>Jones (anthropology, Univ. of Central Florida) contends that

I mean I always figured it was people tryna make sense of dinosaur bones.

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>>53695521
>creature that does not exist
Not anymore, at least.

It's possible that dragons actually existed.
I wouldn't dismiss the idea outright.

>>53695521
>predators that most threatened humankind in its infancy: the raptor
???

>>53695602
Probably the class of bird, hence flying.

>>53695602
The birds, not the dinosaurs.

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>>53695602

Makes you think

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>>53695521
You call him Dr. Jones!

>>53695521
If he was right about this, we would see dragons being a lot more bird-like and a lot more cat-like for much longer.

What about crocodiles?
Everyone always forgets about those despite being common as hell, armored, fast, reptilian horrors if you don't have a rifle, ect.

>>53695602
Clever girl.

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>>53695675
If they're beasts of nightmare then why do people want to have sex with them?

>>53696635
>not wanting to fuck your nightmares

I call upon Melinoe, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth,
whom revered Persephone bore by the mouth of the Kokytos river
upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus.
In the guise of Plouton Zeus and tricked Persephone and through wiley plots bedded her;
a two-bodied specter sprang forth from Persephone's fury.
This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions
as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms,
now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness—
all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night.
O goddess, O queen of those below, I beseech you
to banish the soul's frenzy to the ends of the earth,
and show to the initiates a kindly and holy face.

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Ride the nightmare my friend--lest it rides you.

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Imagine being a small mammal, and having to deal with this. You'd probably think it's a dragon.

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>>53697617

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>>53697752

>>53697752

Nope.

I thought the dragons were how people tried to explain dinosaur bones?

Still, I like idea of taking 3 scary animals, smashing them together, and then doing some fine tuning so that it becomes harder to make out the component parts.

>rage, strength, and fine motor skills of a chimp
>mouth, backridge, and blood tracking of a shark
>jerking body movement and voice mimicry of a parrot

Bam. I know what I'm running tonight.

>>53695521
The issue is that not every culture considers dragons to be a negative creature. Plenty of cultures worship their equivalent, such as most Asian cultures and their dragon, and most Native Americans with their Horned Serpent.

>>53695641
WE WUZ TARGETZ N SHIET

>>53695521
I always knew UCF was a drive-through college, but I didn't think it'd be this bad.

>>53696676
This isn't an actual myth. This is an Orphian hymn. They were essentially atheistic, they though the stories of the gods were symbolic for natural processes and events, as well as prophesies and secret knowledge, and thus invented a bunch of myths to account for ideas and concepts. Here, Zeus and Persephone are not beings, but metaphysical concepts, and Melinoe herself represents the concept of nightmares via mingling of those metaphysical concepts. None of them they considered to be actual beings.

>>53697752
That looks like it'd block the esophagus.

>>53695521
The real reason is is that dragons are fucking cool.
Kids love dinosaurs: Anything with dinosaurs sells like it's made of sugar. Dinosaurs were big and powerful and scary and fast and dangerous. Hence, kids and adults love them.
So you're trying to write a story- what animals are cool? Snakes. Snakes scare the shit out of you, because they're poisonous and slippery and fast. Lions are also super powerful hunters, to the point where if you kill a lion you're automatically a badass.
You make a snake that's got the build and legs of a lion. That's pretty fucking cool. But you know what would be cooler? Giving it wings, so it can fly, even though you can't actually fly at that size. But that's still not cool enough. So make it breathe fire, because that's sick as hell.
Now, in the middle ages, you hear about this legend about a guy that killed a flying snake with the body and jaws of a lion that can breathe fire. Name a creature that's cooler and more terrifying than that. You can't.
So that's why dragons show up everywhere. Nobody's thought up a cooler monster that doesn't look human.

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>>53695521
>incredible similarities in the appearance and behavior of dragons in the lore and legend surrounding them
But Eastern dragons are nothing like Western ones aside from being vaguely reptilian.

Serpent fear is one of the oldest evolved fears humankind has. We even share an instinct with all other primates to jump back when a snake strikes.

Darwin used to go to the reptile house of his local zoo and put his face right up against the glass of the snakes and try to force himself not to jump back when it struck at him, but he couldn't no matter how hard he tried. That's how deep the fear of serpents are ingrained in us.

>>53697752
What in the fuck am I looking at?

>>53701175
Either shoebills have very, very stretchy tissue in their throats and across the bottom of their jaws, or that bird is dead.

>>53701242
https://youtu.be/lu3Iqze5mgo

It's probably fine.

>>53695548
yep

>>53695582
lel, no

>>53698805
Right, but you can still want to fuck it.

>>53695582

>six limbed vertebrates

What the fuck are they teaching.

>>53695521
I feel this poorly explains the very common traits he's pointing to. Take the wings for example - they're not bird wings, they share many more traits with the wings of bats. If this hypothesis were true, you'd expect to see them look more like bird wings in the earliest depictions.

>>53695675
Dr. Jones got the Hellboy artist to back this mess up?

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>>53701384

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>>53701384

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>>53696635
To be fair, some people also want to be eaten by them.

>>53703430
>sphinx without the human
Despite just being a big lion with fluffy wings, it looks better than normal sphinxes.
If it went for the Grecian (I think?) sphinx's serpent tail, we'd have all 3 of the animals OP mentioned.

>>53698805
This is a whole hog of hot opinions based on personal interpretations. Its a huge assumption based on literally, meaning literally in the literal sense, small scraps and fragments cobbled together.

There is nothing to suggest anything associated with the Orphic (not 'Orphian') mysteries and cults were in any way atheistic or allegorical outside a 'hunch' from some translators, and a lot to suggest that yes, they did believe in Gods, the afterlife, ritual sacrifice and every other superstition found in the ancient world.

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>>53703691
>Someone realizes archaeology is largely based on guesswork.
>Comes by on 4chan and sees one of the commonly accepted views on the subject posted. Specifically, the one he doesn't agree with.
>Thinks that this is the perfect place and time to try and seriously debate the subject like he's an expert and his opinion has any value in seriously determining the truth.

>>53703732
Hello yes welcome to /tg/.

>>53695548
>>53701281
no dinosaur bone was discovered before the 18th century, dumbasses.
beyond that, there was no possible way for people back then to recognize dinosaur bones as reptilian.
Christ, how can people be this retarded?

>>53705754
>no dinosaur bone was discovered before the 18th century
Citation heavily needed.

>>53695521
I'd place my bet on Dino bones.

Also the chimeric dragons only came about due to christian art depicting a bunch of chimeric creatures they adapted from Greek and Jewish myths.

Prior to that the image of Dragons across Europe was that of serpents or serpentine lizards with 4 legs.

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>>53696563
This here.
And what ascpect in a dragon is the big cat?
What about spiders, scorpions, wolves, bears?

>>53705913

Please see >>53702311 and >>53702426
for depictions of Sumerian Dragons, which predate Christianity by about 2000 years.

>>53705857
that anon was wrong. it was the 17th century
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/when-was-first-dinosaur-discovered/
>>53705913
why would every culture on Earth, even cultures that aren't involved much in digging underground, all discover dinosaur bones and all erroneously decide they were scaly things that eat people?

>>53705754
Yeah, no. Large-scale excavation and scientific investigation of dinosaur bones may not have begun until then, but there's records of dinosaur bones being discovered throughout all of recorded human history. They most certainly at least influenced early myths and legends.

>>53695521
>dragons are formed from a mix of threatening predators
>all dragons were threatening monsters

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>>53705754

>>53706011
>why would every culture on Earth, even cultures that aren't involved much in digging underground, all discover dinosaur bones and all erroneously decide they were scaly things that eat people?
They didn't. Educate yourself in oriental myths.

>>53706129
... aren't chinese dragons benevolent?

>>53703732
>Comes by on 4chan and sees one of the commonly accepted views on the subject posted
Its actually not that commonly accepted. It's a very thinly drawn conclusion based on a text that's only a commentary on another text that we don't have a full copy of. A full text of both commentary and the original text its referencing.

>>53707118
So are snakes. Tigers could be benevolent if you were smart.

>>53695571
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHJnxggzaeg

>>53695629
>>53695628
What kind of bird will hunt a human? Aren't we, like, a bit too big?

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>>53695582

>>53707547
Don't make fun of /x/, he'll put a hex on us.

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>>53707536

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>>53707598
Damn harpies.

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>>53701336
I mean, it's not like it needs to have six limbs for it to be a dragon.
The real issue here is that dragon is an incredibly vague term, if any mythology has any sort of monster with distant similarities people will immediately translate it to dragon and spread te myth that the creatures appear in mythology all over the world.

>>53706013
I heard one theory that stories of cyclopes might have been spurred by finding mammoth or even just elephant skulls, as the big hole in the center where the trunk goes would seem like a giant eyesocket to folks who don't know elephants well.

>>53707667
I actually heard that with triceratops, with the central horn being the eye.

Although, that's kinda stupid, thinking about it, but I didn't question it at the time.

>>53707536
In New Zeland there existed a bird of prey that hunted ostrich size birds, for creature that size early humans (that were shorter) would be a nice treat.

>>53707699
The only surviving terrestrial megafauna are things like elephants and rhinos. Because we killed and ate everything else

>>53706011
They didn't. It wasn't erroneous, you've just never gotten to see one.

>>53700682
This. Dragons being universal is just euro-centric bullshit. We wouldn't even call chinese dragons and western dragons by the same name if we lived in a sino-centric world.

>>53703526
It's clearly just a weird manticore.

>>53708082
You know that most humans fit the technical definition of megafauna, right?

All you have to do is be an animal and weigh over 100 lbs.

>>53708211
Manticores have bat-wings and scorpion tails. It's missing 2 things to be a manticore, but only one to be a sphinx.

>>53700682
And even then thats a mis-interpretation of the scales, as eastern dragons are commonly connected to fish.

>>53708216
He's using the other definition, which is 1000 kg. So we still have to include your mom.

>>53707637
>It doesn't need to be a dragon, it just has to fit into my own vague definition that happens to prove me right to strangers on the internet!~

>>53707137
Snakes weren't seen as universally evil in the west before christianity.

>>53708246
Who didn't think snakes were evil? I mean they're poisonous and scary, it's easy to see why people would dislike them.

>>53708219
The human head is essential for the sphinx and what defines it. The bird wings are optional so you could as well say that a lion only misses one thing to be a sphinx too.

Also you don't see the end of his tail, that could perfectly end in a scorpion sting.

>>53708274
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_in_mythology

>>53708241
lolwut are you even saying?

>>53696635
people want to have sex with everything, anon

>>53695571
Australian abbos ended up eating these things charrred methinks.

>>53709759
Yeah, there's evidence that early inhabitants of Australia burned down wide areas of forest to create farmland, which also killed megalania and denied those that survived the woods they used to ambush prey.

>being afraid of dragons
For what purpose? Dragons are cute.
>but theyre big and they could kill you-
They stopped giving me xp YEARS ago.

>>53707121
>4chan poster still thinks he's an expert.

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>>53710835
>but they're big and they could kill you
Alternatively, they could fuck you. And perhaps you could convince one to only "eat" you ;)

>>53711370
I wanna touch that dragon's tail

>>53711345
>Got his opinion called out by someone who has slightly more knowledge
>N-no, YOU'RE pretending to be the know-it-all!

>>53696635
>BBW: not even once

>>53708082
Not true. A lot of the predatory megafauna went extinct because we killed and ate their food.

>>53708274
What's scary about a snake?

For some reason I'm recalling reading an article that talked about spider nightmares being more prevalent than anything else, cross culturally

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>>53712730
I know, right? They're adorable!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCFMmOR5Z4A

>>53712730
If you get bitten by some of them you die in agony.

>>53713457
Yeah but not most of them.

>>53713467
Better safe than sorry.

>>53713467
Don't they move in a certain way that subconsciously agitates humans too? Like spiders?

>>53713500
Might as well never leave your house at that rate.

>>53713508
It's more like a
>treat all firearms as if they're loaded
thing.

>>53713508
But then you'd starve eventually.

>>53695521
Fucking Florida needs to be nuked

On second thought, it would probably improve the place

>>53695548
The problem with this theory is that obtaining large, intact dinosaur bones, putting the bones together and recognising it as even vaguely reptilian requires sophisticated scientific and archeological knowledge that people didn't have back then. As imaginative as people are, no-one is going to look at a fossil imprint of half a vertebrae and say " well this here is clearly a bone of a giant reptilian monster".

Anyway, early dragons were just big snakes. They most likely came about from the same mechanism that led to people telling stories about rocs and kraken. That mechanism being "wot if dis fing were bigger"

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>>53702311
>>53702426
Mesapotamians put wings on everything.

>>53698794
>drive through college
>Literally means U Can't Finish
Bruh

>>53700682
Fuck, most European dragons didn't even look that similar until the modern era.

Thing used to look like big cats, or turtles half the time.