If we found some kind of alien technology, or something that was otherwise unexplainable,

according to anything we know, what would we conclude about it?

We can also go back in time, centuries or even millennia, and imagine what our predecessors

would have thought when they found fossilized bones of prehistoric creatures.

One explanation they may have come up with was...

Let's come right up on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid. For Brian Dunning, this is guest host, Ryan Help for Skeptoid.com.

Today we explore the natural history and evolution of the Griffin.

The famous creature said to have the head of an eagle and the body of a lion found guarding gold

in the mountains along central Asian trade routes during the times of the Greek and Roman empires.

Nowadays we like to think of the Griffin as a mere fantasy in the same league as Centars and Mer people.

However, the way ancient writers depicted the Griffin was much more as a natural animal,

just part of the landscape in a far off exotic land.

So how did the nomads and traders come to believe there were Griffin's all around them?

Was it always a story to scare intruders away from their gold deposits?

Or is the Griffin actually the first recorded attempt to interpret a fossil fact?

The original Griffin stories come from the folklore of central Asian nomads called the Scythians.

The Scythians never had a written language, so are earliest evidence of Griffin's in their culture

comes from their art, which relied heavily on zoological themes, which included Griffin's.

In the 1940s, Russian archaeologist Sergei Rudedenko explored several fifth century BC tombs

in the Scythian region and found nomads that had been mummified by permafrost for 2500 years.

One of the mummies was a male warrior covered in tattoos of animals, including Griffin's,

...