This is exactly my thoughts on this subject. Not to mention snakes can be found almost everywhere.

Also there are flying snakes, (Well they glide from tree to tree!) Chrysopelea, they are of the family Colubridae.
They can reach up to four feet in length, they mainly live in the trees in the lowland tropical rainforests of Southeast
and South Asia. Now imagine the stories that could spin off of a person seeing that back in ancient times.



Regards,
Tom

Wow i have never heard of such a creature. A snake that glides with out the use of wings. That is immensly clever and a very good find by you
I was only aware of the gliding lizards.

Good work man.

Thankyou, i apreciate the compliment. I think something i could use serious work on is my spelling though, having re looked at my last post. hehe.

Well, thank you Dariune!

I personally do not believe Dragons ever existed. I do not really care what ancient texts,
Hymns, or Cylinder Seals describe. People have, and always will have a vivid imagination.

Taking that into concideration, it is not really that hard to over-embellish a creature that
does exist, such as a Snake, Alligator/Crocodile, Lizard, even a Bird.



Regards,
Tom

They say that ignorance is bliss well i want to know is it true?

I agree, people always sensationalize stories of things that they have seen, so you can't really rely on witnesses, and sightings. Also people back in those earlyier years that those ancient texts were written weren't as educated about biology, and science in general, so that makes it even more likely that those stories weren't true, and were probably sensationalized.

Then you sir have a closed mind, if you open your mind to the world, you learn to believe in anything

But why would our ancestors acknowledge all over the world that such a fearsome monster (giant serepnt or dragon) is also a benificient god, protector and educator? This is the flaw in the basic premise that dragons are an amalgamation of the beasts universally feared by man'.

This gross contradiction then, suggests there is an unknown factor, that logically would be early man's actual contact with such a creature, that proved they were more than mere predators of man.

Actually there are several people here who I trust, who know my real name, that I am the director of a major museum and that I have several books and dozens of articles to my credit. As for the rest, I don't care what they think. Some have demonstrated they are little more than young adolescents teenagers with delusions of commanding dragons to kill their enemies. Do I really want people like that to know where I live? Or calling me up at work? Some of these people are genuinely sick, hateful people. Just read some of their attacks.

The people here "who matter" know everything I say here is 'credible'. And they know enough about the subject that it is not neccesary for me to post a source for every sentences I make here. This is ridiculous.

True, my attackers have demonstrated they know almost nothing about these subjects and contribute nothing to the discussions at all. They are too lazy to read my previous posts, and apparently don't know how to google sources on their own, which will verify my every sentencei. And why should I care if they think I am credible? . I KNOW, and anybody with any intelligence, also know that they are not credible in the least.

But why would whole human cultures all over the world turn such frightening creatures into protectors and givers of wisdom?

Only some cultures reverred the serpentine deities as benevolent. The celts of Wales, Ireland and Scotland did, but then they tended to associate the dragon with guarding, the earth and its spiritual associations and as beings of power. I have never read any texts describing dragons as a deity. More as a symbol.

Also as has been discussed Quetzalcoatl was supposed to be benevolent, but i really dont think he was a dragon. Just had some draconic features.

The Naga was beneficient once Bhudda had changed them but the Naga originally was just a snake deity worshipped by the Naga tribe in India.

Mostly dragons were symbols, in my opinion, conjured by people to explain or elaborate on a situation. Take Ddraig Goch. The legend goes that Y Ddraig Goch (The red dragon of Wales) defeating Gwiber (the lesser known white dragon) was symbolic of the Saxons inability to march into Wales.

Therefore using your logic we must base what we know on the legends. The dragons of that myth were fighting each other. But i think in actuality there were of course no dragons, they were just manifested in the imaginations of men at the time as a portent of things to come.

You seem to think that all cultures believed the same thing. They didnt. Their "dragons" (and i use the term loosely) were so wildly different some of them could hardly be described as the same creature.

You see thats just the thing DC! You take the evidence you read and believe it to be that way.
I on the other hand don't.



Regards,
Tom

I think that if you look at the serpent aspect of the myths it makes much more sense, and its the most simple explanation for the origin of the majority of 'dragon' entities.

take the aztecs for example; in their early culture 2 animals are powerful, the eagle and the serpent. Is it any wonder that a deity like Quetzalcoatl would appear?

Sometimes it is the amalgamation of 2 or more cult/tribal totems that lead to such composite entities, sometimes the root is more esoteric.


most often in mythology they are associated with life/death/rebirth...they are cthonic (associated with the underworld, fertility, ancestors and heros etc)
The dragonslayer part of the myth is there from the earliest stories.

Id agree with you dc that they are not simply an amalgamation of beasts universally feared by man, these animals meant more than that.

The transformation of the monster into a benevolent being is a standard mythological motif. Here's a children's version of the Buddhist story "Sticky Hair and Prince Five-Weapons:"

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/bt_5.htm

In this version, the monster becomes a benevolent fairy. In other versions, the Buddha-to-be preserves Sticky Hair's monstrous form, and appoints him to be the guardian of the forest which he formerly terrorized.

It is also the standard dream motif sometimes called "Unseen Monster," in the variant where the dreamer seeks out the initially dreaded and elusive monster, confronts him or her, and one way or another, the "monster" is no longer a threat, or never really was one in the first place.

(You may perform local search on UM for instances of "unseen monster" dreams. User "The Last Unicorn" posted a humdinger, which should be on her profile page's content section, but there have been several others as well.)

What so many people dream is bound to show up in our stories as well. It all comes from the same place.

That's a very good point, eight bits. I never thought of it in quite that way before.


If you really are what you say you are, you would know by now to provide your own sources, not to ask people to Google them themselves.

Also, I think you might have learned to recognize the difference between logical reasoning and sick, hateful attack. Of course, I can't discount the idea that you might be paranoid.

I can easily see why you wouldn't want to give your name and address out to everyone on this forum. But I'm also rather curious as to how you're going to avoid recognition once your book is out.

I'll agree that the naga seemed to be almost entirely a snake legend. But with the others, there are actually a lot of similarities in the various dragon legends. They often looked rather different in the artwork, but then it takes time, and imagination, to be able to put together the highly stylized depictions of real animals that many cultures made. If something like a fish, which the artist had seen, can become so stylized that it is hard to tell what it is, what about a creature that (we can both agree) the artist had never seen?

None of this, of course, proves dragons, bu think that the argument that they are in a related legend is rather strong.

No it's just common sense, you shouldn't believe everything people say.

I know this is way off the current subject in this topic, but I have a belief as to why dragon remains have yet to be found. a few actually. One, dragon wings could infact not be bone but cartiledge (sp) and therefor upon death and decomposition, the wings fully decompose not leaving any bone structures, the rest of the dragon could be believed remains of dinosaurs. Another belief is that Perhaps dragons are like our modern day elephants who travel a very long way to die. there could be such "dragon graveyards" in existance. there are many places in the world, in some of the mountain ranges and such, that have yet to be explored. or havent been explored for many centuries. I do believe in the existence of dragons. Perhaps they are all extinct now and the remains of such can be considered to be those of dinosaurs? perhaps we will never know?

Perhaps I've mislead you with my wording, my apologies if that is the case. I was thinking more along the lines of, for example the titans of ancient greek mythology, a great being's mundane actions (be it dying or some other action) create the world/universe that humans now live in.
As for the rainbow serpent behaving like a snake these stories show him to be doing just that-
First of all, I do apologise for using a site aimed more at upper primary school children as my first reference, but it does have a good collection of dreamtime stories (to me they appear to be a collection of Arnhem Land,North Queensland/Cape York and Central New South Wales stories. Unfortunately they don't really say where each one came from). The rainbow serpent story is toward the end of the page. It's interesting to see that despite being set in the Dreaming, that the actions of the rainbow serpent are spoken of in a manner that suggests they occured a long time before this story takes place Link
This next story shows him as a fearsome predator (and anyone reading it would be advised to note just how much like a typical constrictor his technique is. I can't really say anything about sea snakes, since I have no idea how they attack their prey, other than with powerful toxins) Link
This next one, whilst it is more of the intelligent creator vein, could possibly reflect an observation of certain species of snake and their dietry habits

And of course there's the version of my grandmother's people (unfortunately unverifiable via internet, so take it or leave it), where the Great Dividing Range (a mountain range that extends from Victoria to Queensland) is the exposed coils of the sleeping snake.
I've also heard a story (through one of the forum's members) that two mating 'rainbow serpents', created a large crater in Wolfe Creek.

Actually the tangent is quite relevent. Belief tends to transform as it migrates across time as and space. The spread of Bhuddism into China is a superb example, as we see the almagamation of old beliefs with the new.

In the information age, our cultural borders are so porous that we see more and more the emergence of universal claims of pan-global mythology.
All it takes these days is one person to stumble upon Joseph Nigg's 'The Book of Dragons & Other Mythical Beasts', for example, and suddenly the universal claim that all great serpents are dragons, becomes established fact (since the criteria for 'credibilty' seems to be 1.Is a published author, high ranking military officer, scientist with security clearence, etc... 2.Found on a global information exchange [the www.] ). Link
Or a misunderstanding of something presented as serpent divinity in myth and legend Link, as all people believed in the same serpent, and we can confirm that these great serpents existed as megafuana.
Of course the problem with these universal statements, is that they only take into consideration the superficial similarties (so from an argumentitive POV, is a hasty or sweeping generalisation).

My earlier point I tried to present to DC re: Radcliffe-Brown was- . Essentially he would have relied on an interpreter to translate for him, so his research would have been a little skewed as he would have had to 'mentally fill in the blanks' to bring those stories into his terms of understanding.
Additionally, by 1926 a few of those language/tribal groups were 'extinct', and despite his extensive travels, I doubt he came into contact with every group either, so he could not say (nor do I believe that he ever did) that all Aboriginal people believed in the rainbow serpent. Instead he identified a superficially similar pan-Australian myth within certain groups, and from there it was transformed to a universal pan-Austalian mythos. Which is all well and good, but that still lives a few missing links and some other elements that are overlooked (frogs and Kookaburras as rain and flood bringers/heralds).

And then there is the different descriptions of the serpents 'form' and habitat. In some mythology, the rainbow serpent is a rainbow (as he moves from waterhole to waterhole), and in others is a dark streak 'visible' in the milky way. If we look around the world, we see that other cultures have also looked at the night sky and imagined great snakes and dragons dwelling in the constellations, or present as the rainbow. But to say that over 50,000 years of time and space (and only recently have we developed the capability to rapidly share our culture and belief) that these people all believed the same thing requires some extraordinary proof. Be that secret hubs of civilisation, lost 'technology'/travel cabalities or flesh and blood superbeings.

IMO, your are more than correct in your ascertation that the Eurasian mythology was merely the result of gradual expansion due to the exchange of belief and culture.

So which culture do you claim did not originally regard dragons as beneficient Gods? The only possibilities may be some of the more barbarian cultures like the germanic people, who because of their illiteracy, we have no idea of their earliest beliefs. But even here, there are so many dragonforms in thier art, that this is probably unlikely. Dragon effigies on coffins suggest a guardian nature of dragons which is quite universal. So with peoples with virtually no records you cannot make a realistic appraisal. And if we concede that 'civlization' sprung from major centers like Mesopotamia and China, then in those places the dragons are essentially beneficient dieties, though sometimes with tempers.

Actually you dispute what real anthropologists agree on. That yes, these dragons have remarkable similarities despite being believed in al over the world.

The original Ddraig Goch really does not suggest a noble, protective symbol, but rather what the ancients probably regarded as "comedy" , that it was a stupid beast captured and subdued because of its taste for intoxicating beverages (mead). Perhaps even this is based on some real incidenct,t au'a a sfe d


And understand tha t I never proposed every dragon legend should be taken literally. For example, all of the dragon slaying fables are pure nonsense, though in some cases may be based on a dragon leaving an area.e obafairystoiresemust be o,

No, they could not be cartilidge becasue then they would have no lift capability at all. NO other animal has cartilidge wings. It simply wouldn't work.

And if you imagine any dragon slaying tales are true, itemss of skin, bones, claws and scales would certainly be highly prized trophies and found by archaeologists and preserved in churches (exactly as fake dragon remains are).

Our ancestors tell us why there are no dragon bones. They believed the dragons were gods or at least deities that did not die, much like they don't mention angels dying either. This is even carried to the modern fantasy literature where dragon have incredibly long lifespans, though this is perhaps the only thing the modern writers may have 'gotten right'.

If the dragons are sentient creatures, and did eventually die, they could eat the remains of their dead, and are capable of completely dissolving bones, exactly like a komodo dragon or crocodile. And of course, if they are the large, intellgent creatures as our ancestors described them, then only a fool would imagine a person ever killed one. There may be as many dragons today as in any times past. Only a dozen could still be responsible for the worlds dragon legends. The Bible says there are 70 of these sons of El, of which their deity Yahweh was the most important.

Perhaps some aborigines believed events in the sky were 'rainbow serpents', and in many places this may be all they saw of these creatures. But far too many of the stories suggest real, living creatures., who, for example, might eat a woman who contaminated its sacred pool with menstrual blood. Yes, such stories could be based on true predation by megafauna like the Megalania, but would people who were such observant experts of the natural world regard relatively stupid predators as beneficient Gods?

This is the problem with basing dragon legends on contact with normal animals. They are just not that impressive to be made into Gods. Becuse no matter how 'stupid' you may imagine ancient man, he really wasn't that stupid.

As I am sure you discovered yourself Arch, the more the subject is studied, one finds far more precedent for dragon legends to have a basis in fact, than less. And as more and more people populate the earth, prying into the most remote places, we have more and more 'dragon' sightings. More people may believe in dragons today, than in any previous period of history (though in some cases they may not be aware their diety was originally a dragon).

For someone who claims to be a published author on military history, this seems an odd statement.

No wolf can kill a healthy bullmoose, but half a dozen wolves acting in concert make short work of him.

Grasping that a few acting in concert can accomplish what many more cannot accomplish in serial single combat is an elementary prerequisite to understanding military history.

It becomes more and more clear why your Roman military book is as elusive as dragons themselves.

Just the opposite. It is you who reveal your ignorance on this subject. In a defensive position, with secure flanks a mere handful of disciplined armored legionaries could resist huge numbers of enemies much like the armored Hoplites at Thermopylae. And all the accounts suggest dragons are armored.

What an absurd analogy. A moose may be stronger than the wolf, but is not a canrivore with sharp claws, teeth, and powerful sweeping tail, and inpenetrable hide, and we won't even get into the more fantastic weapons attributed to dragons like fiery breath. The key point that if the dragon is intelligent, it would be literally invinceable, which is likely why the ancients regarded them as omnipotent Gods that could destroy whole armies. Only little monkey video game playing children could imagine a person getting close enough to even prick such a creature with a spear or sword. Obviously you know nothing about fighting with ancient weapons.

If surrounded by piddling little humans, one thrashing sweep of its tail would flatten them like chafe. I guess you never seen crocodiles in nature shows. Du you even suppose a person would have the strength to penetrate the keratin scales of a dinosaur sized reptile? It would probably be impossible.

Part of my work in the Roman and Mediieval fields involves actually testing the weapons in simulated combat situations. If you watch shows of this type, as shown on history channel you have undoubtedly seen me, for I am in several of them, discussing and demonstrating ancient and medieval weaponry.

But I suspect if you watch television it is probably just cartoons, and the r******ed monster slaying movies on Sci Fi channel where you evidently get your childish ideas that humans with iron age weapons could kill something like a dragon.

So, to recap, you will not disclose the name and title of your pseudonymously published book in order to preserve your privacy, but you now claim to appear on television, and to have done so repeatedly.

Nevertheless, in making a capabilities assessment, you restricted your analysis to single combat, and drew species-level conclusions. That's a rookie mistake, DC, not the lapse of an accomplished expert.

Whatever eats can be killed. Humans evidently held their own against real megafauna using Stone Age weaponry, and teamwork. Calling these people rude names does not undue their achievement, nor the effectiveness of their achievement in demolishing yet another pillar of your argument.

And many other people around the world regard menstural blood as a taboo, so where's the dragon in that?
I'm assuming this is the story you're trying to retell-

So dragons caused floods in order to eat people? Seems a very elaborate length for a giant dragonslayer killing, fire spewing tank to go to catch and eat a couple of women and children...
Or to silence crying children, for that matter... (seems a crafty creature of superior intellect could come up with a more effective and efficient way of doing these things)

Both of these are taken from this site Link and appear to be part of a collection of stories presented to prove 'The Great/Global Flood' (another universal statement about a common occurance along many river deltas and flood plains, which seems a little too mundane to account for the 'fact' that evey culture has a flood story...).
And these 'stupid people' of ancient times seem to have a great deal of respect for the intelligence of these relatively stupid predators, probably because they were able to spend more time observing them than modern humans.
As a matter of fact, modern man's test of true intellect was the ability to create tools and use them. For most of the last century this was what marked us as superior to the rest of the animal kingdom, until a few researchers realised that certain chimps and a few other animals actually make use of rudimentry tools...
So perhaps it's an invention of the modern 'civilised' mind to regard certain normal animals as unimpressive and relatively stupid...

I made no misake in my assesment. There is no physical evidence to suggest humans have ever killed a dragon, and i cannot imagine any sane adult believing people with primitive weapons could do so, if we imagine the dragon to be the dragon of popular culture (large as T-Rex, intelligent, covered in scales , etc). And there are scientists who have made the statement that if large theropod dinosaurs like the T Rex survived extinction they would have wiped out the human race. An now we are talking about a landbound 'dragon' with unimpressive intelligence.

Part of the whole dragon premise is the belief that they taught humans technologies, not that they were simply a walnut brained dinosaur that survived extinction. Maybe we only survived megafauna like the saber toothed cat and dire wolf becasue our ancestors were protected by their 'dragon gods' exactly as ancient human legends and hymns attest. The "great dragon of the earth" Enlil was proclaimed in his hymns to be "a good shepherd" who protected his human flock from danger. There is a big difference between killing a fleeing herbivore like a mammoth, and killing an armored carnosaur that would actively hunt piddling little naked monkeys for food. And then give the carnosaur human or better intelligence, and it is no wonder our ancestors regarded such creatures as omnipotent gods. Interestingly, it is only dragons that man has universally believed to have great wisdom. Virtually all other gods, have been made in his own image.

If sperm whales were intelligent enough to have known man was a deadly opponent, and must be destroyed, they could have sunk every wooden ship with impunity, as demonstrated in one rare actual case, and man never could have ventured into that element. That is the power of intelligence, and why it is ludicrous to imagine man defeating a giant armored reptile with similar intelligence to his own. Stop playing D&D guy, it will only rot your mind.

Yes, I have advised and portrayed my reconstructions in many history channel productions. But I doubt this will reveal my identity here, where everyone is seemingly 'allergic' to history and seem to spend their time watching cartoons and playing dragonslayer video games, which like you, they seem to ascertain 'man's capabilities'.

Really? So what does that make Coyote, Raven and other members of the North American Pantheon? Or the creatures mentioned in the stories from the first link in my earlier post?

If anything it strengthens the case against the claim that ordinary animals are simply to unremarkable and stupid to be awarded diety status...

And speaking of Coyote, another universal statement has been made in the past that Coyote, Loki, Maui, Satan and other trickster gods are all conclusive proof that there is a being/force (the Christians typically use the other gods as proof of Satan) that works against mankind to lead him away from the almighty one (since every culture has a trickster, apparently).

As I've been saying for the last few threads, the information age makes it very easy to find those superficial similarties and catagorise them as pan-Global mythologies...

On a similar note, of course there is no evidence to suggest humans ever killed a dragon because there is no physical evidence to suggest dragons are real in the first place, and I can't imagine any sane adult believing so.


So where are all the dragons now? Why aren't they still here teaching us? How come the most technological age doesn't attribute dragons to the advancements? We obviously don't need dragons to teach us how to build electron scanning microscopes. So why would humans have needed dragons to teach them flint-stone scraping or how to build wooden boats?

Indeed bball, the idea that man could not come up with agriculture and metallurgy by evolving processes himself, and instead relying on some gargantuan talking lizard to instruct him at every step is both ridiculous and insulting. Besides which we know and have plenty of proof that man did evolve such technology by his own merit, and had no need of tuition from big snakes or altered archosaurs.

The serpent and the eagle have been, almost universally, two of the most important totems, and were not regarded as 'stupid' by those that had them.

In mythology the serpent's cthonic attributes are the basis for many of the mythological characters we may label 'dragons' today.

Exaggerated stories of snake and other reptilian behaviour form the basis for earlier Natural Historians accounts of 'dragons'.

My apologies for the long quote and 'cherry picking' of the introduction to this article, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you, given the turn that the discussion has taken. Most of you will be well aquainted with the concepts presented.


Hornblower, G. D.(May, 1933). Early Dragon-Forms. Man, Vol. 33, , pp. 79-87. Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland



Unfortunately, I'm unable to provide a direct link to the article, as it's from the JSTOR database, but I do have the full .pdf.

edit:added information, corrected OCR produced typos

While flood myths are quite universal, few people realize the floods are nearly always caused by an angry dragon in these stories. This is even the case with Yahweh, who seems to be a composite of the dragon brothers Enki and Enlil.

I agree that the flood is a bit of an overkill just to capture a couple of women, but it was a common belief that the dragons brought rain, and if they brought too much, it was becasue they were angry, and this case because a sacred habitation was contaminated by a human.

Sometimes the surviving myths are composites of two related stories. Perhaps an angry 'rainbow serpent' did use water to flood a cave or crevice it couldn't reach where a woman was hiding that defiled its sanctuary, and this over time, became attached to a greater flood myth.

It is also interesting that Yahweh had similar taboos against menstral blood contamination and it is a recurring theme. Perhaps the dragon gods of the various world wide cultures were all given some specific guidelines by the creator entity, in order to "tend their human flocks", though as they each had their own personality there would be room for some variation. There seems to be a different rainbow snake for each aboriginal tribe, just as each stone age mesopotamian city had its patron dragon god. Australia is a big place.

Well, the ancient peoples themselves did not think it was "both ridiculous and insulting".

THEY BELIEVED THESE THINGS.

Now it is up to us to try to figure out why, and it is not so unreasonable to give our ancestors the benefit of the doubt once in a while. It is not like I am making this stuff up, I am just trying to come up with a plausible explanation.

Just because you believe in something doesn't make it true, DC. If an ancient person had never seen a crocodile, komodo dragon, or other large, actually existing, reptile, they would have made stories based off of them. That's just how people are. They exaggerate. It's also funny how you can conclude that the ancients were smart enough to tell the difference between large, existing reptiles and dragons, but they weren't smart enough to figure out basic means of survival such as agriculture? Don't pick and choose when you want to give the ancients credit, DC.

Oh, so now dragons are sexist? Menstrual blood being considered "dirty" and "unclean" is as old of a biased, sexist, false taboo as you can get. Some people, such as Pagans, actually worship the menstrual cycle for what it actually means: the ability to create life, of being fertile, and youth. There's absolutely nothing "disgusting" or "wrong" with menstrual blood, and if dragons were as intelligent as you claim, I don't think they'd be subject to such senseless, meaningless, untrue biases and stereotypes.

Exactly, that's what i've been trying to say. People (especially in the past) have always sensationalized, and over exaggerated things in their stories. People have been over-estimateing the intelligence of people in the past, they wern't smart enough to figure out basic science, and when they see creatures, or bones that they have never seen before they will exaggerate and call it a "monster" or "dragon" or something like that, it's human nature.

Yep. Biology and mathematics are two different concepts. Why do people all over the Earth create pyramids? Because they're the easiest geometric shape to construct.Sadly, wiki is the source I have to use to demonstrate the commonality of pyramids all around the globe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid
It's not that the ancients couldn't figure out numbers, it's that they didn't understand the natural world around them as well as we do today. This creature is an excellent example of how early humans could have mistaken large reptiles for "dragons". http://www.parks.sa.gov.au/naracoorte/wona.../extinct/005780
http://www.survive2012.com/dragon_myths_6.php
Megalania became extinct as early as 19,000 years ago, so it's no stretch of the imagination for people to exaggerate these creatures into the common "dragon" we see today.

Many cultures had many set beliefs, but that doesn't mean everyone of them is true. South American cultures believed that human sacrifice was the way to a good season of crops or plentiful rain. Does that make it true? Should we somehow have to give them the benefit of the doubt?

Edit-If you think that because these cultures believed these things therefore they must be true, despite ours and their lack of evidence for them, then there is absolutely no debating with you on this subject.

"That is the power of intelligence, and why it is ludicrous to imagine man defeating a giant armored reptile with similar intelligence to his own..."

Intelligence is synonymous with living in groups. If these things are that big, and travelling alone, snatching up people everywhere and gulping them down, they're not going to be smart. They're going to be like any other lone predator, nowhere near what humans have. I've SO said this before, over and over. There is no basis for the evolution of intelligence to the degree that humans have in a species as social as the one you're describing. That is, NOT social.

As for the Sperm Whale analogy, a kid doesn't know the stove's going to burn it until it touches it, and then it's too late. I'm sure I remember hearing about tales of whales who learn that ships mean harm, but keep in mind that the whale's not going to come out of the fight with the ship unharmed. It's probably more stupid to attack them than to simply try and get away. Most animals will choose flight over fight any day; less energy wasted, less personal risk.

I'm a little confused by your use of the term 'false taboo', milady. Are you meaning false taboo in the sense of 'made up', or false taboo in the sense that it is real, but morally wrong?
Menstural blood, in some cultures, is still regarded as having the 'fearsome' power of potentially being able to rob a man of his strength, and segregation of menstrating women is a practice that still continues in some parts of the world today.

A fuller retelling of the Wawilak Sisters Story shows that it is probably less about colossal serpents/dragons and more about sexism, sex and fertility. This version is essentially the compilation of the four versions of this myth.

Knight, Chris (1983). Levi-Strauss and the Dragon: Mythologiques Reconsidered in the Light of an Australian Aboriginal Myth. Man, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 1, (Mar., 1983), pp. 21-50. Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland



edit:corrected OCR (text recognition) generated 'typos'

I'm afraid you'll have to take that up with Yahweh, Rainbow Serpent, and probably Quetzalcoatl.... not sure what the Chinese dragons though about it.

Usually Yahweh's advice in health and dietary matters was pretty sound, like not eating pork. It may not have been so altuistic however, as Yahweh also sometimes requested humans, and may not have wanted 'wormy' ones.

If the Rainbow Serpent story is based on an actual incident, it may have merely been innocent enough as the 'god' did not want any human discharging ANY bodily fluids into his domaine. (Many pool owners would probably be sympathetic with Rainbow Serpent). Now if any creature could sense even a tiny amount of blood in his pool it would be a giant carnivorous reptile, for that big snout is filled with olfactory organ.

The key word is 'universal'. These other animals are local, and are more comedic in their stories compared to the less humorous dragon gods.

Christians may be surprised to find that the 'trickster' in Eden is in fact, Yahweh, in his earlier guise as Enki. It is this Enki who warns the Sumerian flood as well.

What is interesting is that while some cultures had intelligent, talking animals, there are others that did not, with one notable exception: the dragon or serpent (the two often being interchangeable in the same mythology).

In the Eurasian cultures, the dragons seem to leave their human "flocks" in the early bronze age. Yahweh's nomadic adventure with the Israelites is a notable exception.

The work of the dragons is dramatic, and actually called a revolution. For over 100,000 years, humans were merely hunters and gathers, and gan to happen in the lands of the dragon gods. Agriculture, domestication of animals, eventuall metalurgy.

This boost from ape behaviour to human behaviour which our ancestors attributed to their dragon god's wisdom was all the 'jumpstart' the human race needed.

The controller of the dragons evidently wished these remarkable events to by forgotten and relegated to myth. Otherwise mankind's initiative would have been stifled if compelled to worship these reptiles indefinately. And in truth, the dragons, though intelligent in their way, would probably do poorly in a round of Jeopardy against a human of today.

I suspect the motive of the dragons was simply to have a prolific 'flock' to prey upon, and it may be human foolishness to regard them as paricurlarl benificent. So if not expelled from their godships by the creator, they would have likely stifled human progress after the basic conditions of civilization had been established by them for optimal breeding of humans and thier livestock.

We do still see the dragons today however. They are the cryptid sea serpents and lake monsters. We will continue to see them, but they will be dismissed as drift wood and hoaxes by scientists who say they cannot exist.

I agree. And isn't it also interesting how emotional and downright nasty some of the supposed 'skeptics' get over the subject of dragons, when they claim they are nothing but fairytale creatures. Anyone who gets that uptight obviously think there are more to dragons than they are letting on. Or maybe it is unintentional, but the dragons are in their subconscious much as Carl Sagan had postulated.

Then why did it take over 100,000 years for man to discover agriculture, domestication of livestock, etc. And why did ancieny man himself attribute these accomplishments to yout "gargantuan talking lizards" and not himself?

Im not making these things up, they are part of the historical record. I am just trying to explain why THEY said they were taught by those 'lizards'. I guess most people just pretend that they didn't credit these things to their dragon gods.

Most of the dragon legends are full of exaggeration, magic and marvelous deeds. But this is not true of all of them. Many stories seem rather believable. It is true that many of them are mythical or legendary but it is also true that most legends are based on some truth. It cannot be an accident that so many separate peoples of the world tell such stories.

Here are some interesting things that I have read through over the years on this subject.

The stories of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and Saint George killing dragons are likely to have been based on at least some fact. These were real men in history.

As you know, dragons are prominent on Chinese pottery, embroidery, carvings, etc. It's interesting that the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac are all animals eleven of which are still alive today, but one is the dragon. It doesn't seem logical that the ancient Chinese, when constructing their zodiac, would include one mythical animal with eleven real animals.

In 1271, Marco Polo (the Italian explorer) reported that on special occasions in China the royal chariot was pulled by dragons. Marco Polo also said that he saw long reptiles in Asia called Lindworms that could easily ran as fast as a horse.

In 1611, we can see that the emperor appointed the post of "Royal Dragon Feeder" which doesn't make sense if there were no dragons to feed. We also find Ancient Chinese books telling of people using dragon eggs, blood, bones and other parts for medicine.

John of Damascus (an Arab monk in the 8th century) wrote against some of the wild and mythical claims about dragons and said, I am not telling you, after all, that there are no dragons; dragons exist but they are serpents [reptiles] borne of other serpents. When just born and young, they are small; but when they grow up and mature, they become big and fat so that they exceed the other serpents in length and size. It is said they grow up more than thirty cubits [45 feet]; as for their thickness, they become as thick as a huge log.

There is a well-known science book from the 16th century by a Swiss naturalist and medical doctor named Conrad Gesner called Historia Animalium. The book claims that dragons were still not extinct in the 1500's, but were extremely rare and relatively small by then.

After Alexander the Great invaded India (356-323 B.C.) he brought back reports of great hissing reptiles the Indians kept in caves. There was one that really frightened his army was estimated by them to be over 100 feet long.

And then there's all the stories of giant sea serpents and sea monsters. As Dr. Mace Baker said, For more than a thousand years ancient and medieval mariners often returned from their voyages with frightening tales of encounters with, or sightings of, large and dangerous sea monsters.

There are hundreds of these types of legends. Evolutionists just say that it's coincidence that many of them sound like dinosaurs. World Book Encyclopedia says: The dragons of legend are strangely like actual creatures that have lived in the past. They are much like the great reptiles [dinosaurs] which inhabited the earth long before man was supposed to have appeared on earth.

I suppose it all comes down to what a person really wants to believe in the end, as it does seem as though some
of these ancient legends and stories do have some kind of truth to them.

This does not say in the least that I agree with DC's theory. Personally, I cannot even begin
to try and fathom it.


Regards,
Tom

Funny that you lend credence to the LEAST documented of all dragon stories, that of St. George. Yes, George seems to have been a real Roman soldier in the 3rd Century AD, but there was nothing about a dragon in his life until an author invented it in the late middle ages and added it to his book so George's story would be more interesting.

Most of the Christian dragonslaying stories were invented for the same book. As I have shown, dragons were actually heavenly Creatures in the real Christian theology.

Most of the medieval dragonslaying stories were clearly written as farces that were not to be taken seriously, though people seriously believed that dragons were real, and amonst the nonsense we see realistic accounts of the creatures merely raiding farms, and seen by numbers of people.

And Gilgamish's monster seems to be a kind of machine, and he himself may have originally been based on a dragon that was anthropomorshpised, as the dragon gods eventually were as well. If you read the poem there is a point where it is plainly stated he does not look like a human.

No. Probably because there is no such creature.