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Aug 18, 2008 · More than 20 percent figure it's possible to communicate with the dead. Nearly 40 percent believe in haunted houses. Asked if " creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster will one day be ...
- Our 10 Favorite Monsters
Other accounts depict sirens as half-bird, half-woman...
- Dragons
The most celebrated of these was St. George the Dragon...
- Our 10 Favorite Monsters
Ancient humans encountering whale bones would have no way of knowing that the animals were sea-based, and the idea of such gargantuan creatures might well have led people to assume that whales ...
Jan 4, 2023 · The Origin of Mythical Dragons. According to medieval legend, the town of Klagenfurt in Austria was founded on a marsh that was home to a Lindwurm, or wingless dragon. Those wanting to settle in the area had to first deal with the dragon before founding Klagenfurt. As is traditional with dragons, this one gobbled up anyone who tried to cross ...
Jan 18, 2022 · The most celebrated of these was St. George the Dragon Slayer, who in legend comes upon a town threatened by a terrible dragon, according to English Heritage. He rescues a fair maiden, protects ...
- Karl Shuker
- 1995
- Lands of The Dragon
- Dragon Origin Stories
- Completing The Picture
- Comparative Mythology
- Mistaking Dinosaurs For Dragons
- Dragon Planet
China has the longest continuous tradition of dragon stories, dating back more than 5,000 years. In Chinese imagery, dragons symbolize imperial rule and good fortune. The dragons of Chinese legend dwelled in distant waters, and although usually wingless, they could fly. Crucially, they brought the rain, and hence the fruits of the soil. In the 12-y...
Mesopotamian stories of monster battles are the best candidates for the earliest writings about dragons. In the Babylonian version, a serpentine deity-monster called Tiamat emerged from the sea to threaten all of creation with a return to primordial chaos. The heroic young god Marduk takes up the challenge, slaying Tiamat and rescuing the cosmos. A...
From Tiamat and Perseus, it’s only a short jump to the standard dragon story of the medieval West: the legend of St. George. In the legend’s classic form, a venom-breathing dragon terrorizes the Libyan city of Silene. Over time, its required tribute goes from animals to humans, and, inevitably, the princess of the land. St. George rides into town o...
So there’s a lot of source material bouncing around different cultures in the Western tradition, with a fairly clean path from ancient times connecting ancient Asian dragons with their present-day successors. But how did these two general currents, let alone all of the parallel traditions around the world, converge on a single image? Mythologist Jo...
In The First Fossil Hunters, historian of science Adrienne Mayor presented as an alternative examples of folk paleontology in ancient texts. People started finding fossils long before they had any way to make sense of geological time, but that didn’t prevent them from trying to explain their extraordinary discoveries. An isolated femur from an exti...
But at least one academic is considering the theory that the dragon trope is really, really old. Michael Witzel, a Harvard University scholar of Sanskrit, proposed that two branches of culture among early Homo sapiensdiverged along lines of settlement and migration, and brought their distinctive dragon myths with them. Based on genetic evidence, on...
- James Burch
Aug 17, 2023 · In Slavic regions and in China, it was usually a dog or a cat doing the jumping, but in Romania, a bat flying overhead was said to reanimate a dead body. 7. Zombies. The zombie has Haitian origins ...
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Oct 15, 2018 · In the U.S., surveys show 90 percent of adults believe in some higher power, spiritual force or God with a capital G. Even self-proclaimed atheists have supernatural leanings. The same study found all atheists reject God, but one-in-five accept higher powers or spiritual forces. In short, humans are a believing bunch.
