TIL that a bunch of medieval manuscripts featured illustrations of knights fighting giant snails, and no one knows why

Monks did most of the writing and artwork.

Monks main diet was brassicas.

They grew their own food.

Do the math, it's wish fulfillment

The ones with the rabbits are pretty messed up as well!

The exact same thing will happen hundreds of years from now with amogus memes and :.|:;

I saw this years ago and I still think it was primitive office humor. Snails ate delicious plants and there were probably monks waging a war against them. The incredulity of fighting so hard against an enemy so weak was funny.

Permanently Deleted

A few hundred years from now, historians are going to be equally confused by the horse-sized duck images ...

Not friends of the gentle racing snails? How sad...

Well, do you see any giant snails around? No? Then thank those knights

Ye olde memes.

Imagine future civilization digging out some of today's memes...

Honestly, it would be amazing if the answer was that large mollusks actually existed and were poorly documented.

Because they probably had a great sense of humour, comedy clubs and memes back then too, but hey let's ignore that for just a moment to imagine how hardcore a knight you would have to be to fight off Cthulhu snails

Did they also take that challenge with the immortal snail?

I think we know the real answer.

Humanity was ruled by giant snails and their hyper intelligent queen, and it was only through the bravery of these fine knights were our shackles cast off and the mollusk menace thrown down.

And, in great effort to hide our collective shame, all knowledge about this was intentionally purged, Save for a few manuscripts who managed to be overlooked or were kept in hiding, so hints of humanities true history would be known.

Oh dear. I read that as ‘fisting’ at first.

I picked the wrong day to give up sniffing glue.

"And if you join our ranks today, they never will!"

-Me, while extending my hand out in invitation for YOU READING THIS to join the...

Associated

Society of

Snail

Hunters and

Ancient

Truth

Seekers

...yes, I know. Yes, we're technically the "A.S.S.H.A.T.S."... Yes very funny, okay, have your moment... It's a secret society okay, so it doesn't actually even come up, nobody will know, it's fine.... IT'S FINE.

It's fun to draw. Mine were cowboys fighting snails.

Gardeners... Nuff said

Garden warfare!

I mean, I would guess dragons were a thing because of dinosaur skulls being found a long time ago. There were also giant dinosaur mollusk shells, so maybe this is the equivalent?

He links to this great Reynard the fox poem about fighting a snail: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29320962@N07/3050276900

Its easy to forget that yeolden times were also capable of satire.

Ever heard of the Voynich manuscript? Imo human expression finds a way, church or not, technology or not.

Go fighting flail snails

Is that writing in the pictures old English? I can't make any of it out.

I hate long articles with lots of theories and the ending is "we don't know".