How Was The Mythical Dragon Created From 9 Different Animals

Dragon statue — A dragon statue in Ljubljana, Slovenia Wikicommons

Around the earth, people are jubilant the Chinese New Year and the commencement to the Year of the Dragon. This got us wondering: Where did the myth of the dragon come from in the first place? Scholars say that conventionalities in dragons probably evolved independently in both Europe and Prc, and mayhap in the Americas and Australia likewise. How could this happen? Many have speculated most which real-life animals inspired the first legends. Here's our run-down of the likeliest suspects.

Dinosaurs. Ancient people may have discovered dinosaur fossils and understandably misinterpreted them as the remains of dragons. Chang Qu, a Chinese historian from the fourth century B.C., mislabeled such a fossil in what is at present Sichuan Province. Accept a look at a fossilized stegosaurus, for example, and you might run into why: The giant beasts averaged 30 feet in length, were typically xiv anxiety tall and were covered in armored plates and spikes for defense.

The Nile Crocodile. Native to sub-Saharan Africa, Nile crocodiles may have had a more than all-encompassing range in ancient times, perhaps inspiring European dragon legends by swimming beyond the Mediterranean to Italia or Greece. They are among the largest of all crocodile species, with mature individuals reaching up to eighteen anxiety in length—and unlike virtually others, they are capable of a movement chosen the "high walk," in which the body is elevated off the ground. A giant, lumbering croc? Might be easy to mistake for a dragon.

The Goanna. Australia is habitation to a number of species of monitor lizards, also referred to as Goannas. The large, predatory animals have razor-precipitous teeth and claws, and they are important figures in traditional Aboriginal folklore. Recent studies fifty-fifty signal that Goannas may produce venom that causes seize with teeth victims' wounds to develop infections after an attack. At least in Australia, these creatures may be responsible for the dragon myth.

Whales. Others fence that the discovery of megafauna such equally whales prompted stories of dragons. Aboriginal humans encountering whale bones would have no way of knowing that the animals were sea-based, and the thought of such gargantuan creatures might well have led people to assume that whales were predatory. Because alive whales spend up to xc percent of their time underwater, they were poorly understood for nigh of human history.

The Human Encephalon. The nigh fascinating caption involves an unexpected beast: the human. In his volume An Instinct for Dragons, anthropologist David East. Jones argues that belief in dragons is so widespread among ancient cultures considering evolution embedded an innate fearfulness of predators in the human listen. Merely as monkeys accept been shown to exhibit a fear of snakes and large cats, Jones hypothesizes that the trait of fearing large predators—such as pythons, birds of prey and elephants—has been selected for in hominids. In more recent times, he argues, these universal fears have been frequently combined in folklore and created the myth of the dragon.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/where-did-dragons-come-from-23969126/

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