What is the prototypical "monster"?

inb4 "man"

>>51237211
Frankenstein

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The big bad wolf.

>>51237211
Bear.

>>51237267
Woman.

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>>51237328

This right here. The first monster was the ravenous wolf, just at the edge of the camp, just outside of the light of the fire, waiting for the perfect moment to pick off the smallest of your tribe.

>>51237418
This.

"Bear" isn't even a direct word for it; it's derived from a euphemism, due to the fact that proto-germans were so scared of them they preferred to refer to them indirectly; like "The Kindly Ones" refers to The Furies or Erinyes in ancient Greek parlance.

>>51237211
What's a "monster"? (Seriously, it's an important philosophical question if you want to answer that one. Is a monster evil? Is it unnatural? Is it inhuman? Is a wild animal a monster? Is a serial killer?)

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The snake.

The first "monsters" were very likely simply animals, with no further distortion. This then lead to animals with exaggerated traits (such as intelligence or size) or folkloric misconceptions (crocodiles crying out of pity for their victims, or that oysters are stones), then into combinations of animals due to the distortion of trying to describe an animal to someone who's never seen it (such as the "monocerous" having the head of a stag, the body of a horse, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a single very long black horn growing from the forehead), followed by invented animal combinations (Griffin, centaur, pegasus).

For the question of which animal was first to be thought of as a "monster," the snake is found all around the world and also kills the most humans directly, with only insects killing more humans through the spread of disease. They are very different from humans, being cold legless reptiles, and also serve as a base for a multitude of monsters, ranging from dragons to Echidna, the Greek mother of monsters.

This is, of course, all baseless conjecture.

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>>51237211
Giants.

>>51238160
As it happens, the snake also had a great deal many positive connotations to ancient people (wisdom, medicine, prophecy, immortality, etc.). In fact, it's been theorized that the demonization of the snake by ancient Jews was sort of a response to its veneration by local Canaanites. To this day, in Hebrew mythology, "lokesh nekhashim" ("Snake Whisperer") describes an evil kind of magic user.

>>51237211
Bears. No, seriously.

Bears, snakes, and any animal associated with disease and famine. For early man those things were back-breaking and could wipe out entire families. There's a reason two of the horsemen of the apocalypse are pestilence and famine/locusts wear slaughtered in droves.

>>51239722
Famine was originally conquest.

>>51237820

Similar to the jaguar of the Amazon. Locals believed speaking it's name would invite its appearance. I didn't know the superstition was more universal.

>>51239765
No, it's Pestilence that got added later - originally Pestilence was just part of Death.

>>51239824
"speak of the devil"
Also, ya know one of the mesoamerican hells was the "house of jaguar".

>>51237784

Probably a leopard, considering Africa, but still.

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>>51237211

>>51240073
That looks like one of those /d/ things...

>>51238222
Giants
Trolls
Ogres
Oni

large raiders from the mountains basically

>>51240596
But both trolls and oni were originally used to describe immaterial evil spirits that caused misfortunes. The depiction as giant humanoids is RELATIVELY more modern (as in, "give or take a millennium").

>>51240073
I love the look on the Bull of Heaven's face
>it's a Monday.
>I just want to go home
>This is Gilgamesh's fault for spurning the love goddess's advances

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>>51240571
A Queen's Stallion/dorse?

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>>51242467