Cultural Depictions
The Pleistocene megafauna and their abruptly recent extinctions have captured a large portion of the human imagination, as well as human culture. Their immense size and their nature as fantastic versions of more familiar creatures (giant short-faced kangaroos, dwarf hippos, giant beavers, etc.) make them especially engaging and appealing for wide audiences. Recently, films (10,000 BC, Ice Age) and videogames (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) have featured megafauna like mammoths and sabertooths, while books (Once and Future Giants) and comics (Zoostalgia) have attempted to celebrate these creatures.
Anthropologists also suggest that some megafauna, like Eurasia's Elasmotherium, Australia's Diprotodon, and the woolly mammoth, may have historically endured in legends of mythical beasts.
Read more about this topic: Pleistocene Megafauna
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or depictions:
“Hard times accounted in large part for the fact that the exposition was a financial disappointment in its first year, but Sally Rand and her fan dancers accomplished what applied science had failed to do, and the exposition closed in 1934 with a net profit, which was donated to participating cultural institutions, excluding Sally Rand.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Surely, of all creatures we eat, we are most brutal to snails. Helix optera is dug out of the earth where he has been peacefully enjoying his summer sleep, cracked like an egg, and eaten raw, presumably alive. Or boiled in oil. Or roasted in the hot ashes of a wood fire.... If God is a snail, Bosch’s depictions of Hell are going to look like a vicarage tea-party.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)