Studying the Obvious #5
Today, I’m going to refute a study that, on the face of it, sounds obvious, but is really a bunch of crap.
Professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida has done the math and figured that vampires are a mathematical impossibility.
Why is this crap, you ask? Simply put the good professor’s assumptions about vampires were dubious.
He estimated that the human population was around 536 million people in 1600 and assumed that he first vampire was created around this time. If Dracula bit one person per month and turned each victim, who would then have bitten one person per month, the human population would have to had doubled every month in order to keep pace. Clearly, it has not, as we are only now approaching the 6.3 billion mark a scant 400 years later.
Several problems here:
1) Vampires don’t turn their victims by simply biting them. Everybody knows that you have to drink a vampire’s blood to be turned. They can be -and often are- very selective about whom they turn.
2) Vampires are known to hibernate for long periods of time. Years can go by between feedings.
3) The idea of Vampires, or similar blood-sucking, near-immortal, super-strong creatures have been around for a lot longer then 400 years. The Babylonian Lilu, Sumerian Akhkharu and Indian Vetalas are just a few examples. Furthermore, the preponderance of similar legends among varied and disparate cultures implies some common origin.
So a study like this has enough holes in it that even a layperson like me can tear it up. Do vampires as we know them really exist? I would bet that they don’t. But even if they aren’t real, something made our forbears write down stories about them… There’s something out there.
Professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida has done the math and figured that vampires are a mathematical impossibility.
Why is this crap, you ask? Simply put the good professor’s assumptions about vampires were dubious.
He estimated that the human population was around 536 million people in 1600 and assumed that he first vampire was created around this time. If Dracula bit one person per month and turned each victim, who would then have bitten one person per month, the human population would have to had doubled every month in order to keep pace. Clearly, it has not, as we are only now approaching the 6.3 billion mark a scant 400 years later.
Several problems here:
1) Vampires don’t turn their victims by simply biting them. Everybody knows that you have to drink a vampire’s blood to be turned. They can be -and often are- very selective about whom they turn.
2) Vampires are known to hibernate for long periods of time. Years can go by between feedings.
3) The idea of Vampires, or similar blood-sucking, near-immortal, super-strong creatures have been around for a lot longer then 400 years. The Babylonian Lilu, Sumerian Akhkharu and Indian Vetalas are just a few examples. Furthermore, the preponderance of similar legends among varied and disparate cultures implies some common origin.
So a study like this has enough holes in it that even a layperson like me can tear it up. Do vampires as we know them really exist? I would bet that they don’t. But even if they aren’t real, something made our forbears write down stories about them… There’s something out there.
posted by Unknown at 6:47 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Mike, for some insight into why so many cultures and religions have myths concerning blood, take a look at Leonard Shlain's new book Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution. He mentions the vampire myth early on.
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