Dragons are some of the world's most popular mythical creatures. There are myths and legends about these monsters in many cultures from the Americas and Europe to India and China. Their history is long and rich in form. To this day, they inhabit books, films and TV series.
It is impossible to pinpoint when and where the earliest dragon stories appeared. Descriptions of huge flying lizards are found in both the ancient Greeks and the Sumerians. Most of the time, dragons were treated like any mythical creature: sometimes they were protectors and saviors, sometimes dangerous destroyers.
Everything changed when Christianity spread throughout the world. Dragons began to be considered sinister creatures, symbols of Satan. In the Middle Ages, most people knew about dragons from the Bible. Most likely, many Christians of that time really believed in their existence. The same Leviathan - a giant monster described in detail in chapter 41 of the Book of Job - is very much like a dragon:
The belief in dragons was based not only on legends, but also on physical evidence, people believed then. For millennia, no one knew how to relate to the giant bones that were regularly found in various parts of the world. Today they are engaged in paleontology.
Variety of dragons
Anyone can imagine a dragon, but many of the details of these “illustrations” will differ dramatically. Some dragons have wings, while others do not. Some can talk and breathe fire, others cannot. Some dragons will be small, no more than half a meter, while others will be able to boast of a kilometer wingspan. Dragons can live in underwater palaces on the ocean floor or in caves in the mountains.
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As folklorist Carol Rose describes in her book Giants, Monsters, & Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth, dragons “possessed a mixture of the traits of other beasts, in In India they had the head of an elephant, in the Middle East the features of lions and birds of prey and, of course, the heads of various reptiles, in particular, snakes. Their body color ranges from green, red and black to unusual yellow, blue and white.”
Zoologist Karl Shuker describes the variety of dragons in his book Dragons: A Natural History. There are giant snakes, hydras, gargoyles and dragon-gods, and basilisks, wyverns and cockatrice *. In general, dragons, like chameleons, have adapted to the cultural and artistic expectations of a particular era.
* Cockatrice, or kurolisk - looks like a basilisk, and they are often considered synonymous creatures, but according to some legends they differ.
We know dragons not so much by legends as by interpretations of legends in books and films: from The Hobbit to How to Train Your Dragons and Game of Thrones.
The battle of St. George with the dragon (Paolo Uccello, c. 1456).
The origin of dragons
The word "dragon" comes from the Greek δράκων, which most likely comes from δέρκομαι, which means “I see / look / follow”. After all, it was believed that these creatures guarded treasures, mountains of gold and precious stones. Most likely, the treasure still had a symbolic meaning, as a reward for defeating the monster.
Dragons are one of the few monsters that have fallen into mythology for the most part as a powerful and dangerous enemy for the Hero. By themselves, they rarely exist, only as an impetus to daring adventures. Other mythical creatures - trolls, gnomes and elves, for example - seem to coexist with humans, interact, while dragons act exclusively as an opponent.
The Christian church has created many legends about how saints defeat and destroy the devil in the guise of a dragon. The most famous of them is the story of the battle of George the Victorious with the serpent. After his victory, in admiration for the faith and courage of Saint George, the inhabitants of the city converted to Christianity.
The destruction of the dragon was not only a promising career step for a saint, knight or hobbit. According to the legends, it was a good way to raise an army. To do this, it was only necessary to nail the dragon that turned up under the arm, bury all its teeth and step aside. After that, brave fellows in full uniform with shields and swords had to come out of the ground (apparently, dig out).
Where did the idea of fire breath come from?
Experts suggest that this is to blame for medieval images of the entrance to hell, which was often depicted (and called) in the form of a literal mouth of a monster with fire and smoke. Add to this the vision of dragons as the personification of the devil and you get a fire-breathing serpent.
Fragment of an illustration from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, 1440.
Unlike Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, few people today seriously believe in the existence of these mythical creatures, at least in the Western version of them. They are too big and too fantastic to be taken seriously in the era of satellites and smartphones with cameras.
But just a couple of centuries ago, the dragon legends were “confirmed” by witnesses in the person of sailors who visited Indonesia. There they, apparently, came across Komodo monitor lizards - giant, very aggressive lizards, growing up to 3 meters in length. Western scholars confirmed their existence only in 1910, but the legends of the "komodo dragons" spread throughout the world long before that.