As it turns out, giant one-eyed skulls did belong to an ancient ancestor, a prehistoric ancestor of the elephant, a creature we named Deinotherium Giganteum, which means “terrible beast.”

This wasn’t actually known until the late 19th century, 2,600 years after The Odyssey was written. With the benefit of centuries of scientific research backing us up, we could smugly dismiss this whole giant Cyclops nonsense as fantasy perpetrated by an ignorant, ancient people. And we could go back to simply enjoying our modern comic book fantasies of the Cyclops.

But knowing what we now know, is our modern disbelief still secure?

In this video, presenter Frederick Tamagi discusses how we should engage myth in the modern age.