Re: What would Hitchcock have thought...?

[Adrienne Mayor <Afmayor@aol.com>]

Thanks for these ideas. I agree there is no way to find "historical  
proof" of the myths about avian abductions. People are always asking  
me if such stories are true. Personally, I think Native American  
stories of avian abductions originally arose from the storytelling  
imagination, based on seemingly plausible fears of large raptors and  
knowledge of their behavior (as noted by Norton and Graydon) and on  
discoveries of well-preserved fossil remains of extinct raptors and  
their nests (which often contain parts of mastodon bones carried  
there from carrion sites, but giving the impression to a casual  
observer that the bird brought large prey to its nest). If one baby  
was ever carried off in a rare instance, that would help perpetuate  
the myth.

Ancestral memories of megafaunas from the Pleistocene is a dubious  
argument. It's an unprovable hypothesis, but it has cropped up in  
popular and scientific venues for the past century or so. The only  
kinds of oral traditions that can be proven to have been inspired by  
an empirical observation in the prehistoric past are stories about  
scientifically datable geological or astronomical events (volcanoes,  
earthquakes, comets, etc).


On Jan 15, 2006, at 10:26 AM, Patrick Norton wrote:

> Ok, good point. But if not teratorns, which other Ice Age birds of   
> prey would be capable of picking up a small child (either in talons  
> or beak)? Or should we reject the new interpretation of the  
> evidence in South Africa, reported in Am J of Phys Anthropology,  
> that large birds apparentlypreyed on human ancestors?>

I accept the recent evidence from South America. I just don't think  
it's very surprising, or that it confirms the historical truth of the  
myths you mention.  There is all kinds of evidence of large raptors  
preying on primates, including video of a Harpy Eagles (with a modest  
7 foot wingspan) snatching an adult three-toed sloth out of tree and  
flying away with it. It's not surprising to see evidence that this  
also happened in the distant past to juvenile hominids. In the  
Pleistocene, the New Zealand eagle, Harpogornis, would likely have  
been able to snatch a snatch up a human toddler with little problem.   
I'm skeptical about the North America origins of these myths,  
however, because nothing analogous to Harpagornis (that I'm aware of  
anyway) is known from the late Pleistocene of North America.

Perhaps there was such a North American bird that just hasn't been  
found. Perhaps the myth goes further back in human history than the  
Pleistocene of North America. Perhaps the myth is born of a fear in  
which the observed prey capture techniques of eagles was conflated  
with a parental concern for the safety of children who did live in  
the shadow of the huge teratorns.

PTN