Dragons have been an integral part of many cultures throughout history. They range from Norway with the vikings, to the famed dragonslayers of Europe, and to the ornamented dragons of Southeast Asia. Interestingly enough, dragons are real! Well, kind of.
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| Thomas Hawkins's Book of the Great Sea of Dragons (1840) |
The usual description of dragons are massive, reptilian beasts with sharp fangs and claws. Sounds a bit like dinosaurs, right? It is actually possible that dinosaur fossils were unearthed, and with the lack of knowledge we have today, were misinterpreted as dragons. Take a look at this Dracorex fossil, a pachycephalosaur who roamed the earth in the late Cretaceous period. Its skull features are suspiciously synonymous to that of a dragon - except it was primarily a herbivore.
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| The Children's Museum of Indianapolis |
It is also probable that dragons were confused with extant reptiles. From pop culture media, the rule-of-thumb to kill a dragon is to puncture their soft underbelly. Now, let's consider crocodiles and alligators. They are heavily armored with osteoderms present under a thick layer of scales. If you ever watched Swamp People, you would know that modern bullets can have difficulty puncturing their skin. Modern Archosaurs can be massive, as well. The longest recorded crocodile comes from my home country of the Philippines, with a frightening length of over 20 feet!
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| St. George the Dragonslayer photographed by Antonio Sadurni (Barcelona) |
I think that this goes to show that we as humans have an innate fear of the unknown. We take what brings us fear, and rationalize it with concepts we are already familiar with. For example, many reptiles can cause harm, so we must avoid them. With years and years of storytelling passed down through generations, it is fascinating to percieve the creativity our ancestors had.
Sources:
https://tristanerwin.medium.com/dragon-an-analysis-of-the-origin-bbb37fa6664a
https://www.thoughtco.com/dracorex-hogwartsia-1092859#:~:text=The%20Complication%20of%20the%20Species&text=A%20few%20things%20that%20thescientifice,in%20length%20and%20500%20pounds.
Very interesting post. I agree that humans have a way of being scared of the unknown and come up with stories to help us understand things. I find it curious that the idea of dragons can be found in almost every civilization, the Chinese dragon and central American Maya and Aztec all had depictions of dragons, and are important to their culture.
ReplyDeleteCool post! I wonder if the morphology of mythical dragons corresponds in some way to the fossils found in the area.
ReplyDeleteNice post. The most stand out part of your post was the comparison between a crocodile and alligator skin which is very tuff and hard to puncture. Which the skin and scales for crocodile and alligators always resembles the dragon creatures that are depicted in films or drawn. Also, one thing I've noted from viewing certain films was the wing span for the "dragons" it's similar to bats which would have to be very strong since those creatures would be heavy.
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