Dragon myths

[charles brough]

Archeologist Gimbutas dug up a lot of ancient lore and concluded that the snake was revered in the mother-goddess pre-history society. When the patriarch-monogamous religions developed in Sumer and then Egypt, they promoted the male god and turned the snake into a symbol of the old order, the old and discredited system. The new male-dominated system proved so successful it created those two civilizations and spread into India and China to produce several more.

In Babylon-Sumer, the snake was made to be "evil" and big enough to be a threat that strong, brave men could kill. In the Genesis myth, it merely tempts eve, a member representing the old order, to get Adam to defy the new male God. Of course, the new male god wins and they are cast out into the world. This myth also establishes the partriarchal monogamous system. Adam was given just one woman. Even the alpha males were (theoretically) allowed only one. It was a system of rationing.

charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com

 

[pjdude1219]

probably the best dragon in the world:

the welsh dragon:

its so cute and cudly i want one for a pet

 

[Orleander]

I saw a picture of one bringing down the World Trade Center. I'm not kidding! I saw it at a scientific site!!

 

[SnakeLord]

probably the best dragon in the world

I thought you were going to say 'the Carlsberg dragon' (sorry, Carlsberg joke).

Anyway,

I wonder if many dragon stories perhaps originated from the finding of dinosaur fossils? In ancient times such a find must have been quite freaky as best and one could assume that the finding of such a thing would ultimately lead to many dragon style stories. I'm just guessing though..

 

[Gently Passing]

All these hypotheses are mere speculation. The most plausible explanation is probably the most sane: that aliens are running the earth and occasionally send giant space lizards to lay waste to a city (or of course the World Trade Center) to scare us into compliance.

Seriously, though, it's probably akin to the legends of sirens and other sea creatures that turned out to have real biological origins, but were distorted by word-of-mouth telephone games between sailors and landlubbers alike.

Whales are well-known for singing, and anything the size of a sperm whale would certainly have seemed threatening to ancient sailors. Consider their reactionary defenses upon attack! They may be gentle giants, but I bet they can get pretty ugly when pissed off.

Snakes are known to reach well over 15 feet in length, and crocodiles can weigh a few tons. Hunters venturing into the woods in Africa probably had similar encounters with potentially threatening (or at least very large) creatures, in their case reptilian ones. Rather frightening creatures still exist, if seen in the proper context. A rhinoceros may be cute in the zoo, but I doubt you would mess with one in the wild!

There are birds in Africa the size of large men. They aren't fliers, but I imagine they wouldn't be fun to toy around with, either.

 

[flameofanor5]

I think that they existed, and still do. The reason is that there were so many different stories that mention dragons, on seperate continents, before there were any ways to get over large oceans.

 

[Orleander]

Has anyone seen the cover of this months Natl Geographic. That damn thing is a dragon. Its scientific name is Dracorex.

 

[draqon]

Orleander...is quite obvious that you are trying to collect the worst pictures depicting how evil dragons are...for the reason that is also quite obvious.