Dragons, a Global Concept, Hardwired?

 Throughout history, dragons influenced wars, science, art, and religion. They appear in almost every culture and many still believe in dragons. How could different cultures, isolated by geology and millennia, all invent the same creature? If the dragon is simply the product of our imagination, how could distant peoples, with no knowledge of each other, all invent the same beast?  Some say it's from survival instincts that have been hardwired into our brains and evolved with us.  They point to three animals, a large cat, a predatory meat eating bird and the snake.  All three could have preyed on our ancestors and the Dragon is an evolved idea combining elements from all three.  What do you think?  

Yeah, maybe they all saw dinosaur bones over time?

I would extend your definition to, hardwired to perceive monsters. Vampires seems pretty universal worldwide, werewolves/windigo, ghosts and spirits, witches and so on.

Edited by Paul - 06-May-2007 at 15:33

None of the others you mention are as pervasive to every culture as the dragon

I would argue that dragons are not pervasive in the Americas or Africa or Australia regions isolated from the major Eurasian culture groups.

Certainly it can be said that the Americas had Thunder Bird and Quetzelcoatl, but these can hardly be similar to the notions of Old World dragons.

African myths feature many prominent serpents, but again these are very unlike Western and Eastern dragons.

Australians up till very recent times, basically lived with dragons, or at least creatures entirely alien to anything else.

I believe that Dragons as they are seen through Western eyes are uniquely a Eurasian mythological creature, and even the differences between the West and East make the creature almost entirely separate.

Originally posted by Paul I would extend your definition to, hardwired to perceive monsters. Vampires seems pretty universal worldwide, werewolves/windigo, ghosts and spirits, witches and so on.   I think the answer lies back in a previous post about religions. Like all prey, preyed upon by predators, we've been hardwired by evolution to have a fear and wariness of the unknown and darkness. In the modern human brain this has developed into cunjering even more predatory monsters than the animals that used to hunt us, because they're no more terrifying to us. The new monsters we create are however based upon the animals, scales, claws, teeth ect.

Janus wrote-

You could argue it, but you would loose  Again, dragons are pervasive, every culture has a dragon like figure.

Huh? You tell me I've lost when you've just repeated your earlier arguement. What are the elements that detail a dragon?

Here is what wikipedia describes as dragons:

The dragon is a mythical creature typically depicted as a large and powerful serpent or other reptile with magical or spiritual qualities. Mythological creatures possessing some or most of the characteristics typically associated with dragons are common throughout the world's cultures.[1] Dragons are commonly portrayed as serpentine or reptilian, hatching from eggs and possessing extremely large, typically scaly, bodies; they are sometimes portrayed as having large eyes, a feature that is the origin for the word for dragon in many cultures, and are often (but not always) portrayed with wings and a fiery breath. Some dragons do not have wings at all, but look more like long snakes. Dragons can have a variable number of legs: none, two, four, or more when it comes to early European literature. Modern depictions of dragons are very large in size, but some early European depictions of dragons were only the size of bears, or, in some cases, even smaller, around the size of a butterfly.

So basically all a dragon is is a creature that is serpentine in nature, may or may not have wings, may or may not have any number of legs, and may be of any size. Oh and it must have some magical or spiritual significance.

I'd say that with that definition you could call anything snake-like a dragon as long as it's mystical. This doesn't mean that dragons are universal, it means that the definition sucks. So what do you believe defines a dragon?

All "dragons" not of Old World origin are merely mythical snakes, and it's easy to understand how snakes are involved in nearly every mythology since snakes are represented on every continent except antarctica. Therefore dragons are not universal, snakes are.

I agree with JanusRook, but the fact that 'dragon' covers a considerable number of 'species' doesn't mean that they aren't titivated folk memories of actual beasts - just that there must have been a considerable variety of such beasts.

Edited by gcle2003 - 09-May-2007 at 09:23

It is possible that dragons are memories of living dinosaurs. Now before you laugh (you might already have done so) think for a moment. If you beleive the bible is right, then the theory is without any doubt. If you beleive evolution is right, then you have probably already disregarded what I have said as stupidity. But you cannot say in the most absolute sense that things are extinct, unless you know everything about the earth. There is still a huge bit to uncover. Also, you have to realize that the fossils that have been found are only the most minute number of all dinosaurs that ever existed. If (this is theoretical) evolution were right, and something killed most of the dinosaurs however many million years ago, is it not possible that some lived in more isolated places until mor recent (in evolutionist terms) times? We have only found a few thousand fossils of dinosaurs, and most are just one or two bones. It isnt impossible to have missed a the few from more recent times, from the more isolated places. Most bones arent found in the middle of the brazilian rain forest, as most people arent searching there.

Originally posted by El Pollo Loco It is possible that dragons are memories of living dinosaurs. Now before you laugh (you might already have done so) think for a moment. If you beleive the bible is right, then the theory is without any doubt. If you beleive evolution is right, then you have probably already disregarded what I have said as stupidity. But you cannot say in the most absolute sense that things are extinct, unless you know everything about the earth. There is still a huge bit to uncover. Also, you have to realize that the fossils that have been found are only the most minute number of all dinosaurs that ever existed. If (this is theoretical) evolution were right, and something killed most of the dinosaurs however many million years ago, is it not possible that some lived in more isolated places until mor recent (in evolutionist terms) times? We have only found a few thousand fossils of dinosaurs, and most are just one or two bones. It isnt impossible to have missed a the few from more recent times, from the more isolated places. Most bones arent found in the middle of the brazilian rain forest, as most people arent searching there.   Here is a good link on these things: www.s8int .com Its fun to read, and interesting, and I am sure some of the accounts are true, but not the majority.