Here Be Dragons

You may know this is the Year of the Dragon. Not attentive to the Chinese zodiac, I wasn’t aware of it until a couple of weeks ago. Now old memories surface. Savoring dragon imagery in North American Chinatowns. Playing Dungeons and Dragons with old-fashioned graph paper and pencil. Watching dragonflies hover above the pond, and dragon kites soar into the sky. Singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” by the campfire. Reading tales of King Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon.

In general, a dragon (from Greek drakon and Latin draco, “large serpent”) is a giant, mythical reptile with long sharp claws and fangs, four legs, a long tail, often with wings and horns and fiery breath. Comprising all the traits of great predators built onto an enormous serpent, it was powerful enough to give protection (as in China and Wales), threaten enemies (as on the bow of Viking ships), or devastate the countryside until slain by Saint George or some other valiant hero.

The puzzle about dragons, to me, is why such similar scaled beasts took shape in so many disconnected parts of the globe—including places that don’t have crocodiles, iguanas, or traces of Tyrannosaurus Rex. There are theories but no consensus. One that intrigues me lies in the human genome. Although people of many lands faced more danger from bears than snakes, the opposite was true in Africa where their early ancestors evolved. Fear of snakes (and spiders, and heights) promoted survival. Like monkeys, humans are born with an instinctive fear of snakes. Small wonder such fear became the basis for fantastical super-predators around the world.

​Images (all cropped): (left) Aztec era stone sculpture of feathered serpent, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City; (middle) Drawing from original gypsum bas-relief, from beside door in Babylonian temple, now in British Museum; (right) Carving on choir stalls in Chester Cathedral, England, 1380.