“In the woods you will find a beautiful place. A deep wood exists which contains a place that lies in your dreams. To find this, you must spend many months hiking through the trees.”
This rather redundant quote is an ancient one, the origin of which is unknown. The earliest known script that contains this says ‘according to another person.’ This legend is a little known fact (though some would say it is an opinion, as it has never been discovered, even with technology such as satellites) that has never been proved or disproved.
But where did the legend originate? Sure, someone before that earliest time this quote was made might have gotten it directly from his brain, but few are content with such an explanation. The story was dubbed legend in 100 CE, when someone looked at it and said, ‘this hasn’t been proved!’ This is probably the only time it really went public so that it was common knowledge. There are more than 1,000 recorded events of someone going into the woods in search of such a place.
Since then, there are no such recorded sights. The adventurous person is one in a million, and the person who knows the legend is one in a billion. It has survived through the 2-6 people (at a time) that have known it throughout the ages. Otherwise, either one has seen it but dismissed it and forgotten it, or they have never seen it at all.
But now there is evidence that it never was anything significant. We may not have seen the earliest script that contained this quote, but we have likely seen the earliest pictures that describe this quote.
Recently, archeologists have discovered specific carvings in caves that have been known to contain dead remains of ancient humans. Though they knew nothing about the legend, they did publicize the findings, and no one interpreted them in any way except for us.
The carvings were simple—a series of trees with a circular area left alone, in which there was something to represent freedom or happiness, such as a cloud.
So the legend might have originated as a person’s dream, which was soon interpreted, and the quote lived on. And then in the year 100, they dubbed it a legend. And now we can see how it was originally a dream.
Here are some links to describe other features of this legend: