The main thing that makes humans different from animals is the ability to imagine.
From time immemorial, human beings imagined and wrote about mythical creatures with supernatural powers. From ancient Egyptian civilization to our own, ancient people imagined mythical creatures and created many stories about them. Here is a list of a few mythical creatures from across the globe.
Dragons are mythical creatures that look like flying dinosaurs or big-sized lizards with wings and have the ability to fly and emit fire from its mouth. No one is sure from where actually the myth of dragons started but it’s popularly believed that it originated in China. Dragons were part of various fictitious literature and stories. It was already a very popular mythical creature that became more famous after the American fantasy drama series Game of Thrones, adapted from a series of fantasy novels titled A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.
The myth of unicorns is found in many ancient civilizations including our own Indus Valley Civilization where the image of an animal-like unicorn is found in stamp seals as old as around 2000 BC. The actual myth of unicorns started in Greek civilization in 400 BC when the Greek historian Ctesias first documented a unicorn-like animal in his writings about the ancient region of India which was expanded till the present day Afghanistan. Many prominent historical figures, like Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, and even Julius Caesar, wrote about unicorn-like creatures. The ancient writings about unicorns described them as ferocious, swift, and impossible to capture, with a horn on their forehead. In a few other myths, some unicorns had wings also which helped them to fly and the horn of unicorns has magical powers that can cure many types of ailments.
The myth of mermaids has captivated people across the globe and many sailors during the mid-centuries even claimed to spot these half-human, half-fish creatures. The Disney series of Ariel, a beautiful mermaid made them very famous and before and after that also many stories have mermaid-like creatures in them. Mostly mermaids are described as beautiful creatures but in some stories, they were described as monsters also. Nevertheless, the myths of mermaids were always famous and will remain so in the future also.
