Why are Dragons such a common mythological creature across the world...

Why are Dragons such a common mythological creature across the world? Also how did Eastern and Western Dragons become so divergent?

dino fossils

You didn't really think this through, did you?

This is just a linguistic misunderstanding. We've been using the word dragon to any mythical serpentine creature, even if they have nothing else in common.

This. Dragon is basically equivalent to snake.

because humans are capable of imagining some badass shit

>Also how did Eastern and Western Dragons become so divergent?
They're not the same thing, westerners just encountered stories of eastern giant flying reptiles and were like "oh yeah we have those too"

A large and horrible snake.
They're the same thing, though.

On the subject of dragons isn't fascinating that the aztec and maya had such a bizzare take on them and yet were now finding out that the feathered serpents that they described were almost dead on accurate to how we now envision dinosaurs who are suspected to be the source material for most dragon lore.

This is circular horseshit. Giant flying serpentines ARE dragons.

There is no way the ancients would be able to comprehend the jumbled mess of incompleteness and warping that dinosaur fossils normally come in. I don't buy it.

t. paleofag

Yup it sure is interesting its ashame that most of their writings were lost in the age of colonization maybe they knew something we didn't

Not really, we have records of Chinese pulling huge bones out of the ground and grinding them up and putting them in potions 2,000 years ago. But fossils are almost always too mashed up to e able to tell what they are to someone not trained in modern anatomy. Ergo there was nothing the ancients could've looked at and thought "yep, this came from a giant, fire breathing lizard."

Then do you think they saw live specimens?

Eh, no, sometimes those fossils are pretty damned intact - incredibly so if you're digging up a dry tar pit or tundra.

...and really, it'd only take one until that story spread everywhere - it's just too good a story to die.

Well, they were getting attacked by big carnivorous birds and the occasional sabertooth in prehistory, and there's big snakes and lizards (and crocs) in various corners of the world.

I mean, how often do you ask if they were running into unicorns?

True its all so interesting

No I think dragons are what happens when you combine some of our primordial fears (snakes, cats and birds of prey) to create a super predator. throw in the fire breathing and its pretty clear the ancients were just trying to create an embodiment of evil/ beasts.
That picture isn't real.

yeah i guess so the ancients were pretty imaginative

Dude... Come to Commiefornia or Colorado, we've got tons and tons of fully intact dino skulls still in the cliffsides where they were originally found on display, sometimes without the cliffside being moved, and nearly every skull we dig out of the Brea Tar Pits is fully intact.

Hell, the Romans used mammoth skulls as decoration. (Some theorizing this was the source of the cyclops mythos - but I've my doubts as it seems a fairly simple synthesis.)

It's unusual, but not that unheard of, and just one would be enough to spread stories through a whole region for generations.

what are some examples of Asian dragons that isn't the Chinese dragon?

I don't think you quite understand me, I'm a paleo major that LIVES in Colorado. I have seen most of the fossils in your collage in person (excluding the several that are just photoshopped pics) Mammoth skulls are one thing, because they are frequently found on the surface and in realtively large quantities because theyre so close to us in time. Meanwhile, all of those pictures in your collage are fossils that have undergone great amounts of meticulous and careful preparation to make them recognizable at all, or they're just straight up fake. Perhaps there were ancient people that found large individual bones and thought, "hm, this came from a dragon" but I do not believe they were the origin of the myth.

Meh, I've seen skulls much more intact than any of those, still in the original site, but I'll relent that they are of course carefully extracted, and sometimes enhanced with dyes and lacquered for a permanent road-side attraction.

Still, if some ancient miner or temple builder cut into a large vertebrae, I don't think it'd be beyond him to realize what it was, realize he was going to shatter it if he kept digging, and get a bunch of people to carefully brush and carve it out, even if they probably wouldn't be able to preserve it enough to transport it anywhere.

...on the other hand, yes, chimera synthesis is just as good an explanation, and I suppose the legend may have predated such findings, which merely reinforced them. Sneks be scary, and they kill people fairly regularly.

in addition to the giant reptiles, both extant and extinct, many cultures just had a lot of furries and scalies

and many of these dragons were quite fab! refer to pic if you need convincing

Dragon

龙