Horse-Men (Horse Body; Human Face)

[EnolaGaia]

As this article in New Scientist shows, belief in animal-men is very old indeed:
Animal-headed humans appear in earliest art
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991590

The originally posted link is dead. I cannot locate the linked material at the current New Scientist site.

Here's the full content of the linked article, salvaged from the Wayback Machine.

Animal-headed humans appear in earliest art
19:00 21 November 01
Leigh Dayton

Paintings of mythical animal-human hybrids are among the oldest surviving art ever produced. New research suggests that minotaurs, satyrs, the werewolves beloved of Hollywood and even Egypt's animal-headed gods are latecomers to the art scene compared with the "therianthropes" carved by the earliest artists on bone and painted on stone.

Antelope-human hybrids are among the creatures depicted (Photo: Werner Forman Archive)

"They go back to the dawn of humanity, to the first fully modern people," claims rock art expert Paul Ta�on of the Australian Museum in Sydney.

He has found that in Australia and South Africa there are dozens of animal-headed people in rock paintings and carvings more than 10,000 years old. Some may be far older. The oldest was an androgynous feline-headed statuette from Germany, thought to be around 32,000 years old.

Together with Christopher Chippindale at Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Ta�on conducted the first rigorous worldwide survey of prehistoric therianthrope images. They surveyed nearly 5000 examples of rock art, most from northern Australia, Europe and South Africa.

Composite beings

They recorded the frequency and types of therianthropes portrayed, and reviewed their age. Because many images have not been radiocarbon dated, the team also assessed artistic style and content - say, portrayals of extinct animals - and looked at whether motifs were superimposed on top of each other.

Ta�on and Chippindale say that belief in therianthropes was common in the distant past. Although they comprised only about one per cent of the works studied, the researchers found examples worldwide, indicating that today's fascination with hybrids such as werewolves is nothing new. Early humans were just as fascinated by supernatural "composite" beings who exist between the everyday and spirit worlds.

Sven Ouzman of the National Museum of South Africa in Bloemfontein says it is notoriously difficult to date rock art, so he is sceptical of the claim that therianthropes were the first beings ever portrayed. "[But] what Paul and Chris's paper does do is set up a testable hypothesis," he says.

SALVAGED FROM: https://web.archive.org/web/20011125162917/https://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991590

 

[James_H]

Arnold Böcklin, famous for his Island Of The Dead paintings, did quite a unique line in 'realistic' centaurs.

 

[lordmongrove]

He wanted to catch a bus to the city centaur.

 

[McAvennie]

I refer again here to the horse pictured on p75 of FT364.

Could this type of view of a horse be the source of human-faced horse myths?

In fact, the more horses noses I look at, the more convinced I am that they are the truth behind any number of sightings down the years.

Little green men, roadside phantoms... A horse with its nose stuck over a fence, illuminated by a torch or car headlights, seen quickly by someone and the rest filled in by paredolia...

 

[LordRsmacker]

Loads of women think I'm part human, and part horse



I think it might be something to do with me leaving great piles of shit everywhere to trip over.

 

[king123]

I live in Drogheda and can verify the horse-with-a-man's-face story. I remember reading it in the local newspaper when I was about 10 (c.1983). As I recall it happened to an engaged couple. The report (scared the crap out of me!) told how the couple's car cut out on a dark country lane, after which the entity appeared on the dark road in front of them. It appeared to be an ordinary horse, but when it stomped its front legs up on the bonnet and thrust its face to the windscreen they saw, to their horror, its human head. It screamed in at them for a couple of minutes before disappearing. They drove to the local hospital where they were treated for nervous shock.

Legend has it that in penal times the priest in that area visited the local landlord to appeal for more lenient treatment of his parishoners. He rode on horseback and his dog accompanied. The story goes that the landlord ordered his men to seize the priest, and a struggle ensued during which the horse stamped it's hooves on a window sill and the dog left its paw print on a window pane of the landlord's house. Apparently they are still there to this day (its private property). Anyway, all three were beheaded and this is said to be the origin of the horse-man.
I've never heard of any other sighting of the horse-man other than the one mentioned above, and also never heard the legend of the beheaded priest until after the report was published.

I've since looked in vain in the local library for the newspaper report. Thanks Justin, for the original post containing the woman's name - I can investigate further now...