The Satyr - A Cryptid like You and Me?
Cryptozoology ArticleOh boy, this one. Well, we all need to get started somewhere and I dislike erasing one's history just because it is unpleasant, so let's talk about The Satyr, a terrible article from when I barely spoke English but didn't know it.
By the late 90's, I was reading and writing in several mailing lists related to topics that interested most nerds at that time. First and foremost paleontology and cryptozoology, where I proposed such weird ideas as Tyrannosaurus being closely related to Compsognathus because of similarities in the skull or even Spinosaurus being aquatic. Of course, now tyrannosaurs are considered Coelurosaurs (like Compsognathus, but not closely related) and Spinosaurus turned out to indeed be at least semi-aquatic.
Be that as it may, I also got into contact to American cryptozoologist Loren Coleman. Not to be confused with science fiction writer Loren Coleman, whose entries in the Crimson Skies universe from around the same time are also on my bookshelf.
This lead to me eventually submitting an article to the cryptozoology magazine Crypto, covering the idea the satyr known from Greek mythology where traces of late-surviving neanderthals the Greek might still have met.
The idea was not mine (it was Boris Porshnev's in 1968), the English on display was absolutely terrible, but this still is my first published work in English. At least it's predated by two years to not be my first published overall work, that honor going to the unfinished German short-story fragment Erwachen.
Well, on the upside, the idea itself is still considered every now and then in academia, but credited to the correct inventor.
April 2001
Available in:
Crypto - Hominology Special Number 1
