Werewolf! There. A wolf!
Everyone knows what a werewolf is. A shapeshifter by day a man but by night of a full moon, they transform into a bloodthirsty, beastly, gigantic wolf.
But did you know that there is a wolf transformation story in most ancient cultures? In Roman mythology there is Romulus and Remus, twins abandoned by their mother and raised by a pack of wolves. Greek mythology has King Lycaon, who tried to serve Zeus the entrails of a child and was turned into a wolf as punishment. Following suit, if children were sacrificed in Zeus’ temple it was said that he would transform the perpetrator into a wolf. If they abstained from human flesh for 9 years, they would be restored to their human form. The Scandinavian Vikings had stories about “wolf-coated men”
Werewolves were so prevalent that they were even written into laws in Medieval times and there were trials where people accused of cannibalism and murder would be convicted of being a werewolf.
Tales of wolves as the bad guys are so ingrained in human nature that they’re childhood stories and fables we tell our children. The three little pigs and the big bad wolf; red riding hood; the boy who cried wolf… and yet most homes have a wolf descendent in them.
