Why do so many cultures have depictions and stories of dragons despite being mythical?
>>451322
The phallus.
The word dinosaur was invented in 1841. It means terrible lizard.
Before that, they were called dragons. The reason so many ancient cultures and civilizations talk about dragons is because man lived with them. There are even pots depicting man riding on dinosaurs.
/thread
Dinosaurs you retard
Alligators and crocodiles.
>>451348
GO AWAY KENT HOVIND
YOU DONT BELONG HERE
>>451783
Uh, perhaps a huge scaly lizard with wings? Just a guess.
>>451322
probably from fossils
>>451827
I wonder how retarded you are.
>>451831
>>451768
What other reason would there be you fucking idiots?
All ancient cultures, civilizations, unconnected with eachother talk about these giant lizard creatures.
They obviously refer to dinosaurs.
What else? If they were just local myths, why is it so wide spread and practically all civilizations mention them?
Atheists are stupid.
>>451831
plenty of dinosaur fossils around which look pretty similar. even if someone had accurately described the fossil as it got passed around it'd easily turn into looking like a dragon at some point
They talked about what we now refer to as dinosauria.
/thread
>>451322
>Why do so many cultures have depictions and stories of dragons despite being mythical?
>Take a dangerous animal like a snake
>Make it bigger and scarier
Same reason so many mythologies have giants in them
>>451322
First of all those two are not the same really.
One is called a Dragon. The other is called a Long, and is only called a dragon thanks to western interpretation.
>>451877
And second of all?
>>451881
The western one is evil or at least animalistic. Chink one has human like intelligence, benign, and can shapeshift into a human to talk to people.
>>451885
>tfw not breeding with a dragon
why live?
>>451877
>name: Chinese dragon
>Has 4 fingers not 5
>>451932
Chinese dragon claws are mandated by Imperial law since probably the Song Dynasty.
5 claws are for the Emperor's
4 is for high ranking government officials and the Imperial Household and
3 is for everyone else.
The 5 clawed imperial dragon is the closest Premodern China ever came to a flag (besides the Qing Flag that is) and is labelled "Chinese Dragon." But really, they're all Chink dragons no matter the number of toes. This is why Koreans, Japanese, Viets, and Bhutan can only have 4/3 clawed dragons. Depicting a 5 clawed one is like copying someone elses' Flag.
>>451961
>this is why Koreans, Japanese, Viets, and Bhutan can only have 4/3 clawed dragons. Depicting a 5 clawed one is like copying someone elses' Flag.
If they had used a 5 claw dragon, the Chinese Emperor would probably declare war on said country. Weren't the number of claws used to rank different countries place in the tributary system?
The Chinese had 5 because le civlization
Korean had 4 because they were seen as little China and since Japan were lower down in the tributary system than Korea, they were only allowed to get 3 claws.
Anyway, interesting post, I didn't know the depictions of claws in were also used to rank people in China.
>>451846
Did these lizards not have bones? Why do archeological digs not find dinosaur bones anywhere close the the level of the ancient civilizations you refer to.
>>451322
Well, Christian Crusaders in Egypt thought Nile Crocodiles were dragons. Same for the Romans if I remember correctly.
>>451322
>many cultures
wich are?
>>451930
Bad dragon exist just for people like you
>>451846
what do atheist have to do with any of this?
>>451783
YOU ALREADY HAVE A TRIPCODE. THERE IS NO NEED TO BEG FOR ATTENTION BY OTHER, EXCESSIVE, MEANS
How many dinosaur bones would they have uncovered before modern paleontology?
>>454116
Good question, but I'm sure it wasn't super rare
A lot of digging got done for building houses, roads, ditches, mass graves, etc.
Not to mention mining and wells which went even deeper
All it takes is one set of bones to provoke a legend that gets passed along
I heard an interesting take on the historicity of David & Goliath in this vein: Goliath was some huge (but not mythologically giant) Philistine who got into a fight with David. Some guys are sitting around a fire, drinking possibly, and the story of some little Jew boy who knocked down a 6'5 dude turns into this whole tale
>>451930
Fear not, you can still pretend with a dragon dildo. I'm sure you already do.
>>454527
>Goliath's stature grew at the hand of narrators or scribes: the oldest manuscripts—the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel, the 1st century historian Josephus, and the 4th century Septuagint manuscripts—all give his height as "four cubits and a span" (6 feet 9 inches or 2.06 metres) whereas the Masoretic Text gives this as "six cubits and a span" (9 feet 9 inches or 2.97 metres; Hebrew: שֵׁ֥שׁ אַמֹּ֖ות וָזָֽרֶת šêš ’ammōṯ wā-zāreṯ).
Because of intra-universal Concept influence between all the ten Gears made the 5th-Gear Concept of dragons spread to the rest of them, duh. lrn2Divine States-World Interaction Theory. It's like you haven't even read Owari no Chronicle.
>>451322
Lizards are cool.
Also fire is cool.
Ancient fiction.
Basically dragons are badass, but they're mostly originated from eastern culture.
Western culture has mostly mammals in their heraldry and mythology.
>>454116
Imperial China uncovered them quite commonly enough to include them in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Hell, shit continues to this day. In one province in Southern China & North Vietnam, there's this noodle dish called "Dragon Bone Soup" whose soup mix includes ground up dino fossils. A headache for Chinese paleontologists.
This was, however, a tribal belief. Han Chinese viewed such things as consuming dragon essence as sacrilege. Not to mention their literati believed that dragons are spritual beings and not real flesh and blood things.
>Guys what do you think ate my sheep
Probably a bear or some shit
>But what if it was monsters
Well we'd probably have seen them
>But what if they live in the sky
We'd have no way to know, so I guess we'll have to consider this a possibility for the next few thousand years
>>452263
Because information passed down the line by spoken work becomes muddled over time, and since spoken word cannot be considered fact unless its supported by evidence you get the mythological creatures that are Dragons.
Please dont be a retarded pleb.
>>454639
Well now I want to go to China and eat some fucking dinosaurs.
A lot of 'dragons' in mythology aren't really traditional dragons. The 'dragon' slain by Sigurd the Dragon slayer was more of a giant lizard/snake.
>>454780
Nigger you don't need recorded world's to be able to date dinosaur bones. Dinosaurs were not alive anywhere near the time man became prevelant.
Stop spouting nonsense.
>>454612
Considering the average height in the ancient levant to be about around 5 feet that would seem huge 2bh
>>456575
Why wait?
Just munch on some chicken dude, they're raptors and shit.
>>456666
WE DOMESTICATED DINOSAURS
>>456666
So white men domesticated fucking aurochs AND dinosaurs? And negroids can't even domesticate a fucking Zebra!?
Probably because some of them discovered dinosaurs fossils and then they made up all this dragon thing.
>>451877
fuck off
They are not mythical.
>>454780
That wasn't even close to answering his question.
Here it is in retard terms to help you understand.
>Archaeological dig
>Dead people are 10 feet underground
>Everything around at the same time as dead people is 10 feet underground
>Big scary lizards are 50 feet underground
Explain.
>>456948
they buried them in mass graves when they killed the dinosaurs duh
>>451322
They don't, get it through ya thick skull ya fuggen fuckwit. Chinese dragons are a totally different creature to Western ones, labelled purely due to superficial resemblance.
>>452364
He's clearly a creationist.
>>451846
>Take an existing animal (lizard)
>Make it bigger
Wew lad, that was hard. Obviously separate cultures couldn't have done this, so it proves the entire universe is 6000 years old.
>>456666
Satan's quads have graced us all on Christmas Eve.
>>457601
>Satan's quads have graced us all on Christmas Eve.
IT'S SEASON, THEN!
>>457747
>"Ayy man, snakes and lizards sure are scary!"
>"Ayy imagine if they had legs and could fly"
>"Whoa, imagine if they could shoot fire as well! That'd be fucking insane, dude!"
It's not a very hard thing to come up with. Snakes and lizards come in lots of shapes and sizes in almost every area on earth where dragons were part of peoples mythologies. It's also not unthinkable that dragon myths were spreading even during the the times when most people were still wandering nomads. Snake and lizard bites have always been one of the most common causes of deaths for humans, and made their way in to their respective cultures and mindsets in many different ways.
The part about dragons commonly being depicted as shooting fire is most likely because fire was kind of the most destructive force known to man before gunpowder.
>>456582
>This is a stupid argument. It required modern comparative anatomy and detailed paleontology study to determine Dinosaurs shared features with reptiles
Yeah, but does it take much more than an uncovered skull and the power of imagination to make shit up?
Pretty sure no one is arguing that the classification of "dragon" is in any way accurate. The skull looks kinda lizard like, and everything else is the rule of cool run amok.
Snake + Tiger = East Asian
Snake + Lion = European
>>457973
>lizard bites have always been one of the most common causes of deaths for humans
>How do cultures have zombies without them being real
>How do cultures have griffons without them being real
>How do cultures have ogres without them being real
>How do cultures have fish people without them being real
Have you considered that human imagination is limited and all develops on a similar track?
This might have something to do with it:
>since the origin of primates, snakes have been a universal threat; both primates and snakes that can kill them (i.e., constrictors and venomous snakes) have their greatest diversity in tropical ecosystems (1, 2, 40, 41). Our data provide unique neuronal evidence supporting the hypothesis that snakes provided a novel selective pressure that contributed to the evolution of the primate order by way of visual modification (2, 5). We urge neurophysiologists to engage in similar studies across a wide range of primate species and closely related mammals to further examine the phylogenetic fingerprint of fast snake detection.
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/47/19000.abstract
Primates are naturally afraid of snakes due to evolutionary conditions. So, perhaps we humans have the same in-built reaction in us, making the image of the serpent particularly potent.
Even in countries without serpents, like Ireland, images of dragons and serpents are persistent. Sure, they may have been brought in from cultures/mythologies from countries that had serpents roaming around, but the fact they remained alive might speak to something on a deeper level, like Freud's archaic remnants.
That being said, I don't know why the spider isn't a more typical image in myth if that's true.
>>458164
Spiders are very prevalent in mythology and almost always in a negative connotation.
Which I find interesting when contrasting dragons from the west and from the east.
Western dragons are seen as greedy calamities where as Eastern dragons are wise and benevolent if terrifying entities.
>>451322
I find it more interesting the divide between cultures who see Dragons as sinister and to be killed or at least avoided, and those which see them as beneficial and there to help/lead humans.
not to imply that Asians are reptilians or anything.
I also like that Eurasian cultures (like Persians, Russians) portray dragons similarly to East Asians yet have them as diabolical
>>451322
In baltic mythology we have:
Slibinas - basically a flying snake, evil creature.
Grass snakes - pagans used to keep them on their house and they where supposed to be deities that defend their home from evil spirits.
So yeah one is venomous hence evil, other isn't hence good.
>>458207
in their house*
>>458164
>countries without serpents, like Ireland
>>458164
>Even in countries without serpents, like Ireland, images of dragons and serpents are persistent.
not really, t. Irishman. Dragon/Serpent tales aren't common here at all, there's like one story about a giant worm that digs a river, and the story of Patrick chasing the snakes fromIreland.
>>451322
Mexico had dragons too
This is what modern dinosaurs look like. Very draconic. I guess ceratopsian fossils are the most similar thing. But dragons in general look more reptilian (expect for the hip structure in the non-serpent types), so perhaps they're just strange amalgamations of snakes/crocodilians, bats, and birds or other dinosaurs.
>>458631
BAVI
A
V
I
>>458635
BANTI DESU
>>456582
>implying people used to be stupid
>>451322
We western eurasians who share a dragon tradition identify big fantasy reptiles from other cultures with dragons when they clearly play very different roles.
Big reptile isn't a weird concept precisely, since they exist in real life.
>>452296
An andalusi muslim traveler said the same too. Can't remember the name, but I'm pretty sure it's the one /pol/ quotes to show that arabs hated blacks.
>>456582
its not very hard to figure out that these two animals would look alike
>>456582
There's poisonous snakes in pretty much all the globe. The exception being some islands like Ireland and Madagascar plus frozen shitholes like the part of Canada where nobody lives.
>>456666
>>458600
huehuehue
>>451322
Dragons are probably a combination of animals that mankind feared during their evolution in Africa that became instinctual. A dragon personifies all of our predators rolled into one monster-
>Long, thin bodies like poisonous snakes.
>Clawed paws like great cats
>Heads like crocodiles and alligators
>Limbs built like those of the great cats.
>Scales like all the reptiles determined to nom on our bones.
Etc
>>458600
So did those abo cunts in australia desu
>>458568
I'm Irish too fool. Fionn mac Cumhail fights a dragon. in one of the preliminary stories of the Táin, the two pig keepers turn into dragons and rain snow on Ireland. Cú Chulainn's spear is made from the bones of a sea serpent called the Coinchen, there's an evil deity called Crom Cruach that was some sort of serpent. Then you've St. Patrick.
There's also The Celtic Dragon Myth, which I've yet to read but that's unrelated to the above stories. Serpents and dragons are everywhere, buuud.
>why do so many cultures base mythic creatures on reptiles
no idea. maybe they seen reptiles
>>459168
What reptiles from Africa? I can see where you're coming from but I think stuff like that came from populations where reptiles were present, like Europe and Asia.
>>458190
What spidery myths do you know? I only know of Anansi.
>>459659
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_spiders
Lots of 'em here. Especially with Native Americans.
>>459617
>What reptiles from Africa?
You serious? Crocs, monitor lizards, chameleons, etc.
Reptiles are all over the planet. There's a west african story about a guy who spends decades fighting a dragon with over 800 swords.
