If the legend of dragons exist in so many cultures, is it not possible that they really existed?

Question

Chinese, English, Irish...... I can understand them having the culture in China, Komodo dragons are near by... but where did we get the idea from in England?

Answer 1

Well I think they did

Answer 2

well here is what I said about dragons from another YA question tha got best answer.

yes.

well when you ask a question like I say why wouldn't they exist?

now there was a big lizard that lived a long time ago but after the dinosaurs that was said to be in Australia. this lizard killed allot of early people but in a movie on animal Planet's "LOST into the past' or something like that it said that "we" used fire to kill them and set fire to the bush. now other tribes might have had lizards ruining or maby have killed people wile trying to escape the fire and some who saw that linked the fire with the animal.

http://www.genesispark.com/genpark/histo...

IF THEY EXISTED

Now shy might they not exist? they would have lived a long time ago and were killed by the KT event. but the water dragon would have lived.
http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/...
now they could have moved on land as said in the site and humans would haved not liked that much. there would have been fight and nobody lived to tell the story so dragons went into myth and legend. sad. but the water dragon could be living at the bottom of the ocean and we have just not found them, there fossils could been lost to Earth's platal movements, or we just have not found them.

keep this all in mind and if you want to talk about e-mail me.

so having said all that yes I believe dragons once lived.

one more thing...komodo dragons are monitor lizerds now they may resimble dragons and that could be one of the stories that evalved into dragons but konodo dragons are MONITOR LIZERDS

Source(s):
animal planet, my nolage of dragons, and some leagends that I study

there always is the possibility that people got high and took a dragons like lizerd that maby could fly but not breath fire and stories were born

Answer 3

I think there's something you're missing. Dragons did not just appear in the eastern parts of the world and on one island. Every culture throughout the world has stories of dragons. They all look different, as though they were adapted to the environment surrounding them. Norse dragons are very large, very adapted to the cold and incredibly dangerous (Siegfried and Fafnir in Norse Mythology). Even Mayan cultures had dragons. How do you explain such a wide spread belief in one thing long before trade routes and intercontinental communication unless it actually did exist?

Answer 4

saint george and the dragon, a tale of how one man, with the aid of god, defeated a beast.

if dragons don't exist, then St george and the dragon must be false, which means that christianity spawned a false story, which means that everything else christianity says is possibley false.

hmm,interesting twist.

considering dragons could be attributed to dinosaurs, theres a possibility that they at one point really existed, the way that they breath fire or fly however, may or may not be true.

(no offense to christian people, i'm just sick and tired of the bigots and being told that i'm a living abomination all the time, i know they aren't true christians.. meh)

Answer 5

I feel in my heart that they existed although they may not have spouted fire or even been as large as people say. Stories are exaggerated but a nugget of truth could still be there. I have heard that paleantologists in China have found fossils of creatures similar to pteradactyls but not pteradactyls. It is suggested that they are the dragons of old. Maybe looking into this more might give you more faith in the awesome tale of the dragon.

Answer 6

It could be.
However, you must make a clear difference between "cycles" and "legends".
Whils the first appears in different places at the same time (and are more likely to be true), the second one appears to originate somewhere and spread from that point (and are more likely to be of literary origin).
Dragons are legenday figures, for they appeared first in cHINA (6-5000 years ago), and tales about them only reached Europe some 800-1000 years ago.

Answer 7

I think people all over the world saw bones from dinosaurs, but they didn't know how long they were dead and thought they were dragons, there's even fossils of footprints they saw that and thought this animal can leave tracks in stone, must have been scary for them and they came up with stories about dragons

Answer 8

Exactly...

Most people are unaware that the word “dinosaur” was not coined until the 1840s by Sir. Richard Owen. So, if these creatures lived alongside humans prior to that time, they were not called dinosaurs. So what were they called? Dragons. Most cultures throughout the world possess ancient stories about dragons and sea monsters that closely resemble what we today would call dinosaurs. Dragon stories have been handed down for generations in most civilizations.

No doubt many of these stories have been exaggerated through the years, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have their original basis in fact. I believe many of the dragon legends are simply distorted versions of dinosaur encounters. As Paul Taylor has said, “Most of the dragon legends are full of exaggeration, magic and marvelous deeds. But this is not true of all of them. Many stories seem rather believable.” It is true that many of them are mythical or legendary but it is also true that most legends are based on some truth. It cannot be an accident that so many separate peoples of the world tell such stories.

The stories of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and Saint George killing dragons are likely to have been based on at least some fact. These were real men in history.

As you know, dragons are prominent on Chinese pottery, embroidery, carvings, etc. It’s interesting that the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac are all animals—eleven of which are still alive today, but one is the dragon. It doesn’t seem logical that the ancient Chinese, when constructing their zodiac, would include one mythical animal with eleven real animals.

In 1271, Marco Polo (the Italian explorer) reported that on special occasions in China the royal chariot was pulled by dragons. Marco Polo also said that he saw long reptiles in Asia called Lindworms that could easily ran as fast as a horse.

In 1611, we can see that the emperor appointed the post of “Royal Dragon Feeder” which doesn’t make sense if there were no dragons to feed. We also find Ancient Chinese books telling of people using dragon eggs, blood, bones and other parts for medicine.

John of Damascus (an Arab monk in the 8th century) wrote against some of the wild and mythical claims about dragons and said, “I am not telling you, after all, that there are no dragons; dragons exist but they are serpents [reptiles] borne of other serpents. When just born and young, they are small; but when they grow up and mature, they become big and fat so that they exceed the other serpents in length and size. It is said they grow up more than thirty cubits [45 feet]; as for their thickness, they become as thick as a huge log.”

There is a well-known science book from the 16th century by a Swiss naturalist and medical doctor named Conrad Gesner called Historia Animalium. The book claims that dragons were still not extinct in the 1500's, but were extremely rare and relatively small by then.

After Alexander the Great invaded India (356-323 B.C.) he brought back reports of great hissing reptiles the Indians kept in caves. There was one that really frightened his army and was estimated by them to be over 100 feet long.

And then there’s all the stories of giant sea serpents and sea monsters. As Dr. Mace Baker said, “For more than a thousand years ancient and medieval mariners often returned from their voyages with frightening tales of encounters with, or sightings of, large and dangerous sea monsters.”

There are hundreds of these types of legends. Evolutionists just say that it’s coincidence that many of them sound like dinosaurs. World Book Encyclopedia says: “The dragons of legend are strangely like actual creatures that have lived in the past. They are much like the great reptiles [dinosaurs] which inhabited the earth long before man was supposed to have appeared on earth.”

Answer 9

i think dragons do exist, though not in the physical world mabe they once did but not anymore. i think dragons live in some type of spiritual world, some call it an astal plane. the spirit of the dragon is very real and the dragon lives in the spirit of those that believe in them.

there are many sites that speak of dragons as though they are real, as well as many sites that speak of dragon magick. just type in dragon and search the web.

Answer 10

Yes, it is not possible. What is possible is that they were smoking opium and hallucinating, eating bread that was made with mold ridden wheat, drinking spirits made with mold ridden grains. Foreign substances such as those have been knows to take ones mind and senses on journeys far beyond those of sober and healthy individuals. Next time you run into someone with halitosis, you might think they have "dragon breath". Check it out!

Answer 11

Not likely, sorry to say. There are so many great heroic stories about them one almost wishes they could have been real. What IS true is that lots of big old bones have been found in many places and misinterpreted as many different things, including "giants" and "dragons".