The roc bird had a large role in the medieval world, but is not often thought of in the modern world because it is extinct and its legend is losing popularity.
What is the roc bird?
That’s a great question. We know for sure that the roc bird was a thing of myths. No one really knows what the roc bird is though there are plenty of stories and legends of a large bird that swooped down and wrecked havoc in villages.
It is believed that the roc bird existed, but no one’s exactly sure what version of the roc bird is the actual roc bird. Many believe that the roc bird was actually what we refer to as the elephant bird. The elephant bird was a large bird that lived in Madagascar and could not fly. The elephant bird is now extinct.
The elephant bird
The roc bird, or what we may now refer to as the elephant bird, was about 10 feet tall and lived until sometime in the 1600s. Not much is known about the elephant bird, but based on fossil records it’s believed that the elephant bird looked somewhat like a modern day ostrich with a very stout, round middle section.
A few roc bird legends
The roc bird was amazingly famous in the 1500s. Many parents told their children that the gigantic roc bird would swoop down from the sky and carry them away if they went to certain areas. This, of course, was not true and was a parenting technique used to prevent kids from getting into trouble. It’s possible that the people of the 1500s actually believed that the bird would indeed carry the children away, but it might be safer to assume they did it to keep the kids in check.
The roc bird also played a role in the tales of Arabian Nights. This tale spins a fantastic story about how the roc bird, who was so large its body actually blocked out the sun, flew down from the sky and carried Sinbad to safety after he was involved in a shipwreck. Another version of this Arabian Nights story involving the roc bird says the bird killed two men by dropping boulders on them.
Some believe that the boulder story involving the roc bird was a way to explain why meteors had fallen from the sky. Before science became a booming industry, people used stories to explain the inexplicable. It’s very possible that the roc bird emerged as a way to explain certain natural phenomenon.
