Is there anyone from the age of four on the face of the Earth who does not know the mythological being popularly known as the dragon? The exceptions would be so relatively rare that you would have to conclude that out of almost all things fictional, dragons would probably rank in the top ten on the recognition list. So is that the beginning and end of all things? Behind most myths, folklore or fairy tales, there is often a small kernel of reality behind the apparent fiction. What about that core at the core of the dragon lore?
For starters, I note that the dragons are obvious from the start. Dragon images are frequently found on cylinder seals from the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia and surrounding regions, the cradle of civilization.
Now, mythologically themed texts are excellent for recounting various tales of dragons and their associated dragon-slaying humans, such as Saint George, Sigurd (Siegfried) and Beowulf*; what purposes did dragons serve, such as guarding treasures and the dwellings or palaces of the gods, as well as intermediaries between the gods and humanity (something like homing pigeons) and having some control over the weather and waters; and what they symbolize like evil, sin, power, military might and pagan customs in the West and the Emperor and Empress, wisdom, immortality and other positive things like good fortune in the East.
However, mythological texts almost never explain why dragons are universally past and presently loved in almost all societies in the first place. It is one thing to say that dragons are mythological beings; it’s quite another thing to explain what that’s like in light of the details surrounding dragon lore and its universality.
Let’s see what a typical dragon looks like. The classic dragon of Western lore was a four-legged winged serpent with scaly skin and sharp claws (or a variable number). Chinese dragons generally had horns and beards, with a pair of long whiskers protruding from the upper lip. The dragons were very large, averaging 80 feet (25 meters) long. They had the ability to fly through the air and move on the ground. Many dragons breathed fire while others killed with their poisonous breath. There’s nothing vague about what the dragons looked like and what they did, which is weird since they never existed. Or did they never exist?
As for that explanation:
The traditional conventional explanation for the reason for mythological dragons is generally not based on human nature to invent life forms that do not exist, but rather on the assumption that fossil remains of dinosaurs etc. It led to speculation that in this case, the life form we call a dragon, well, those fossils started those dragon mythologies all over the world. As expressed in a recent book on mythological creatures:
“The ubiquity of dragon legends around the world remains surprising; few legendary creatures have a wider distribution. Some scholars have linked the stories to discoveries of dinosaur bones and it may be that in early times dragon tales served to explain the existence of large dead creatures. However, no single reason can hope to cover all the strands of draconian lore. Most likely, the gigantic winged serpents fill some archetypal need in the human imagination, crossing cultures in their power to excite wonder and fear”. (Tony Allen; The Mythic Bestiary: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Most Fantastic Creatures; Duncan Baird Publishers, London; 2008: page 169)
Oh what a bunch of shit! Actually, a lot of bullshit. First, no big dinosaur bone comes equipped with wings etc. Have you ever seen a T-Rex fossil or replica that had wings and could fly? They may refer to pterosaurs and/or pterodactyls, although they are not dinosaurs but a class of flying reptiles. However, flying reptile fossils are not very common and are actually quite fragile.
Second, fossils won’t tell you anything about color, scaly vs. smooth skin, beards and mustaches, fire-breathing abilities, and poisonous or other bad breath, etc. Those kinds of details aren’t preserved in the fossil record, although dinosaur skin impressions are very, very, very rarely found, but there are enough examples at hand that you can count them on one hand.
Third, non-avian dinosaurs and flying reptiles went extinct 65 million years before humans and dragon mythology, so there can be no contemporary first-hand knowledge of those long-dead dinosaur life forms. a long time. And the avian dinosaurs, which survived, we now call them birds, barely come close to the kinds of sizes and other features that might be remotely related to dragons.
Lastly, 99.9% of large fossils are not lying in the ground fully exposed in all their glory for the entire world to see. Most of the fragments are usually buried and mostly in a somewhat disordered state due to the various geological, hydrological and meteorological forces acting on the bones at the time of the animal’s death and the millions of years afterward. Experts are needed to put things back together, as two or more animal fossils could be intermingled.
Besides, why would uneducated greats who lived unwashed before those golden years when mythological dragons ruled the skies go to the trouble of the kind of back-breaking work it takes to fully expose a large fossil in the first place, and thus invent the mythological dragon ? I mean I wouldn’t put food on the table!
So when all else fails, chalk up our invention of mythological dragons and universals to some variation of hazy Freudian mumbo-jumbo psychology. Give me a break! No, the answer is that dragons were really real and humans were watching them. There is only one reason after all.
Now just consider, how many extinct animals did we mythologically invent before the discovery of their fossils? Dinosaurs weren’t all the rage before their fossil bones were discovered and people realized what they were. Why don’t we mentally create them before the fact? Why didn’t we have mythological trilobites in our legends 7000 years ago? We just didn’t have dinosaurs, trilobites, mythological or otherwise, before their fossils were discovered.
Why didn’t we have in our various mythologies some of the thousands of strange organisms, now extinct? Perhaps the answer is because we are NOT prone to inventing fictional beasts. If strange beasts are an integral part of our mythology, perhaps it’s because those strange beasts really did exist at some point that coincided with human existence.
On the other hand, it is worth asking why there are no deep mythologies about the now extinct mammoths or saber-toothed cats, despite the fact that they coexisted for a short time with ‘modern’ man. Why not? They were quite large and fearsome; maybe not quite in the big dragon leagues, but big enough. Perhaps that could be because these beasts had no connection to the ‘gods’, they were not alien beasts.
Now the bigger mystery here is why the cultural difference between East and West in the popular perception of dragons, although that’s not as clear cut as some texts make it out to be. For example, China also had bad dragons, evil black dragons that were credited with inciting storms and floods, and a dragon slayer (Lu Dongbin). Japan also had an evil dragon named Yamata-no-Orochi, slain* by the often troublesome Japanese god Susanowo. There is a somewhat parallel story in ancient Babylonia and Assyria between the god Marduk and the ‘dragon’ Tiamat. For a god to slay a dragon, well I guess if you can have two wildcats and wildcats you can have rogue dragons! Perhaps only ‘gods’ are allowed, or have the ability, to slay dragons.
Exceptions to the rule aside, I suggest that the relative differences in the depictions of dragons reflect the nature of their masters: the gods.
The eastern gods seem to me much less dysfunctional and more likable deities than the western gods. The Greeks and Norse may have worshiped Zeus et al. and Odin et al. but you really wouldn’t want them to serve as role models for your kids.
However, there is another, and perhaps even more logical, explanation for the differences between western and eastern dragons. Dragons are bad in the (Christian) West because the Christian churches so decree. Dragons represent the old ways, the old gods, maybe even the devil incarnate. In the non-Christian East (Hindu, Buddhist, etc.), dragons don’t have that baggage or stigma attached.
Alien ‘gods’ and their dragon pets have something in common. Dragons, like their masters, the ‘gods’ are the closest thing to immortality that has no odds. I think it’s safe to say that ‘immortal’ in this context isn’t really forever and ever, amen, but rather a long time, which, as far as early humans were concerned, translated as, for all practical purposes, ‘immortal’ .
The conclusion of all this is that the gods are really extraterrestrials; their pets, the dragons, are also aliens; part of the bestiary of the god. When the gods left the building (Planet Earth), they took their dragons with them, as well as the rest of their so-called “mythological” menagerie.
*As an aside, actual dragon slaying is problematic against such events. Yes, as described (see above), you would no longer face off against a dragon armed only with a sword like you would against a T-Rex. You’d want at least one army tank under your command or at least one swordsman army (and expect heavy casualties as well). Also, the gods may not allow the killing of their pets. Of course, the Christian church would encourage fantastic tales of dragon slaying, since the dragon was a pagan and may even be a symbol of Satan.
Telling stories about slaying dragons is similar, IMHO, to a fisherman’s tale: the six-inch fish that got away, after a few drinks in the pub, turns out to be a six-foot monster fish! But if dragons were really slain, where are all the mounted and stuffed dragon head trophies that should be on display in all sorts of shapes and places? The lack of such stuffed trophies does not prove that dragons did not exist (there are no trophies with taxidermic heads of saber-toothed cats on display either), but rather that mortals dared not face them.