# How come people feared "dragons" long before they knew of dinosaurs? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 22, 2008, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-people-feared-dragons-long-before-they-knew-of-dinosaurs/478251 "2008-12-22T01:12:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2008, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-people-feared-dragons-long-before-they-knew-of-dinosaurs/478251/41 "2008-12-25T20:39:50Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Does anyone want to comment on [this](http://paranormal.about.com/od/ancientanomalies/ig/Most-Puzzling-Ancient-Artifact/Impossible-Fossils.htm), then? Is there not even the slightest possibility that there are real finds indicating humans have been around much longer than anyone ever thought? And what difference would it make to our way of thinking, if it was true? While I’m not familiar with the facts regarding that particular link, one possibly hoaxed event doth not a scientific discovery make. One of the most repeated references by the dinos with caveman crowd is the [“Paluxy Mantracks”](http://www.paleo.cc/paluxy/paluxy.htm) discovery, not seriously considered to be evidence of recent dinos or old cavemen except by the terminally hopeful. The timeline of human evolution is getting more established every day, and it points to the oldest _Homo_ as no more than single-digit millions of years before present, depending on which species you are referring to (_Homo habilis, Homo sapiens, H. erectus,_ etc.). It would take lot more than an isolated find like the one you link to for that timeline to be overturned. > [@](#): > > The fossil record of human ancestors may go back 6 million years or more, and the genus Homo arose at least 1.8 million years ago when australopithecines evolved into human ancestors known as Homo habilis. From [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub\_releases/2005-02/uou-toh021105.php](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/uou-toh021105.php) So start digging. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-people-feared-dragons-long-before-they-knew-of-dinosaurs/478251/42 "2008-12-25T20:41:51Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > … > :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: > > -give or take a few dots. Dots enough, now! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-people-feared-dragons-long-before-they-knew-of-dinosaurs/478251/43 "2008-12-26T10:05:55Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > Medieval Europe, Ancient China…all of them have myths about dragons. As Tomndebb noted, they all had myths about large serpentine creatures that we translate today with the word “dragon”. They did not all actually have dragons. > [@](#): > > Dragons that fit the description of dinsaurs just a little too well. In what way do you believe this? Firstly dragons don’t all share the same charteristics. Dragons even vary wildly within regions, but in general Chinese dragons are semi-etheral, intelligent, wingless, vegetarians that undergo a physical metemorphosis from aquatic to celestial form. Northern European dragons are terrestrial, carnivorous, venomous and limbless and universally of animal intelligence. Mediterranean dragons are either flightless or winged, carnivorous, often hoard gold and are inteeligentin at least some degree. In what way do those diverse creatures “fit” dinosaurs? > [@](#): > > Yet, in everyday life, these people didn’t have any beasts to base the image on. The discovery of the first dinosaur fossils were still centuries in the future. The original Mediterranean dragons were almost certainly based on crocodiles, possibly combined with hippos. That is where our modern dragon derived their upturned snouts. That is a feature that you only ever find in aquatic animals, yet it is universal in later Christian era European dragons. Northern European “worms” were almost certainly based on snakes. Hence the limbless reptilian body and the venom. Chinese dragons appear to be simply a hybrid fish and horse/deer. Indeed many Chinese dragons metemorphose form a carp form to the later deer form. And China also had both alligators and crocodiles. So saying that “people didn’t have any beasts to base the image on” couldn’t be further form the truth. They had lots of besats to base the image on. > [@](#): > > Okay, so they had lizards crawling on rocks and walls. But from a lizard to a dragon is a really big step. No bigger than the step from man to giant. And giant myths are universal. Are you suggesting that there really were giants on Earth at one time? > [@](#): > > It would have been far more likely for those people in antiquity, if they had wanted to come up with a monster based on the exaggeration of an every day pest, to come up with monsters based on giant spiders, or giant snakes, or giant rats. Yet none of those are as prevalent as the myths about dragons. Yes, they are. Well, not the rats, but rats aren’t notable killers of humans so they aren’t really the type of thing that legendary heroes fight. But mythologies are just as full of giant fish, giant dogs and so forth as they are of dragons. And of course the European dragon is just a gaint snake. ---
**Author:** ![KP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a9adbd/32.png) [@KP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KP)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2008, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-people-feared-dragons-long-before-they-knew-of-dinosaurs/478251/44 "2008-12-27T04:48:43Z")
It can be quite easy to assume that “we” educated modern folk would quite easily be able to identify and characterize the bones we found. [This](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39761000/jpg/_39761081_mammoth_hollingworth_203.jpg) skull belongs to a kind of well-known animal that has coexisted with man in Europe, Asia and Africa. You’ve probably seen one of [these](http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythiccreatures/land/images/2Dwarf-elephant-skull_lg.jpg) in person If the SD were collectively teleported to an alien planet, and individually ran acorss found the first one, few of us would be at all certain it was even a fossil (much less a skull) . Most of us wouldn’t care ,and could live centuries without ever caring. Few of us would identify the animal correctly, and I daresay a larger percentage of us would remain unconvinced by them. A definite majority would NOT believe it was exactly like a commonly known Earth animal. Set us to the task of carving a living out of the environment, finding mates, perfecting the brewing of alcohol and other essentials from alien plants, and I imagine we’d happily call it “an alien lifeform we haven’t seen around the parts, yet, thank god” for many generations to come, our educations notwithstanding. That isn’t the most familiar animal or most bizarre skull that I can think of. Most models/exhibitions we’ve seen were designed to render selected relations clear and obvious. Samples found in nature are not ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2008, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-people-feared-dragons-long-before-they-knew-of-dinosaurs/478251/45 "2008-12-27T05:26:01Z")
> [@EvilTOJ](#): > > For some reason this [abomination](http://www.1timothy4-13.com/files/bible/dino.html) of a website came to mind as soon as I saw the thread title. Two cowboys shot a pterdactyl? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-come-people-feared-dragons-long-before-they-knew-of-dinosaurs/478251.md?page=2)