Behold, my 2000 word article on dragons!!!
(I love my Uni course
)Dragons: Myth, or something more?
by Jacob Coates
Throughout history, dragons have always fascinated humans. In China and America, they were worshipped as Gods, whilst in Europe they were used as the living embodiment of Satan. No matter where you go, there is no escaping the dragon, they are, quite literally, everywhere. Virtually every single culture in the world mentions a dragon at some point in their history. But how have they become so widespread without any contact between the cultures? Do all humans possess an innate knowledge of massive, fire breathing, winged reptiles? Or is it something else? Did they really exist?
To answer these questions, you must go back to the very beginning. Naturally, it is impossible to tell when the very first mention of dragons was made in human text – such record would have long since ceased to exist or become lost through the ages. However, it is safe to assume that the dragon myth originated, not in Asia as many people would expect, but in Mesopotamia, near modern day Iran and Iraq. The Enûma Eliš, a Mesopotamian Creation epic, describes the dragon goddess, Tiamat, and her dragon children. This text originates from around 2000BCE.
Another ancient Mesopotamian dragon is Mushussu, the protector of the Ishtar Gates of Babylon, an ancient city in modern day Iraq. Though the Gates were only constructed in the year 500BCE, the dragon guardian originates in texts dating back a millennium before he was assigned to guard to Gates.
It wasn’t until around 1800BCE before the dragon started emerging in Chinese society as the totem or banner of warlords and eventually the Emperor himself. In China, of course, dragons were revered as Gods, and the Emperors were their mortal children. As such, only the Emperor was permitted to wear depictions of the five-toed dragons, which were considered to be the most sacred.
It was also about this time a dragon appeared in The Bible. The Prophet Daniel converted the city of Babylon to Judaism by convincing their King that the dragon that resided in their city was not Godly. This was the start of a tradition in the Jewish – and later Christian – faith that denounced the dragon as satanic.
Sceptics to the dragons’ existence would then claim that knowledge of the dragon spread throughout Europe through The Bible and The Tanakh (Jewish Holy Text), but this would not be true. One island in particular seriously undermines this assumption, though many people choose to conveniently ignore it.
The British Isles have long been a hotbed of dragon lore and legends, and even has had its fair share of sightings. And there have been recordings of various sightings across the island.
One such example is on display in the Library of Sussex, detailing an account from the 17th Century.
A Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered, and yet living, to the great Annoyance and divers Slaughters both of Men and Cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson. In Sussex, two miles from Horsam, in a Woode called St. Leonards Forrest, and thirtie miles from London, this present month of August, 1614.
And that was not the first dragon legend originating from St. Leonards Forest. The forest is so called because St. Leonard, a French hermit, killed a dragon that had previously resided in the wood. St. Leonard was wounded in the battle, and white lilies are said to grow in the forest where his blood was spilt. This was said to take place at around 600CE.
And of course, arguably the most widely recognised and well known of all European Dragons comes from the British Isles. Y Ddraig Goch is the national emblem of Wales. More commonly known as the Red Dragon of Wales, he can be found on the Welsh flag.
Out of all of Britain, it is Wales and South-West England that possess the most dragons. You can barely travel fifteen miles without running into somewhere with a dragon legend, story, or sighting. In fact, there is one aspect that the ancient Welsh tribes shared with the Chinese. And that was that their rulers were considered to be dragons, similar to the Chinese belief that the Emperor was the child of dragons. Welsh leaders were referred to as Ddraigs, literally translated to dragon.
There are also many other dragon tales coming from southern England and Wales, dating from before the origins Christianity and after the religion came to Britain. It must be noted that before Christianity came to the Islands the dragons were usually good natured, or at least did not go around eating humans. But this changed with the religion, and the dragons were quickly depicted as maiden-eating, ferocious beasts.
But this in itself raises an interesting question. It is popular belief that it was The Tanakh, and later The Bible, that spread the news of Satan’s servants, the dragons. So how did it come to be that the dragons were already common in ancient Briton texts before either Book landed on British soil? After all, it wasn’t until the 5th Century CE that Christianity came to Britain, and dragon legends certainly predate this.
There is one text in particular that proves this, and that is the ancient tale of Lludd and Llefelys. Dating back from the 6th Century BCE, the Welsh King Lludd needed to overcome three challenges to secure his Kingdom. One of these challenges was to overcome two dragons, one red, and the other white, which he buried below the hill, Dinas Emrys, in the Snowdonia mountain range in Northern Wales. The red dragon was Y Ddraig Goch, the Red Dragon of Wales.
Incidentally, these dragons were later released by the wizard Merlin. He claimed that Y Ddraig Goch represented the Britons, and that the second represented the Saxons. Y Ddraig Goch were to triumph, then the Britons would defeat the Saxons in battle soon after. After a long and exhausting battle, Y Ddraig Goch, defeated the rival dragon, heralding a Briton victory shortly afterwards.
And there were dragon legends surrounding the Roman invasion of Britain, still before the Jewish or the newly founded Christian faiths touched Britain. There are stories of dragons emerging from the bone strewn battlefields to rise up and defend Britain. Roman texts recorded many carvings on the Chalk hills of Southern England, many depicting draconic creatures.
Though it could be feasible that The Tanakh did make it to Britain before 600BCE to spread the dragon legend, this seems to be quite unlikely. For obvious reasons, The Bible could not have spread the dragon legend before 600BCE.
And if this isn’t a tough enough question for dragon sceptics to bypass, then an even greater one poses itself, because the dragon legend didn’t just cross the thirty or so miles of the English Channel. The dragon legend actually crossed the largest body of water on Earth, the Pacific Ocean, all the way across to the Americas.
It was not just China and Mesopotamia who worshipped Dragon-Gods. The Central American tribes also had their own Dragon-Gods. Quetzalcoatl, one of the greatest of the Aztec and Mayan Gods, the patron God of learning and wisdom, was a feathered serpent. And he wasn’t the only one of his kind. There were many feathered serpents engraved on the Aztec and Mayan temples of the Yucatan.
Some, like Quetzalcoatl, were legless, simply massive snakes with wings, but there were also creatures with startling similarities to the European Dragons. Winged and four legged, they were often depicted as breathing fire. The Aztec dragons were worshipped and feared in equal measure, for if they were not appeased then they could herald the end of the world with their flames. In usual Aztec fashion, the Dragon-Gods were kept appeased by human sacrifice.
Unlike the dragon legend having a slight chance of being spread by the Tanakh in Britain, there is absolutely no possible way for the Tanakh to have done the same in the Americas. Humans migrated to the Americas somewhere near the end of the last Ice Age, over 50,000 years ago, long before the Tanakh was written. After the ocean levels rose after the Ice Age, the Americas were cut off from Siberia.
Humans then spread across America, some staying in what is now the United States, some travelling further south to the regions now known as Mexico, Brazil and Peru. It was in this part of the Americas that the dragons began to appear, with absolutely no possible contact with the Europeans and Babylonians.
The only Europeans to land in America before the Spanish was one small Viking raid in about the 10th Century CE. They did not pass south of where the border between Canada and the USA now lies, and certainly had no contact with the Aztecs and Mayan to pass on their tales of Ragnarok, the ruling dragon of Scandinavian lore. The North American tribes did not leave the plains, so they also could have had no contact with the Yucatan tribes in the south.
So, if it is certain that there could have been no contact between at least two places of dragon lore, then that leaves but two feasible explanations.
The first is that humans do possess an innate knowledge – and fear of – massive, fire breathing, winged reptiles. And to be honest, that is not something that is too surprising. There isn’t much that isn’t particularly scary about the image that that conjures. But if humans do possess such an innate fear, then why is that so? Everything after all in the natural world exists for a reason. Everything has its own purpose.
And this leads me on to the second feasible explanation. And that is that humans do, or at the very least did, have reason to fear such a being. It is not too hard to imagine that said giant, fire breathing, winged reptiles would find humans to be particularly tasty. After all, is it not the role of the prey to remember a predator, and fear it? Because it is that fear that will allow it to survive longer, to know when to run from danger. And it will then pass on its fear of a predator to future generations, so that they too, may run from the predator to survive.
Over time, as the dragons dwindled and became more reclusive, this fear also subsided, and tales tell of some humans daring to challenge the few dragons which remained. Some, such as St. George, survived their encounters and became great dragon-slayers. Others were not so lucky, such as a Welsh unnamed outlaw from Hiraethog, who was unfortunate to receive no less than three fatal wounds in combat with a dragon outside Betws-y-Coed, not far from Dinas Emrys. Deadly venom, a sliced throat and drowning was the failed dragon slayer’s fate.
And now in modern times, the friendly side of dragons has started to return to the fore. Since the invention of film, many dragons have come alive before our eyes. Some still maintain the evil nature the church branded them with, but others were not. Arguably the greatest dragon in film, Draco, was of good heart, but he came to a tragic, but joyful ending in the 1995 film, Dragonheart.
Dragons are equally varying in book form too, from Ancalagon and Smaug, the cold and cunning dragons of Middle Earth, to Temeraire, a remarkably wise and perceptive dragon in His Majesties Air Corps during the Napoleonic Wars in the Temeraire novels.
There are many people out there who dream of dragons, who long for them to exist, to varying degrees. And then there are also people out there who scoff at the dragon legends, who claim that dragons could never exist, that they are impossible animals, the creation of someone’s imagination. These people are incorrect in at least one aspect, because it is certain that the dragon can exist on Earth, even with all the rules and laws of science it has. Laws that fantasy worlds do not have. Though the dragons of legend do seem magical, this can be attributed to over-embellishing quite normal feats either from early creative freedom, or from fear of staring such a mighty creature in the face.
The dragon debate will likely rage on between the opposing camps for as long as a certain dragon sighting is made, for none have been made in recent years, certainly not in the days of cameras. Will a dragon ever be seen by humans again? Will they emerge from wherever they are hiding? Or are they another species humankind has caused the decline of?
You cannot prove that something does not exist, so in this respect, those who long for the dragon legends to be real are at an advantage. The dragon cannot be proved to not exist. Only one thing can put to rest the great debate, and the sceptics have no hope of winning it, for as long as no dragon is seen, it will always be claimed that they are just around the corner, waiting to be found.
This article does not necessarily need to be for a dragon or mythological related publication. This would be suitable for a more generic publication such as Discover Magazine. I believe that Discover Magazine, as a branch of the Discovery Channel, would be interested in publishing this. Animal Planet, another branch of the Discovery Channel, recently funded a documentary postulating the existence of dragons (Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real). Because of this, I know that this article would be considered based on the subject matter.
Yay!! 
(Although to the best of my knowledge, there is no downright lies in there...)
It`s too sad really that they scoff at my thoughts. 
