What roc, Europeans have learned after meeting with fairy tales "Thousand and One Nights."When it happened - hard to say.Perhaps after years east voyage of Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, and maybe a little earlier or later.The magical world of fairy tales, absorb millennial folklore of Eastern peoples, captivated Europeans.According to some researchers, the creation of this fabulous cycle a hand not only obscure narrators, but also quite specific literary ancient Persia, India and the Arab countries.Whatever it was, the Europeans appreciated the fabulous exotic world of the East, where the magic roc occupy a worthy place.
In Europe, there were no tales, which featured a giant bird, so the Arabian tales, in which people are fighting these winged monster, there have been what is called a "bang."Later historians, biologists and writers of the Old World began to wonder: why is it that in Europe, information about the huge birds there, but in the Arab tradition of more than a lot.They began to look for, where is could be driven fabulous roc, or at least a prototype.
ostriches Europeans learned long ago, but they were watery in order to initiate an attack from the writers of tales of magic inspiration.When researchers tried to analyze the legend for meeting travelers with a bird, it turned out that almost all surprisingly unanimously point to the island of Madagascar.But by the time the Europeans on the island in the seventeenth century, they did not find anything like it.For some time believed that information about the giant bird - no more than a poetic exaggeration, and perhaps fiction from beginning to end, and firmly established in science and society.
But very soon the fauna of Madagascar, researchers have discovered that the island truly were carried giant flightless birds, and they were killed after the Europeans discover the island.Perhaps the extermination of a hand and numerous European pirates, who even founded their own state in Madagascar, which existed for a long time, and only after, when the pirates have become arrogant beyond measure, destroyed by French troops.Annals of pirates led, newspapers did not publish, and their stories about the hunt for a giant bird could well be regarded by his contemporaries as the traditional sea tales.
According to current estimates, roc Arabian Nights (or Aepyornis adopted today by first name) reaches a height of five meters.Growth of more than respectable, but not enough to call it the name "elephant bird", which appears in some of the Rukh Arab sources.According to the Arab Movement fed elephants and able to lift into the air, according to various estimates, from one to three of these huge animals.A flight roc creating a lot of inconvenience for the Mariners: she closed the wings of the sun and the wind is so created that he had even drowned ships.
course, no five-meter Aepyornis such outrages could not do, even if he really wanted.Apparently, the Arabs, having become acquainted with Aepyornis took his chick, and his mother, in their opinion, had to have a much more large size and, of course, must be able to fly.And eat a giant must also giants, hence the stories about elephants raised in the air.
ancient Arabs had no idea either about the ecological equilibrium or about aerodynamics.Otherwise, they would know that a bird the size of these conditions in the planet Earth can not fly at all.And to maintain the number of roc sufficient for normal reproduction of the population, are not enough any elephants.
