Interesting article in today’s New York Times.
Neat article. I don’t have much to add myself. I always assumed that dragons came about the same way as any other mythical creature – partly by mixing and matching elements of different animals, and partly just by exaggerating size/ferocity/etc. Of course dinosaur bones might play into it as well. Humans have always proved remarkably adept at making up weird stuff.
I saw a Komodo dragon in a zoo in Indonesia when I was a little kid. I think they kept it in a big pit in the ground. I don’t remember anything else about it, unfortunately (I was about 4 at the time).
Peter Dickinson wrote an interesting book called The Flight of Dragons, which postulated a biological model for dragons which fit the majority of folkloric evidence, as well as accounting for the lack of physical evidence. To summarize appallingly, he suggests that dragons were essentially huge blimps, and that the chemical reactions which allowed them to fly would tend to destroy their skeletons after death, leaving no fossils. It’s the sort of wacky theory that is unproven and probably unprovabel, but makes for a nifty thought experiment.
I wonder if Creationists approve of it.
Most Creationists I know have simply argued that dragons were dinosaurs who co-existed with humans. My problem with this is that dragons in myth tend to be much more serpentine than dinosaurs.
I think I saw an animated version of this book. I thought the theories quite ingenious as a thought experiment. Subpar plot, as I recall, but the “science” was neat to a burgeoning geek like me.
Troy