Conquering Vertigo

there be dragons here

So what's with dragons?

They show up in almost every ancient culture and some modern ones as well, not to mention best-selling novels. The Welsh fly a dragon flag (pictured at right), and no self-respecting Chinese festival lacks a benevolent, if fire-breathing, dragon. Dragons show up in both the Old and New Testaments, and even the Inuits have dragon references.

Dragons are on my mind thanks to Harry Potter and my sister. Jules inspired me to dip back into Book Five of the canon (Order of the Phoenix) before the movie hits the theatres this summer. Reading five led me back and forth to 4 and 6 for context, and thence to dragons.

What real creature gave us the dragon? Did dragons give us dragons?
In the East, they're usually good; in the ancient / historic West usually bad; in the Americas they are gods or god-like; in the mid-east, including Judeo-Christian, they generally oppose God. Satan is described as a dragon in the Book of the Revelation. Modern fiction gives us many varieties of good, smart, bad and ugly dragons, filled with magical powers.

I'm neither anthropologist nor archeologist, so my research is facile at best. One scientist says humankind has a primitive imprint of fear against predator raptors, so we all "know" dragons. Others have formulated the "dinosaur skeleton" theory, but really it holds no water. Dem dry bones didn't lead to the spontaneous and somewhat independent formation of dragons who fly, guard treasures, have magical powers, fight, speak, etc.

Aiding and abetting my dragon flights of fancy is science itself. Here is a link to a story about a newly uncovered "Gigantoraptor" (really): http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/14/MNGUTQESS41.DTL
My favorite quote is: "When I went back to my geologist colleague Lin Tan's lab to check the skeleton, I was shocked," Xu wrote in his e-mail. "I said to Tan, 'It is not a sauropod, it is not a tyrannosaurus, it is a tyrannosaurus-sized oviraptor. We have a gigantic chicken!' "

A gigantic chicken. Here's the artist's rendering:

But this gigantic chicken isn't my dragon. This is not the dragon of the Norsemen or of King Arthur, whose surname was Pendragon. Who were the real dragons? And where are they now, these fierce beings, hidden deep underground in caves in the Caucasus Mountains, guarding ancient treasures?

posted by Woman In Love @ 9:49 PM