same thing, to be glimpsed and recorded by humans? There must, assuming this situation was the case, have been a large amount of cultural diffusion involved in the spreading of such a legend, however, as the locations on earth that remained warm enough to support large semi-reptilian creatures were few and far between.

Yet there are still, and always will be, many fantastic legends which remain unexplained, and to dig into the minds of the geniuses and sages of antiquity to unearth their origins would be impossible. The study of fantastic origins is just now becoming popular in the scientific community, and who knows what they’ll unearth in the future? Perhaps some day we will see the bones of a mermaid, or the horn of a unicorn, but until then, the artist, the writer, and the enthusiast must assume their own origin of fantasy, and chose their own theory to follow and believe, or else create their own.