Talk:Centaur

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Not to be rude but this article is not written in a style suitable for the wikipedia. LordFenix 19:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

"As children of Apollo, they are taken to signify the rays of the Sun." I removed this statement which embodies several misleading misconceptions. Wetman 00:44, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Many centaur legends state that they are very fickle creatures, and often look to the sky to determine the fates. They are great astrologers and have a love for divination." This may be a modern pop astrology use of centaurs. Fickle astrologers, eh? Can anyone give a concrete instance that would support any element of these statements? --Wetman 22:28, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've no clue as to where that came from, I was just moving it. Although come to think of it, the centaurs in Harry Potter are quite like that. Maybe that's what the tidbit's contributor was getting at. [[User:Premeditated Chaos|PMC]] 23:12, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ah! "Centaurs in the Harry Potter series" is a perfectly good subsection, at a Harry Potter entry-- with a linking note here: "Modern centaurs have been reimagined in the Harry Potter books." or somesuch. Would a Potterite do this for us? --Wetman 00:16, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd be willing to try, being that I'm something of a closet Potterite. The only problem is that I haven't touched the books in at least a year, but that's easily fixed; I read fast. Edit: None of the other magical beasts in Potter are actually included in the article; they have separate entries elsewhere. Maybe we should make the Centaurs in Harry Potter subsection on the Centaur article itself, and link from Harry Potter? [[User:Premeditated Chaos|PMC]] 00:30, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I could swear the Narnian centaurs were stargazers too. It stems from the story of sagittarius, I'm sure, and the idea that one of their number is living in the sky with other creatures.. naturally they'd give it a look.

The "fickle creatures" bit was added by User:Premeditated Chaos 17:49, 27 Nov 2004. I've deleted it. --Wetman 00:51, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I removed the incoherent nonsense of the second and third paragraphs and the two single sentences that followed. Why was this reverted? 15.195.185.76 16:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

For the same reasons it was put there to begin with: vandalism, or thinking that Wikipedia is a joke encyclopedia. Twit happens. Coyoty 19:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Could we mention the similarity between the centaurs and the gandarewa-Gandharvas? I am not skilled at editing the Wikipedia. Quote from the Ghandarvas page: In Hinduism and Buddhism, the Gandharvas (Sanskrit: गंधर्व, gandharva) are male nature spirits, husbands of the Apsaras. Some are part animal, usually a bird or _horse_(my emphasis). They have superb musical skills. They guarded the Soma and made beautiful music for the gods in their palaces. Their name may be cognate with that of the Greek centaurs. Gene K 08:25, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

They may be anthropomorphic, but unless they have a mainly human body from the waist up with an animal body from the neck down, they wouldn't be centaurs. Also, the Gandharva page is unsourced and may not be accurate. The one non-hearsay source I could find about gandharvas and centaurs, The Religions of India by Edward Washburn Hopkins, says, "The Gandharva, moon, is certainly one with the Persian Gandarewa, but can hardly be identical with the Centaur." Coyoty 17:40, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'Did centaurs actually exist?' article is non-sense!

External links: Did centaurs actually exist? - Article from Pravda.ru in English

This article is full of non-sense. There isn't any sort of scientific credibility in it. It's obviously - and very ridiculously - made up. I think this link should be removed because it provides false and irrelevant information regarding Centaurs. Haisook 17:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks go to the user who removed it. Haisook 13:01, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Narnia book order

I am changing this back to first novel. the Narnia books (as well as in the movie adaptation of its second novel, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe),

See the section on Reading order in The Chronicles of Narnia regarding this. (esp. the bottom of the section. The guy who first persuaded publishers to change the numbering of the books is co-producer of the movies. And they are being made in order of original publication...) VikÞor [[User talk:Vik-Thor|Talk]] 07:57, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unorthodox theories on Centaur page moved here

I have removed all of the following information from the article. --Theranos 19:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

A few small portions of this might be reasonable to reinclude: e.g. the stuffed Centaur is an amusing curiosity - from Pliny's Natural History or Phlegon's Book of Marvels, or some such? As for the rest, it is far to speculative and off-beat for a Wiki article. There is clearly also alot of confusion between the mythic Greek centaur and the Greek word "onocentaur" (= an African baboon). --Theranos 20:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Evidence of Centaurs in Antiquity Centaurs were reportedly seen in the Roman Empire era. "With expanding exploration in the Roman era, information about exotic lands and incredible animals was eagerly consumed in Rome. Not only was evidence piling up that giants and strange monsters had once populated the entire earth, but new zoological discoveries held out the possibility that some creatures of the mythic era, such as Centaurs, might have escaped prehistoric destruction to roam unexplored landscapes. Speaking of Centaurs, the natural historian Aelian (AD 200) wondered if time and nature really produced populations of such strange creatures, just as the myths claimed. If Centaurs were actually once prevalent in certain places and not just a figment of folklore, Aelian reasoned, then they must have been a temporary, extinct fauna of the deep past. Hybrid beasts combining contradictory categories were singled out by the circle of distinguished natural philosophers as physiologically impossible. So, while Plato, Aristotle, Palaephatus, and Lucretius heaped scorn the viability of mixed human-animal species, especially Centaurs, writers like Phlegon, Aelian, and others kept an open mind about seemingly incredible creatures, allowing the interplay of imagination and skepticism to fill in the blanks of the unknown. [1] Palaephatus’s authoritative assertion in the fourth-century BC that if Centaurs ever did exist, then they would still be seen alive was turned on its head by Centaur sightings during the Roman empire. During the reign of Claudius (AD 41-54), for example, officials in Arabia declared that a small herd of Centaurs inhabited Saune, a remote mountain wilderness. One of these "living fossils" was captured and transported to Egypt as a gift for the emperor. The Egyptians fed the wild Centaur its traditional diet of raw meat, but it could not tolerate the change in altitude and perished. The prefect had the corpse embalmed and shipped to Rome, where Claudius exhibited the marvel in his palace. Pliny the Elder went with friends to see the spectacle: the Centaur was completely submerged in honey. (The antibacterial, anaerobic qualities of honey were well known in antiquity: honey was commonly used as a preservative for transporting cadavers long distances.) Nearly a century later, through the reigns of nine emperors after Claudius, the embalmed Centaur of Saune could still be viewed, by special appointment, in the emperor Hadrian’s imperial storehouse. Phlegon of Tralles, the compiler of giant bone discoveries who served on Hadrian’s staff (AD 117-138), described the marvel first-hand. The Centaur was a bit smaller than one might expect from classical Greek art, but it had a fierce face and hairy arms and fingers. The human ribcage and torso merged naturally with equine body and limbs and its hooves were still quite firm. The man had originally been tawny but the entire body but the entire body had turned a very dark brown -due, thought Phlegon, to the embalming process. ...In about AD 50, for example, the emperor Claudius received a dispatch from provincial Greek authorities that a baby Centaur had been born in Thessaly." [1] Historical Evidence of Human-Animal Sexual Contacts In ancient times, warriors took a flock of sheep or goats for every battle; they used animals for eating and having sex. There is written evidence saying that Italian soldiers deserted during the siege of Lyons by catholics in 1562 because they had little sheep for sex contacts. Allowing sex contacts between soldiers and animals was believed the lesser evil than sex with prostitutes. Respectable scholars - Paracelsus, Cardano and famous accoucher of the 16th century Fortunio Liceti - several times registered birth of hybrids, animal kids born by humans and human kids born by animals. Their notes mention horses, elephants, dogs and even lions. Historical sources reveal that bestiality was very popular among ancient Greeks and Romans. A legend says that Greek scholar Thales recommended his master Periandr not to engage unmarried shepherds not to produce more centaurs. Roman satirist Juvenalius wrote that "Roman women often exposed their naked buttocks to tempt donkeys into sex contacts." In Egypt, these contacts were part of the fertility cult ceremony. Famous Danish anatomist Thomas Bartolin wrote he saw a woman who had a baby with a cat head after copulation with a cat. Medicine books of the 19-20th centuries describe instances of birth of animal humans. At the end of the past century, some British researchers wrote about black women living together with gorillas. Children born as a result of such contacts could even do easy work about the house and even speak. ^{[citation needed]} Unconfirmed Reports of Modern-Day Centaur Sightings Alleged sigtings of Centaurs continue to this day. Reports come from many different places, among them Florida [2] and Nigeria [3]. Unorthodox Scientific Opinions Paul Takon from the Australian Museum in Sydney and anthropologist Christopher Chippendale from the University of Cambridge say that such hybrids, including centaurs, were highly likely living side by side with primitives. In Australia and South Africa, the researchers discovered dozens of rock paintings showing animals with human heads and humans with animal heads that may be over 32 thousand years old. Archeologists have discovered rock paintings depicting strange creatures and called them teriantrops, hybrids of humans and animals. Researchers believe that ancient artists made the painting from life. [4]