The other day I asked my kids to name five species that didn’t really exist. It took them just a few moments to list off unicorns, pixies, trolls, jawas, and wookies. I pressed for more, and they kept coming and coming.

I’d learned in school that mythological creatures had woven themselves into the fabric of the human experience since the genesis of our species, but I found it amazing that my own children, aged 3 and 7, could already tell the real from the fantastic.

Such an exchange could have happened anywhere in the world, as regional mythologies abound as much as they persist. In Africa there are tokoloshes, jengus, and little troublesome sprites that wreak havoc on personal property and lives; in Europe there are werewolves, vampires, gnomes, and faeries; while in Asia and the Americas there are entire pantheons of spirits, plus anthropomorphic beasts like the yeti and sasquatch. There are also creatures hungover from the ancient world like lapiths, hydras, and cyclops’, each more famous than every American Idol contestant. It’s an entire animal kingdom wrought wholly by our imaginations, hopes, and fears. Of course nobody assumes that they are real. One can readily imagine the Greeks giggling at Hercules.

In the twentieth century, two writers added new myths and brought old ones back to life. JRR Tolkien gave us wood elves, ring-wraiths, hobbits, and orcs, while his friend C.S. Lewis re-awoke our appreciation for the inventions of the ancients with centaurs, minotaurs, and an interpretation of God as seen through the prism of the natural world. Sadly, the post-war period wasn’t all that impressive, as the traditional mediums in which our imaginations flourished the most – books and oral stories – gave way to the visual mediums of television and film, where all is fantasy by definition.

I very much doubt that Alien, Predator, Godzilla, or the creature from the Black Lagoon will have the staying power that gorgons and dwarves easily boast. Even ET will fade from our collective consciousness as a mere comedic footnote. Truly, only one director seems to have been able to stand in the same shoes as Hesiod, Herodotus, and Homer, and that is George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars films.

Lucas gave us Sand People, the Jedi, Jabba, and dozens of others, all archetypes echoing myths perpetuated from classical times until today. It’s still too early to know which of his creatures will survive for three thousand years or more. I thought Yoda would be a good bet, all wise and Moses-like, but a tour of the internet – the new New Testament – suggests it won’t be a creature or a droid at all, but rather a machine.

There have been plenty of mechanical things that have wormed their way into the cultural zeitgeist since the advent of motion pictures. Terminator, the Transformers, and HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey spring immediately to mind (there are many others), but these are devices that have been made conscious through the wonders of alien or domestic technologies, and will almost certainly be cast aside as so much cultural detritus (like Care Bears and Klingons). What I instead see sticking around is a device, something that is manipulated. I’m not talking about the X-wing or the Tie-fighter, or even the Millenium Falcon. None of Lucas’ machines – despite being cool enough for young lads and lasses to drop dimes on (for diecast and plastic replicas in minitaure) – exist outside of their original contexts, except one.

I’m referring, of course, to the menacing AT-AT, also known as the Imperial Snow Walker, first seen in Lucas’ second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back.

When I first saw these quadrupedal giants emerging from the snowy haze, advancing on the rebel defense lines on the ice planet of Hoth, my seven year old ass froze in its movie theater seat. Here was a machine that instilled more dread than a Panzer tank, more joy than a Spitfire, and more envy than Magnum’s red Ferrari. So strong was its appeal that it’s almost as if — like the creatures of the classical world — the AT-AT had always existed in the imagination without ever having been seen for real. And like the beasties conjured by the ancients, it now exists outside its original context. Today, the AT-AT just is...on t-shirts, as graffiti, as pop art, as deviant public fornicator, as dessert, as audio design…even as dutiful pet.

For confirmation, check out the gallery of found images that I’ve compiled below:

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Mark my words, when the next civilisation picks up from the one we’ve left behind, they’ll be hard-pressed knowing whether they existed for real or not.