There are many spots and secrets in the history of mankind that are of interest to any researcher. We love everything mysterious and inexplicable. Many are attracted by mythical creatures: mermaids, vampires, werewolves, dragons … The first three are still rumored to exist.
Did dragons really exist?
The dragon is one of the most popular mythological characters among many peoples; it is mentioned in many different stories. The dragon, as one of the most common mythological creatures, is a winged serpent, which is a combination of elements of other animals, usually the head (often several heads) and the body of a reptile (snake, lizard, crocodile) and the wings of a bird or bat; sometimes the image also includes elements of a lion, panther, wolf, dog, fish, goat, etc.
No ancient scripture was complete without dragons. All the peoples of the world who lived in different parts of the globe wrote about them. Moreover, all the legends are quite similar to each other, and this leads to the idea that dragons actually existed before. Otherwise, how people living on different continents, not having the opportunity to communicate with each other, could leave behind the same letters.
For example, in the legend of Herodotus it was written that the monster lived 20 meters long near the Crimean coast. A huge dark body with a long tail, and powerful clawed paws, with a ridge on the head and glowing red eyes. And, in addition, this monster had a terrible mouth with long teeth in several rows, ran quickly and uttered a loud piercing roar.
And the Hyperboreans, who lived in the completely opposite direction, described it as follows: "a huge lizard with large wings, powerful jaws and long claws on large scaly legs, screams loudly and spews fire."
Even in the modern world, dragons exist. One encyclopedic publication says: “Dragons are a squad of lizards, a genus of reptiles, reaching over 30 cm in length, they have a long tail and a narrow flattened body. Thanks to skin folds, these individuals are capable of gliding flights up to 20 m. Now about 14 species of dragons live on our planet."
On the island of Komodo today, there are huge lizards - dragons. They look very similar to the creatures described by our ancestors, only they do not spew fire and do not fly. A lot of controversy among scientists is the existence of the Ladoga lizard and the Loch Ness monster.
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The most common signs of a dragon are the ability to fly and the serpentine body shape; and notable signs such as multiple heads, fire breath, and intelligence are found in a minority of dragons.
According to one of the legends, Zeus stole Europa, the daughter of King Agenor, by cunning, turning into a white bull. Wanting to have faith in his daughter, the king sent his sons to find her. Agenor strictly ordered his sons not to return without Europe.
Having gone in search of their sister, the older brothers soon turned around the younger - Cadmus, leaving the young man alone. He traveled for a long time and finally came to a clearing in front of a grove, in which lived a huge dragon, the son of the god of war Ares. Cadmus fought the dragon and killed him. At the site of the battle, the hero founded the city of Thebes and became its king.
Soon, following the command of the goddess Athena, Cadmus pulled out the serpent's teeth and sowed them like seeds in a plowed field. From the teeth grew warriors - Sparta, that is, "sown", as they began to be called. They helped Cadmus in all his endeavors. The search for Europe was ultimately unsuccessful. The sons of Agenor, fearing the anger of their father, did not return home and remained to live in different countries.
God Ares took his beloved dragon to heaven, where he, wounded, wriggles between the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
Another legend says that the dragon Ladon was placed in the sky, which guarded a tree with golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides. The garden was at the very edge of the earth, where the titan Atlas held the firmament on his shoulders. Only the cunning Hercules could get the apples of eternal youth. He had to measure vultures with Antaeus, fight the dragon Ladon, and even hold the sky on his shoulders while Atlas went to the garden for apples.
Finally, there is another myth that mentions the dragon. He refers us to the expedition of the Argonauts to Colchis on the ship "Argo". To get the golden fleece, Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, had to defeat the dragon Kolchis, who guarded the magical ram skin.
According to the hypothesis of some scientists (A. Leroy-Gurana, V. Ya. Propp), the formation of a hybrid mythological image of a dragon refers to approximately the same period when the earlier mythological symbols of animals, as such, gave way to gods that combined the features of man and animal. The combination of different animals in one mythological symbol leads to the same elimination of the possibility of identifying a mythological symbol with a real animal. It is also assumed that the image of the dragon combines the images of animals that originally embodied two opposite and different from the earthly world - the upper (birds) and lower (snakes), therefore, the original mythological image of the dragon was one of the ways of representing the same pair of opposite mythological symbols.which are known in the myth of the duel or battle of mythological snakes and birds (Indian nagas and garudas, etc.).
Nevertheless, the dragon can be considered a further development of the image of the mythological serpent - the main signs and mythological motives associated with the dragon, in the main features, coincide with those that characterized the snake (cf., for example, the Serpent Gorynych).
The image of a dragon is characteristic of a relatively late stage in the development of mythology, but it is also represented in the mythologies of Sumer, Egypt, Ugarit, India, Greece, China, Japan, Mexico and the Andes), in most of which the economy was based on artificial irrigation (the so-called irrigation, or hydraulic societies), due to which the cult of reservoirs inherited from earlier times, associated with the dragon, acquired special importance.
Further use of the fantastic image of the dragon (in particular, in the mythologies of East and Southeast Asia, as well as in later European culture) was associated with the actual aesthetic role of this symbol in art. The question remains whether the image of the dragon in the mythologies of the early states of Western, South and East Asia, pre-Columbian America, is the result of independent parallel development or is associated with cultural interactions (compare the influence of the ancient Middle Eastern myths about the dragon on the Greek myth of Python, the use of the Chinese dragon symbol in the mythologies of Japan and other neighboring countries, as well as the Indian makara in the mythologies and art of many countries of Southeast Asia).
In Vietnam, the evolution of the dragon as a symbol of imperial power was a reflection of the heyday and decline of Vietnamese society. According to the traditions of feudal culture, in Vietnam, the dragon symbolized moral perfection.
Like a snake, the dragon was usually associated with fertility and the water element, as the owner of which he acted.
The dragon's connection with water, harvest and fertility is sometimes rethought in such a way that the dragon acted as the embodiment of a positive principle, as an assistant giving people water and wealth: in ancient Chinese mythology, a winged dragon helps the cultural hero Yuy, the founder of the Xia dynasty, dragging its tail along the ground and thereby determining the paths along which canals should be dug for water supply. Historically, the dragon assistant in such myths is raised to the myth of a snake tamed by heroes who harness it to a plow (in Babylonian mythology; cf. also the Slavic myth of two divine blacksmiths who harnessed a snake tamed by them into a plow and with its help dug the Dnieper bed, or the legend of Nikita Kozhemyak). A dragon, interpreted as an assistant, can bring treasures to people (in the Slavic myths about the dragon-flying snake,in typologically similar African legends, etc.). But despite the fact that the dragon was also an image of the water element, he was often represented as fire-breathing (a combination of the opposite symbols of water and fire).
The dragon was also considered the patron saint of treasures, which could only be obtained by killing him (in the Germanic myth of Sigurd or Siegfried, etc.).
Common to all mythologies, in which the dragon acts as a separate character, is the myth of its murder by a hero (or deity), who thereby frees the water swallowed by the dragon, a guarded treasure or kidnapped people (most often a girl). A widespread motive for the abduction of a girl by a dragon goes back to a ceremony during which a girl was sacrificed to the spirit of the waters (in China, the most beautiful girl was married to the Yellow River, throwing her into the water; in Ancient Egypt, before sowing, a girl was thrown into the Nile, also dressed in wedding clothes, to ensure the flooding of the Nile, without which the harvest was not possible, among the Maya Indians girls were thrown into the sacred reservoir of Chichen Itza). The myth corresponding to this rite usually takes the form of a story about a dragon demanding girls as an annual tribute. In Hittite mythology, the thunder god kills the dragon,drunk during a feast (Illuyanka, compare the Japanese myth of the hero Susanoo, who kills the eight-headed and eight-tailed snake Yamata no Orochi).
The mythological motive of the battle of the hero-serpent fighter with the dragon (serpent, cf., for example, Apollo-Saurocton) was later widely spread in folklore, and then penetrated into literature in the form of a legend about St. legends and their corresponding images are characteristic of medieval European art).
The Chinese dragon is a symbol of the masculine principle (yang) and the Chinese nation as a whole in Chinese mythology and culture. Unlike the European dragon, the Chinese one represents a good start. In honor of the dragon, there is an annual festival of dragon boats.
According to Chinese beliefs, the moon snake lives in rivers, lakes and seas, but is also capable of soaring into the skies. It clearly shows the traces of the deity of moisture and rain, originally associated with the cult of fertility. Rituals for making rain were not complete without images of a dragon already in the 6th century. BC e.
The main dragon breeds are as follows:
Tianlong is a Heavenly Dragon that guards the palaces of the gods and carries them on chariots.
Futsanlong is the Dragon of the Hidden Treasure that guards the precious stones and metals underground and excites the earth with volcanoes.
Dilun is an Earth dragon who is in charge of the seas and rivers.
Shenlong is a divine dragon, on which the weather, wind, rain depend, and which thunders from the sky.
The last two types of dragon in the popular imagination have grown together in the figures of dragon kings, which have a human body and a dragon's head. They live in the seas in the east (East China Sea), south (South China Sea), west (Indian Ocean) and north (probably Baikal).
As the king of animals, the dragon served as a symbol of imperial power. According to Chinese myth, the Yellow Emperor, at the end of his life, turned into a dragon and soared into the heavens. A real emperor must have a dragon-shaped mole. The imperial throne of many dynasties was called the throne of the dragon. During the Qing dynasty, the Chinese dragon adorned the national flag. For wearing clothes with dragon figures, a commoner was subject to the death penalty.
The Tibetan dragon is one of the representatives of eastern mythological dragons and is closest to the Chinese one. The fierce dragon decoration is typical for Tibetan temples, for example, for the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. There are many dragon tales and stories in Tibet. It is said that when young Dorgzong Rinpoche visited Yonten Ritro in Rongmi, Kham, the whole village saw nine dragons.
One of the stories tells about a hunter who fell into a cave and could not get out of there. There was a sleeping dragon in the cave and illuminated it with its own light. In order not to die of thirst, the man began to lick the dew from the pearl clamped in the dragon's paws, and found that the dew is very nutritious and makes him happy and healthy. In the spring, the dragon woke up and flew out of the cave, and the hunter, grabbing his tail, got out with him.
Also famous is the flight of the dragon into the heavens from the hill in front of the Nubchen monastery in Gonjo, Kham. This happened when the eighth Dorzong Rinpoche visited this place to "enthrone" one Rinpoche and bless the reconstructed altar that was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The ceremony took place inside the temple on June 16, 1993. But most of the people did not fit inside and housed outside. Suddenly someone saw a dragon soaring into the heavens from the top of the hill! As is customary in Tibet and, especially among the people of Gonjo, in joyful moments, everyone shouted: "Kyi … Lha Je Lo … Kyi … Lha Je Lo …". This is an old cry that means: “Be happy! May the gods be victorious!"
When the screams reached the temple, those inside thought that those outside were “drunk with happiness” and thus express joy. This is what Dorzong Rinpoche was told. At that moment, they ran into the temple and said that the dragon rises directly into the heavens from the hill located next to the monastery. Tibetans believe that making a wish when you see a dragon flying up will definitely come true. Usually they pray for the peace and happiness of all living beings, chanting: "Sem what is there che la ga mo sid my yongoye" Konchok Tashi, photographer of Dorzong Rinpoche, went out to look at this strange phenomenon and saw a dragon flying from one peak to another, wagging tail. He rushed to the llamas' room to take a camera and photograph it. But when he returned, the dragon was almost completely hidden in the clouds. And only part of the tail was visible.
If the existence of any centaurs and unicorns there is categorically rejected by modern science, then around such a mythical beast like a dragon, fierce disputes have been going on for many years. Legends of dragons and snakes exist on all continents. The ancient Roman writer Pliny described a forty-meter dragon killed by Regulus during the Punic War, whose skin and fangs were exhibited for a long time in Rome. Celts and Vikings talked about dragons, the Rusich folded epics about the battles of the heroes with the Serpent Gorynych. The Indian Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl is very similar to the Slavic god Veles, depicted as a huge snake and "combining furry and scales in his appearance." In China, dragon legends date back to ancient times. Moreover, in contrast, say, from Europe, where a devilish essence was attributed to dragons,in China, they still symbolize valor and nobility.
So after all, have these incredible animals ever lived? And if not, what contributed to the emergence of so many legends and myths? Florida State University zoologist Walter Auffenberg, for example, suggests that the first dragon myth originated 100,000 years ago, when primitive man watched snakes crawl out of the ground in spring - "reborn" after winter. Auffenberg writes that the first evidence that can be accurately defined as "dragon" refers to the Sumerian culture that arose 5 thousand years ago in the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates. Further, according to the assumption of Auffenberg, about 1500 BC. the warriors-horsemen of Central Asia brought fragments of the Sumerian myth to the west - to Europe and to the east - to China. The Aryan conquerors could have brought the legend of the dragon to India,and then merchants could carry it to Indonesia and Australia, where the Flying Serpent myth exists.
Domestic scientists A. Chemohonenko and Y. Chesnov believe that the dragon once acted as a totem beast. The image of the dragon "originated in those tribal mysteries where it was about the unity of people with each other and with the outside world," but later "ceased to play its socially cohesive and cognitive role." However, people could not part with him for a long time, filling him with new features, making him a character in myths and fairy tales.
But such explanations for the appearance of dragon legends are far from satisfactory. For example, creationists (opponents of Darwin's theory) argue that dragons actually existed. And they were the ancient lizards, which we call dinosaurs. According to Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, Saint George the Victorious was not actually fighting a snake, but a dinosaur. Say, dragons and legends about them are the memory of our distant ancestors about meetings with the extinct masters of the Earth. Evolutionists, however, rightly object that in those distant times, when the last dinosaur died on our planet, there was not even a trace of people.
Some scientists believe that some of the prehistoric monsters on Earth have survived to this day in unexplored corners of the planet. And since just a few centuries ago, these creatures were much more common than they are now, they could well be known among our ancestors as dragons. In the 30s of the XX century, scientific journals collected testimonies of sixty eyewitnesses who claimed that they had seen the underground worm Stollenwurm with their own eyes. All descriptions of the appearance of the Stollenwurm coincided: the length of the elongated body is about 90 centimeters, towards the tail it sharply narrows; there is no neck at all, the head is flattened, on it there are two huge spherical eyes. The beast is covered with scales and publishes a serpentine thorn. It was said that the Stollenwurm is aggressive, jumpy and "capable of killing a person with just one breath." But, alas, it was not possible to catch or photograph the underground worm. And in the 60s of the last century, reports appeared in the world press about another dragon of our time - Sirrusha. Reports of its appearance came from various parts of the world: from Scotland and Ireland, Norway and Sweden, Africa and other places. The beginning of this story can be considered 1887, when the German professor Robert Koldewey, during the excavation of Ancient Babylon, found a fragment of an old brick, on one side of which a fragment of an amazing animal was depicted. More than 10 years later, during the second expedition, Kolvedeus discovered the gates of Queen Ishtar, which were built of the same bricks. The gate was decorated with repeating images of two animals. One of them looked like a tour, and the other looked like a dragon. It is called the Babylonian dragon, in some sources it is referred to as Sirrush. The dragon was depicted as a creature with a narrow long body covered with scales, with a long neck ending in a serpentine head with a straight horn, and a thin scaly tail. Caldeway, trying to find the similarity of Sirrush with any of the known lizards, came to the conclusion that the animal, if it existed, should have been classified as a bird-legged dinosaur.
There is also an opinion that dragons were a separate species that became extinct for natural reasons, since at all times it was extremely rare. A small change in climate, which drove the dragons out of their usual habitats, or a reduction in the diet was enough for the number of individuals to sharply decrease and the restoration of the population was impossible.
There are also absolutely fantastic versions. For example, that dragons can be creatures from a parallel world, or that these animals were brought to us at one time by aliens from outer space.
Flying dragons have been seen in China more than once, which is not surprising, because this country is historically associated with fire-breathing monsters. However, mysterious creatures appeared in other places on the planet. For example, in Romania, a video of the flight of an unknown winged lizard was even shown on local television, which caused a wide resonance in society. And not so long ago in the American state of Montana, an unknown creature was captured flying at dawn over the surface of a local lake.