A few weeks back, while still wrapped in the blanket of dinosaur research, I started thinking about serpent gods, flying monsters, and dragons. I wondered how the scholars had addressed this question, but when a few glances at the research led to papers on children’s stories and the ancestral memory of tree shrews, I gave up quickly. It was Christmas; I had presents to wrap and muffins to bake. Those few who discussed the possible origins of dragons appeared limited to art museums, mythology experts, or psychologists, rather than historians or paleontologists.
But last Thursday was of all things, Appreciate a Dragon day, according to Sandra Boynton. And we are finishing the Year of the Dragon, after all, with January 29th ending this most auspicious year and moving on to a different animal in the Chinese calendar, Year of the Snake.
Perfect timing to take another dive into the topic.
It seemed a simple question. After all, dinosaurs once covered the earth, which, at the beginning of the Triassic, was a single land called Pangaea. The continents split up after the dinosaurs proliferated, so dinosaur fossils now cover the globe, with similar species now found flung far apart in Argentina, the Rockies, and the Gobi Desert. Dragon. Dragon stories also span the globe. It seems a question with a fairly obvious answer: Were human ideas and stories about dragons influenced by dinosaurs, by fossils found by ancient, primitive paleontologists?
To my surprise, the answer was not a simple yes. First, I had to get past the majority of stories that treated dragons as symbolic and aesthetic, not scientific. Secondly, I had to wade through analyses of dinosaur and dragon depictions, which showed how 19th century fossil bones were called dragons, while dragon references themselves were sculptued out of fossils based on mammals and snakes. If anything, snakes play perhaps the biggest role in this story, though it’s also true that ancient paleontologists, i.e. those who analyzed fossils, were more sophisticated than generally portrayed. I’m still a bit unconvinced that dragons aren’t dinosaurs, but let’s take a global journey to hunt for the source of dragons.
Everyone knows dragons don’t really exist. And yet everyone knows what dragons look like.
from “The Mysterious Case of the Chinese Dragon”, language wire.
Don’t Be Ridiculous, Dragons Are Rainbows
Dragons are entirely imaginary creatures, full stop. So say the vast majority of articles which talk about legends, allegories, paintings, bone carvings and even dreams–one fellow noted that Jung believed the dragon represents “the devouring mother.” (Sheesh!) Their origins, according to a surface scan of the research, were people’s imaginations. But I was unsatisfied.
“The Origin of Dragons” seemed a promising title. Anthropologist Robert Blust noted, in fact, in the second paragraph that many think dragons were inspired by fossils–ah HA! However, he quickly dismisses this idea, saying that the reason people thought dragons came from fossil bones or fossilized eggs was because Chinese medicine makes use of “dragon bones.” Building dinosaur skeletons, however, is an “achievement of 20th-century paleontology,” and Chinese “peasants” could not possibly have done so.
He explores other options, but these aren’t whether ancient paleontology could have developed anywhere outside of the Chinese peasant population. Instead, he notes that people have suggested dragons might be based on the Loch Ness monster or genetically encoded memories of dinosaurs that passed through the memory of mammals as they evolved. The latter is actually an idea espoused by Carl Sagan in his book on the evolution of the human brain, The Dragons of Eden. At any rate, Blust doesn’t really address how ancient people might have studied fossils other than to dismiss the possibility.
Instead, Blust argues that dragons worldwide were derived from… wait for it… rainbows. Not just associated with, but “mentally constructed…as a by-product of meticulously accurate observations of weather phenomena…” People saw rainfall and waterfalls and then generated the idea of dragons, which is why so many cultures associate dragons with flight, thunder, hidden springs, and all the symbolic colors. When he got to explaining how red is the main color of the rainbow, and it reflects blood, which connects slaughter with menstruation, I decided to stop taking notes.
I don’t know why it seems more plausible to someone that dragons would have been more associated with menstruation than with the bones of ancient giant creatures who had horns, wings, tails, and claws. A scan of Blust’s other scholarly work shows he is an expert on rainbows, so maybe everything he sees is rainbow-shaped.
The Famous St. George of… Libya
Meanwhile, I turned next to the more well-known ideas about dragons? How about in Europe, maybe good old Saint George, the patron saint of England. Where did that legend come from? George was famous for slaying a dragon–I thought in a cave–that was terrorizing villagers to whom sheep and virgins were sacrificed. Pretty much the design for Smaug, wasn’t he? George goes to the dragon’s cave, slays the fearsome monster, and rescues the villagers, hurrah!
Researching St. George turned up mostly a lot of medieval artwork. Dragons were a favorite theme, and George was no exception. Raphael painted St. George twice, and, in this version, the dragon appears almost like a Great Dane with wings.
One of the most widely read early versions of the St. George story was in the 13th century by Jacobus de Voragine, in his book on the lives of the saints, The Golden Legend. Voragine describes George as a soldier in the Roman army stationed in North Africa. The dragon lives in a lake in Libya, comes out when he’s hungry, and “poisons” the villagers, hence they round up the teenagers. George takes pity on the latest sacrificial offering, a weeping princess, jabs the dragon with his lance, and has the girl walk the limping dragon back to town on a leash. It so amazes the villagers that they beg to be baptized. Thus, it’s really a tale about a missionary. Notice that George does not kill the dragon until they convert to Christianity.
Enter the Draco
This example of a medieval dragon is the European prototype. The dragon is dangerous, evil, a polluting force. Such dragons were associated with Satan and given hoofs, claws, and horns. Biographies of George point out that he was not sainted for this exploit, but rather because he was supposedly martyred as a Christian by the Roman emperor Diocletian.
The dragon/virgin story belonged to classical Greek heroes, like Jason, Typhon etc, who formed a model for what was on to George’s bio later. It’s noteworthy then that the Greeks and Romans also told dragon tales. In fact, our word dragon comes from the Greco-Roman draco.
Draco to the Greeks meant large serpent, and was originally distinguished from other words referring to smaller snakes, serpens, or vipera, which were specifically venomous. When the Romans conquered Dacia, a region of the Balkans, they adopted the practice the Dacians had of using a draco standard. The Dacian Draco was a flag with the head of a wolf but the body of a serpent. When wind filled the flag, it flew like a windsock and emitted a shrill sound, a 1st century BCE version of a rebel yell. Thus, originally, draco was connected to the idea of a snake with a mammal-like, meat-eating head.
A detailed analysis of the ancient “Great Serpent” digs further into the classical commentary about sighting of giant monsters, although author Richard Stothers was concentrating on monstrous serpents rather than dragons. He finds all the roads lead back to python. While some stories were exaggerations or hoaxes, Stothers documents dozens of historical references in Greece, Rome, and India where witnesses corroborated details.
This analysis leans into the scientific rather than the symbolic. He specifically notes that several witnesses of a giant water snake attacking people at the Bagradas River (North Africa again!) in 130 BCE describe it as over 100 feet. Modern pythons generally don’t exceed 30 feet. Is this exaggeration? And there are no such pythons today in Algeria and Tunisia. He concludes by pointing out that pythons may have had habitats in locations that are no longer viable, although he can’t confirm them being three times the length of known giant snakes. He does offer a super-creepy medieval drawing of one such giant serpent, known to swallow children. Stothers’ other key point is that these accounts were related to zoology–real animals–and not cryptozoology–mythical animals. In other words, the ancients could be reliable witnesses and scientists, not just primitives who created myths to explain natural phenomena.
Bones That Look Like Dragons
Were there ever cases where dragons were created based on fossils of real animals, dinosaurs or otherwise? The answer here again, for Europeans, is complicated. One famous example of a dragon sculpture is the Austrian Lindwurm. In 1335, the skull of an extinct woolly rhinoceros was discovered in a quarry near Klagenfurt. The locals had long claimed that their town was once plagued by a dragon in the nearby marsh, which led to the town name Klagenfurt, meaning “ford of lament.” When a sculptor in 1590 created a bronze of this dragon, this Lindwurm, he used the rhino skull as model.
While extinct dinosaurs are generally more well-known to the public than their successors, the extinct giant sloths, rhinos, giraffes, tigers, and elephants of the Pliocene were in their own way just as exotic. Moreover, if we are going to find ancient paleontologists digging up fossils for examination, it does seem more likely they would see the ones on the top layer of soil, the mammals of the Pliocene, rather than the reptiles in the deeper-buried earth of the Cretaceous. I must say that an example of a giraffokeryx, a skull found in the hills of ancient India where dragon legends abound, suggests that weird-looking giant mammals may have trumped the giant reptiles.
Picture the Dragons
So, perhaps those who discovered early fossils found either weird mammal skulls or the lengthy backbones of larger-than-modern snakes. It’s hard to tell and further complicated because those who discovered the dinosaur fossils also knew the dragon legends. The modern science of paleontology which blossomed in the early 19th century rested heavily on the backs of such legends. An 1840 work on ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs called them “sea dragons.” When one of the “fathers of paleontology,” Richard Owen, had an opportunity to design and display pterosaurs as part of the Great London Exhibition of 1851, he labeled them “flying dragons” in the guidebook.
Nos. 2 and 3 are restorations of a flying reptile or dragon, called Pterodactyle…
Richard Owen, who coined the word “dinosaur,” labelled these pterodactyls as dragons in his “Guide” to the 1851 London Exhibition. (Photo from Hyde Park by artlyst).
Thus, whether or not dragons were described after ancient people saw dinosaur bones is hard to tell, but it’s definitely true that more modern scientists described their dinosaurs as dragons. The research starts to double back on itself.
Then, There’s Quetzlcoatl
There is an extraordinary circular reference in Mesoamerica, as well. One of the major gods of the Aztecs was Quetzlcoatl, the feathered serpent. He was the god of wind, fertility and knowledge, the patron saint of the priesthood. He’s prominently carved around the base of a temple at Teotihuacan, near Mexico City.
Centuries later, a 20th century paleontologist dug up the skeleton of a giant flying reptile. It had a 50-foot wingspan, the size of a small light aircraft. The dig site was near the Texas-Mexican border, not exactly near Mexico City but still, roughly in the land that had once belonged to the Aztecs.
Naturally, the paleontologist named it Quetzlcoatlus, after the Aztec god. The imaginary serpent became a real set of bones. Several Quetzlcoatlus have since been discovered, and they are a favorite to grace the halls of museums, if the entrance hall is big enough.
Picturing the Dragon in China
Searching for the origin of Chinese dragons also brings us full circle. For starters, tourist sites love to push Chinese dragons–as symbols. Why not try a holiday in Shanghai this year? Chinese dragons are known to represent good fortune and prosperity, linked to the rain and imperial power, perhaps the symbol of China itself, etc.
The Chinese character for dragon, as explained by one blogger, is a pictograph or picture of a dragon, with ancient characters even more dragon-like. Look! Plenty of Lunar New Year packages to choose from! In short, Chinese dragons are super-symbolic.
Chinese Paleontology, Ancient and Recent
Chinese medicine also heavily relies on “dragon bones,” which crops up in almost all research about dragons. Scholars agree that it’s generally accepted these refer to any kind of bones, especially teeth. The idea is that powerful beasts who battled each other (teeth) would transmit their strength to the user if their bones were ground into powder. But it could be any kind of bones–modern mammals, ancient mammals, ancient reptiles, and so forth. An 18th century European traveler who painted examples of “dragon bones” showed mammal teeth and deer antlers. The Chinese dragon does, in fact, sport antlers which are decidedly un-reptilian. Still, the Chinese knowledge of dragon bones led some archaeologists and paleontologists to sites of important fossil discoveries, notably 400,000 year old Peking man, which helped support the idea of early human migration from Africa.
Two other examples suggest a little more. The scholar Qu Chang wrote in 350 CE that dragon bones were found in Sichuan Province:
In Wucheng County, there is a mountain called Somber Warrior Mountain, also called Three Corner Mountain, that has six bends and six rises. Dragon bones are taken from it. It is said that dragons flew up from these mountains, but when they found heaven’s gates closed, they could not enter, and thus fell dead in that place, and later sank into the earth. That is why one can dig out dragon bones.
Another in 39 CE described how dragon remains were discovered in the digging of a canal, which led to its being named “Dragon-Head Canal.” We don’t know whether any of this excavations unearthed dinosaur bones. But those digging came across something large–perhaps a mammal, perhaps a flying reptile, perhaps a dinosaur. We don’t know, unfortunately. Yet it was a canal, a deep dig. And, even though the remains weren’t placed in a plaster jacket or lifted out by helicopter, it’s possible to visualize ancient Chinese workmen carefully pulling out bones intact. They did not need to construct fully standing skeletons for museum display in order to recognize extinct animals.
In the past few decades, China and Mongolia have generated some of the most exciting new finds in the paleontology world. Site after site reveals ancient reptiles, with the Gobi Desert especially replete with fossils due to its climate and geological history, which are similar to the American west. Here, is Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, possibly 230 million years old. If people from centuries back came across such a creature embedded in the rock, even if they didn’t use lasers and jackjhammers, could they not see a dragon?
Dinosaurs Are Dragons Are Dinosaurs Are…
Going back to the pictographs brings us all the way around. Richard Owen named his discoveries dinosaurs, i.e. terrible lizards. The Chinese character for dragon is long, which means that “dinosaur” in Chinese is 恐龙 (kǒnglóng), “terrifying dragon.”
Up and down the list of Chinese dinosaur names, each has a character that refers back to the dragon, not a lizard or other species of reptile. Reptile is a different word ( 爬行动物 (páxíng dòngwù), which translates to “crawling animal.” In contrast, Tyrannosaurus rex is “tyrant dragon,” 霸王龙 (bàwáng lóng).”Ankylosaur: armor dragon, 甲龙 (jiǎlóng). Diplodocus: beam dragon, 梁龙 (liáng lóng) and so on. In each, the character includes the dragon symbol. How then can we tell whether the dragons or the dinosaurs ever came first?
I have learned a few things after walking this labyrinth, at least. Paleontology was not invented in the 20th century or 19th century. Classical scholars from Greece to India to China mention pulling bones of extinct creatures out of the earth. We can’t be sure if these fossils fueled dragon legends, though dragon legends are everywhere. Some dragon depictions clearly derive from fossilized mammals and giant snakes, and those seem better documented than any based on dinosaur fossils. Sigh.
Still, we are transitioning to the Year of the Snake, but maybe that’s really just a return to the beginning. Perhaps snakes and dragons were always designed to come full circle.
Maybe it’s no accident that the the snake itself has also long been pictured in that circle.
