Bigfoot Vs A Goat

If your first guess about the title is the feature match at Wrestlemania, I am sorry but you are mistaken. However within later Greek and the emergence of Roman culture the large hairy wild man did lose out to a more popular goat. Throughout Greek society there were tales and fables about these wild men which were larger, stronger, and hairier than regular man. They lived in forests and dense wooded areas. And had no connection to the modern society of the time. With the spread of Roman culture and influence came a new creature of the wild, the satyr.

Romans brought many beliefs and ideals to Greece. Some of them were blended into Greek culture and religion of the time. One such theme was the satyr. First seen in Roman culture as a faun, god of the forests. They were half man/half goat and sometimes depicted with horns of a goat, capable of both helping and harming the modern man of that time. Even though the image had changed from looking more like what we think of as Bigfoot these creatures still held some of the same basic characteristics.

Similarities between wild men and satyrs:

• Both were seen as being one with the forests and nature
• The roots of the names for both creatures can be traced back to the Greek term “hairy one”
• Both acted off of basic instincts, many of which modern man of the time had been able to harness
• While the satyr had the lower half of a goat he retained an extremely hairy appearance on his human-like torso and face. Often seen with very long full beards and hair
• Both were depicted as males only at the time. Later poets and bards would add females in their tales, however they were both an all male race in early accounts
• Encounters with both are typically in wooded areas or isolated grazing pastures
• Both have been described as roaming the wilds even before the Gods

The way the Greeks would incorporate this is instead of tales of wild men, they replaced them with a mythical creature named Pan. A satyr who was god of the wild. He acts on instinct and was instrumental in helping to blend the two cultures of Greece and Rome.
In ancient text about the Roman Colosseum poets would write that the satyr was portrayed with different varieties of goats as well as apes. This lends to the acknowledgement that the satyr was recognizable as a wild man of the forest who was popularly depicted until the emergence of Pan and fauns.

Is it too far-fetched to think that the Greeks took something that was real, the wild men of the time, and put a mythical spin on them to make them more interesting as well as fanciful like the Roman faun? After all what is romantic about a wild man roaming in the woods when there could be a half human and half goat creature who loves music, food, wine, and women. You can easily see why a smelly and solitary Bigfoot would lose out on this one.

However the tale does not stop there. In the King James Bible Isaiah 34:14 reads “The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there and find for herself a place of rest.” I think a very plausible theory for this has two parts. First the writers are trying to incorporate Greek and Roman figures to help people who were holding out on converting see that Christianity could incorporate their religions. Second is that they were not talking about a mythical satyr but a wild man who has been documented throughout history, using the more popular name to call the creature.

The satyr would later rise to fame again. In the 17th century tales of them would surface with the same characteristics. A creature one with nature and the forests, man-like, lived off of nothing more than basic natural instinct. Today we know these creatures as orangutans. In fact, the first scientific name given to them was Simia_satyrus.