Dragons

treeve

Major Contributor
Mystery or Myth or Truth?
Did they exist as anything more than the Victorian ramblings on the sight of 'Dinosaur' discoveries of bones and fossils? Darwinians toss the chestnut into the fire of six limbs versus four, as everywhere else. Who said anything about them being Earth founded? Dragons were a part of Tibetan and Chinese folklore, long before the Victorians were invented. Lindworms of Scandinavia (though two legged), the Knucker of Britain, The Asian Lung (Chinese Dragon, of nine forms); Wyverns with four limbs appear in Britain in painting in the 15th century, the Mexican Amphithere and others. I have always maintained that Sumerian writing was first - the Sumerians wrote of a Dragon ..
AnZu 3000 BC, the Egyptaians also wrote of the dragon Apep in 3100 BC. St Columbia is said to have first seen a monster in Loch Ness; Dragons a part of culture in the East and recorded from 700 AD onwards. As I have said elsewhere, evidence would be thin on the ground and without clear direct observation from present day experts (they were not there), it is hard to say in either direction.
It does appear curious to me that a 'fictional' being should form such a strong part of folklore in many parts of the world - that in Australia being far the oldest, a lake having been formed by the Fire dragon (allegedly). Just where did this mystical beast arrive in the collective conscience. It is not as if newspapers or the internet was available then. People barely were aware of any other peoples in the world, let alone have any true concept of a world, or of the universe. And then, the books by a man of the cloth, Edward Topsell, with Gesner and Belon in around 1607 produce a book of the beasts of the earth, including dragons. Many animals drew greatly on Biblical references and on Greek Myth. Then Aldrovaldi and Kircher, produced images and biologies of dragons. Perhaps our ancestors actually saw some surviving 'dinosaurs', or carried some vestige of a memory of these giant monsters in their dream consciousness from previous ages of Man? As lovely a concept that it may be that there was a race of dragon beings from another Time or another World bringing a gentle magic with them, it would seem more likely that Man had a memory of these fearsome beasts, and with the aid of Medieval Natural History, mixed with Religious Roots and re-worked by Victorian Exploration of the world about them and the need for the Fairy Tale, has produced this wonderful legend. But did it? Just how did it come together and why do the dates not match? What do you think???
 
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