![]() Anyone who would come up with an inventive method that could slay massive amounts of killer slugs in one go would become a hero, not only in Sweden but in the whole of Scandinavia. This is for example the case here in Sweden with the “killer slug”, an invasive slug from Spain (Arion vulgaris) that is so disgusting that normal slug predators do not want to eat it. No wonder then that he became a hero if he could slay the Stymphalian birds – or cormorants.Īnimals that might at first seem harmless can be fearful in large quantities and get a scary reputation. Cormorants can also breed inland and this is what might have happened at the time of Hercules. When cormorants invade islets in the Baltic Sea, for example, the ammonia in the droppings kills off the vegetation and the islets become greyish-white and dead looking. Not only do they have yellowish beaks (bronze beaks), their droppings also contain ammonia. There is in fact a bird that fits quite well with the description of the Stymphalian birds and that is cormorants. Hercules used a rattle to frighten the Stymphalian birds and make them fly up in the air so that he could slay them by shooting poisonous arrows at the birds. One of them was to slay the Stymphalian birds, fearsome birds with bronze beaks that had invaded a marsh, or lake, in Arcadia and destroyed the landscape or fruits in the surroundings. All these relatives even got a name – the Heracleidae.īut what about the real man, the Hercules who lived so long ago and gave rise to all these stories and relatives? What can we deduce from the glorious myths when removing the glamour? Who was this Stone Age man and what did he actually do? Here are the twelve non-fancy labors of the primitive Hercules, which still echo through ancient myths and legends.Īccording to legend, Hercules got his twelve labors, or job assignments, from his supposedly evil uncle Eurystheus. And so it continued century after century and as DNA testing did not exist until recently, anyone wanting an impressive background could claim to be related to Hercules. The result was a lot of children and grandchildren who naturally had an interest in preserving and improving stories about their forefather. So why do they? Why do we still watch movies about this almost-Stone-Age-hero who is stealing horses, chasing wild boars and damming up rivers (see more below)?Īpart from his primitive labors – killing birds and steeling horses and the like – Hercules also traveled around and met, as well as raped, a lot of women (and probably also men and boys). And when you remove all the grandiose aspects of Hercules’ labors, you end up with stories about a ruthless, adventurous, hideous but also remarkable man who lived so far back, in such a primitive time of history, it is a wonder that any traces of his deeds remain. ![]() Steal the Golden Apples of the Hesperidesīut do the stories actually tell about a real man? The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, a rather factual man writing between 60 and 30 BCE about the history of the then known world, stated that monsters and bulls that are tamed by Hercules (and other heroes) are actually stories about the “taming” of floods or waves.Capture the Ceryneian Hind (or reindeer).Clean the Augean Stables (or pastureland).Slay the Stymphalian Birds (or cormorants).The reason why Northern Europe is interesting here is that Hercules traveled far, far up north, so far north in fact that he reached the lands of the midnight sun. ![]() In Northern Europe, the Neolithic Stone Age ended 3,800 years ago, which means that Hercules lived just on the brink of the Bronze Age. Depending on which theory you believe in, the battle of Troy occurred sometime from 3,200 to 3,600 years ago. As the warriors in the battle of Troy use weapons of bronze and stone, and do not use any iron or steel, the war is supposed to have taken place in the Bronze Age. The stories that tell about Hercules are all set a couple of generations before the battle of Troy. And his adventures, when cleansed from the fanciful monster stuff, are in fact equally primitive. Those of you who are familiar with his labors, or have seen a movie about Hercules, might remember that he is often portrayed with a very primitive weapon – a club. However, beyond the monsters and godly adventures there are echoes of a real man who lived a very, very long time ago. There are a many stories about the hero Hercules and his twelve labors – and other (heinous) deeds – the one more fanciful than the other. ![]() The 12 labors of Hercules – echoes of a man who lived almost in the Stone Age ![]()
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