A similar iron penis legend can be found in the Indian town of Dantipur. Then there's the nearby legend from Chattisgarh, wherein the hero simply yanks a snake out of there with a stick and makes it magically fix all the dicks it had eaten.

But the gold medal definitely goes to Maori mythology, which has the hero Maui crawl into the vagina of a sleeping goddess to win immortality for humans (thanks?). Unfortunately, a bird cracks up laughing at the sight, and the goddess wakes up and bites Maui in half with her obsidian cooch fangs. And that's why we're not Highlanders. We feel like there might be some hidden subtext to all of these stories, but if so, it currently escapes us.

Lest you think this is strictly a European myth, the Beiteddine Palace in Lebanon (1788) has the same story. Emir Bashir Shihab II had the place built as the Lebanese version of the Playboy Mansion, with a grand apartment, a harem, and a guest house that dwarfed many castles. To make sure no other ruler copied his style, the emir reportedly ordered that the head architect's hands be cut off. The architect wasn't blinded, though, so at least he could see his brand-new stumps.

But the Taj Mahal (1653) has all of them beat for the sheer scale of its mythical cost. Unlike his wimpy other counterparts, this mythical version of Shah Jahan didn't merely mutilate the head designer. Supposedly, every single one of the craftsmen had their eyes gouged and their hands cut off to make double sure they never built anything similar (they could have worked with their feet, though). Considering there were 20,000 workers, this must have taken a while.

In this case, the message behind the legends seems straightforward: Craftsmen, always get paid up front.

What's even weirder is that giving humans the knowledge of fire tends to be followed by cruel and unusual punishment, usually for all eternity. Prometheus was chained to a rock and had an eagle eat his regenerating liver forever. Amirani was tied to an iron pole that would sink deeper into the mountain every time he tried to free himself. Nanabozho had his fur set on fire as he ran back to the humans. Azazel was bound in a jagged rocky tomb in the desert until the Day of Judgement.

Jacob Jordaens"At least it's not a duck."

So what caused this myth? Maybe this is based off of a primitive fear of fire, knowing that it's necessary to survive, but also could burn an entire village down with a single stray spark. We give praise to the figure who gave it to us, even as we know the gods had a good reason to keep it to themselves. Or maybe a time traveler just hopped around to all these cultures with a lighter, and then got arrested by the time cops. We know which we choose to believe.

The earliest version of the story involves the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh. In a fragment dating from at least the 17th century BCE, Gilgamesh is buried under the Euphrates. Later, the Visigoth leader Alaric was said to have been buried under the Busento, after which all the workers involved were massacred. Attila the Hun was supposedly dumped under yet another river, after which the workers were also murdered, but probably twice as hard.

Yet another version involves Genghis Khan, with the added detail that the warriors who killed the workers were themselves killed by another group of warriors ... who were then killed by another group of warriors ... and so on, until the legend kind of tails off (presumably because everyone in Mongolia was dead).

Via Wikimedia CommonsSeems sort of overkill to protect his treasure of six cats.

Even the prophet Daniel got upgraded to a river burial in Medieval Islamic accounts, although they left out the traditional massacre. Maybe it was implied by then.

It's worth noting that none of the legends are considered credible by historians. They mostly don't even make sense. How does killing workers keep the location secret? Someone still had to be there to kill them. Also, a big pile of dead workers seems like kind of a giveaway.

In old-timey Europe, there was a whole slew of legends and fairy tales about brave heroes fucking up the giants who ostensibly went around eating cows and kidnapping women back then. In England, King Arthur cut one's balls off while Jack killed and outwitted a whole bunch.

Wiki CommonsIn this case, "outwitting" means removing the wits with a fucking pickax.

In Germany, the Brave Little Tailor tricked two into killing each other, then carved their hearts out for good measure.

Alexander Zick

In Norway, the stock boy hero tricks a giant troll into cutting his stomach open to win an eating match.

Theodor KittelsenThere's real thin line between hero of myth and serial killer of myth.

While these specific stories originated in the Middle Ages, anthropologists from Durham University claim the root of this tale is actually over 5,000 years old. Across the pond, some Native American tribes passed down tales about having to defeat the man-eating giants who were the original inhabitants of the land. And in Norse mythology, Midgard (Earth) was created specifically to protect our squishy human selves from evil giants. Thor himself faced them in both battles of wits and straight-up battles. If Thor: Ragnarok was more faithful to the source material, the movie would have ended with Thor smashing Hulk's skull with his hammer.

It's possible that all these tales are based on distant memories of early man prevailing over our uglier, stronger prehistoric competitors -- so by slaying those giants, we're truly getting rid of a part of ourselves. We suppose it's also possible that these stories were all based on a real, regular-sized dude, and they kept making the guy bigger with every telling until eventually he was the size of a skyscraper.

Greg Tuff is a writer and comedian. Follow him on Twitter @Decaps86. Alex Perry is a freelancer who wrote an adult novel about time-traveling stalker and a heartwarming kids' book.

For more on the vagina dentata mythos, we'd be remiss not to suggest the movie Teeth.

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