Re: USAGE: Dinos and dragons

> Date:         Sun, 15 Oct 2000 14:06:08 +0000
> From:         Rik Roots <rikroots@...>
> Scientific knowledge, yes. Popular knowledge, I don't know. I do know
> that you can find fossils along the south coast of England just by
> walking along the bottom of cliffs and checking to see what has been
> eroded out in the last storm or two - mostly ammonites and trilobites,
> but the occasional bone, sharktooth, etc.
But not that many wing membranes, and no connected skeletons. It's
possible to find imprints in shale --- which was how Archaeopteryx was
found in the 1840(?)s --- but you need to be looking explicitly.

> There must be some reason for the widespread appearance of winged
> serpents across continents - and I prefer the fossil explanation
> rather than the more "Fortean" cryptozoological explanation.
Big dangerous serpents (or other reptiles) are certainly widespread
--- everybody already knows that snakes are dangerous, so it's good
narrative practice to use a really big one.

But I'm pretty sure that the European dragon myth had the wings (and
flying) retrofitted some time after the Middle Ages, and while Chinese
dragons certainly did fly, ISTR that they just did it by magic.

There's the naga in India, of course. But how many other 'dragons'
around the world were actually winged before they were interpreted in
Western European retellings?

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)