AnimeSuki Forums

aahhsin · 2006-10-30, 23:30

Does anyone here believe Dragons and other mystical creatures could "have possibly" existed in one form or another? Many believe Dragons and such are just part of our imagination and it's impossible for them to exist. I disagree with such statement, for I do believe they have existed in one form or another.

Currently the Fossil Record shows that there are millions of animals that are now currently extinct and come in various shapes and sizes. For example, the Trilobite. Currently extinct and never to come back, but they did once exist on this Earth.

Could the same thing be for dragons? I think so. Dragons are a part of nearly every race's culture.

For Europeans, tales of Dragons guarding treasures and kidnapping princesses are all part of some very nice stories. The Chinese have Dragons as long serpents, and carrying a precious pearl. However, lets disregard folk tales and look at the Dragons themselves.

One characteristic of Dragons are Reptilian in nature. Could giant lizards roam the earth? Yes, Dinosaurs have been proven to done such deeds. How about flying? Once again the Dinosaurs come to mind, such as the Petreosaur (Or whatever that flying lizard is...). Heck Dinosaurs probably are Dragons in another name.

Lizards aren't the only animals currently in the world that exibit flying, mostly associated with birds. Mammals such as Bats are able to fly also. Something very uncharacteristic of mammals.

Another popular idea that Dragons could not exist is the idea of "fire-breathing". Although I am iffy about this idea also, two things spring to mind.
1. If an eel can discharge electricity and shock things, I wouldn't be too surprised if there were an animal that can spray fire. (Could be just poison that reacts violently to Oxygen?)
2. The damn lizard that can run on water.

How about other myths? Such as the Unicorn? A horse with a Horn. That's probably more plausible than a Dragon. Sure granted there aren't any "horses" with horns, such as the Zebra. But how about a Deer that's been domesticated and bred with a horse? And all these deer like animals with long horns?

Who knows?

NoSanninWa · 2006-10-30, 23:53

Since you mentioned the fossil record, let's address it. I don't think it is particularly relevant that we have no fossils of dragons since there have been many creatures whose fossils we have not found. That's why they are "missing" links. The problem is that we don't have any of the dragon's ancestors or descendants. You're talking about missing its entire fossil history, not merely a missing link. That's so improbable that I doubt that there were any dragons.

Quote:

Heck Dinosaurs probably are Dragons in another name.

Only if a dinosaur lasted 65 million years after they were all supposed to be extinct. That's a long time even by evolutionary standards. I find it unlikely we could have missed evidence that dinosaurs continued to exist for 65 million years until humanity finally evolved. Even Homo Erectus only evolved 1.8 million years ago, and our species, Homo Sapiens, is only 200 thousand years old. That's a really long period of time to fill from the dinosaur's era to our own. The closest I can come to reconciling dinosaurs with dragons is to say that some form of racial memory remains from our ancient lemurian ancestors, long before they evolved into anything with opposable thumbs.

I can well believe that flying reptiles and even fire-breathing animals could possibly exist, but the lack of any shred of evidence that it actually did exist is a deal breaker for me. I can also believe in the possibility of aliens, ghosts and talking animals. However I'd like to see even a tiny bit of evidence before I took the leap from willingness to believe into actually thinking that they are real.

As for the unicorn, the historical record makes it pretty clear that the myth evolved after stories of the rhinocerous were brought back to Rome. In the absence of any good pictures, we ended up with a unicorn. That's the problem with exaggerated stories and a lack of photographic equipment.

mantidor · 2006-10-30, 23:59

Im a big dragon fanboy, I love anything that has them in it, but I just can't believe they are or were remotely real, as much as I would like to. Is the flying aspect, flying is not an easy thing, the biggest bird, the condor, still weight a lot less than an average human, lifting up something big with just wings is pretty hard, and theres a limit to how big this creature can be before it meets a limit, after it is just physically impossible to fly.

NoSanninWa · 2006-10-31, 00:04

Since we're on the topic, I am also a dragon fanboy, like mantidor. I also find it fascinating how virtually every culture to ever exist has stories of dragons. That is rather amazing. No other myth is vaguely so worldwide.

While this inspires the belief that they are real, unfortunately, that is a trap. If they were so pervasive world-wide, then there would have to be some evidence of them somewhere. We aren't talking about a creature that only existed in a single geographic locale. Or even a single evolutionary niche. We have sea serpents, flying dragons, burrowing dragons, dragons that like fire, dragons that like cold...

I think I'm sticking with the racial memory theory. Running from those giant lizards must have been ingraned into our very genes. In the absence of scary giant lizards, our genetic memory still insists on scaring us with them.

felix · 2006-10-31, 00:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

Since we're on the topic, I am also a dragon fanboy, like mantidor. I also find it fascinating how virtually every culture to ever exist has stories of dragons. That is rather amazing. No other myth is vaguely so worldwide.

Uh.. just because there are a lot of stories out there with "fire breathing mythical creatures" doesn't mean every culture has one..
Besides how do you know it's the same type.. As far as I know in the old stories when they mentioned dragons they don't mention fire..

Of course I could be wrong, anyone got some examples to prove me wrong?

I myself am a angel, demon, dragon and werewolf fan

Oh yeah, and I don't like Vampires.. they're not so cool..

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

I think I'm sticking with the racial memory theory. Running from those giant lizards must have been ingraned into our very genes. In the absence of scary giant lizards, our genetic memory still insists on scaring us with them.

"Running from those giant lizards" ?!

What do you mean.. you realize that we (the human race) never existed in the same time line with the dinosaurs..

A more simple theory would be : Idiot finds dinosaurs bone, idiot writes dragon story.. the end.

Loniat · 2006-10-31, 03:00

Well, actually I read somewhere that stories about dragons started because people stumbled upon fossils and from there to imagining creatures like dragons, giants etc was just one step. Since fossils can be found nearly everywhere in this planet, it explains why there is the myth of such creatures in different cultures (not including cultural influence).

Secca · 2006-10-31, 03:28

I've been a fan of dragon for a long time too. Altho I cannot find any evidence of a real dragon, but NSW pointed out, for something that just a myth and nobody seen it, surprisingly people in many cultures know this creature. ^^

Personally I'm a fan of fire breathing or flying dragon. But one of the coolest dragon myths I ever encountered was probably Nidhogg from Norse Mythology.

Nidhogg ("tearer of corpses") is a monstrous serpent that dwell deep under the earth. He constantly eat the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil and one day threathen to destroy it. An important mark about Nidhogg myth that should the dragon ever reached the surface, it would be a herald of the incoming Ragnarok.

JanthraX^ · 2006-10-31, 08:49

'Western' dragons have large wings and always seem to be very agile and fly like birds.
'Eastern' dragons seem to swim/slither through the air and make a great S shape.

I like NSW's theory of a deep fear.

Im a dragon fan too, ive seen instances where dragons have different powers not just fire breathing

Illuyankas · 2006-10-31, 09:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackCatXIII

"Running from those giant lizards" ?!

What do you mean.. you realize that we (the human race) never existed in the same time line with the dinosaurs..

Pretty sure NSW means the lemur-like shrew creatures that coexisted with dinosaurs, survived whatever happened 65 million years ago and eventually evolved into, along with many other species, us. There's a lot of stuff lodged in our brains we don't have a clue about yet.

Quote:

A more simple theory would be : Idiot finds dinosaurs bone, idiot writes dragon story.. the end.

Works for me. Idiot or imaginative opportunist.

An old forum of mine I used to visit, before the mods and admins went batf**k insane and drove away about 90% of the members, had this thread as a poll, and frankly it made me despair. Almost all cultures worshipped the Moon as a god, it doesn't make it true.

Spectacular_Insanity · 2006-10-31, 10:23

My opinion is that dragons never existed. But that's just me. The only thing that comes close to such a thing would be the movie Ring of Fire (I think that's what it's called). I thought they did a pretty good job of making up stuff to rationalize how dragons could breath fire. That of course, doesn't explain how they could live off of ash, which is basically carbon.

Rurik · 2006-10-31, 11:15

I’m also a big fan of dragons, but if something like that existed it was not a fire breathing creature, I found highly impossible that a Living creature can spit Fire from its body.

If something like that existed in the past could had been a giant flying lizard. Those stories are just like Mermaids, people think they saw something, but it was just the imagination.

And Spectacular_Insanity, I think the Movie you are talking about is “Reing of Fire”, with Christian Bale.

SilverChakra · 2006-10-31, 14:53

I've been a fan of dragons and other mythical creatures as long as I can remember. Dragons have been one of my favourite creature I know. They are just so mythical and beautiful and I am so fascinated by the stories behind them.

Personally I do believe that there have been or at this very moment are dragons alive (okay okay, I know you people may think I am stupid) and I do believe that there are other mythical creatures out there. The thing is...they don't exist in our world or our dimension. But I do believe if you believe in something hard enough, eventually it will exist. Also I belive in supernatural things as ghost and such. And it's the same thing. You just need to believe hard enough.

Secca · 2006-10-31, 15:12

I think people been fascinated by dragon for a long time, for example let's see the basic of hero story. A knight rescue a princess that was guarded by a dragon. They could have put a bear guarding the princess. But that wouldn't be as formidable. Not that facing a bear would be anything easy either. It's just not as impressive as having to fight a fire breathing dragon first to get to your damsel in distress.

I'm sorry, mr. Bear. xD

Renegade334 · 2006-10-31, 17:04

Well, one thing that should be noted is that in the very beginning - a very long time ago, dragons were in fact pictured as giant snakes. The oldest frescoes and drawings around depict giant, snakelike bodies with wings but rarely with limbs - in most cases, as in certain instances it's hard to identify which creature we're talking about and it's not rare for certain ones to be written off as 'mythological demons' or merely 'legendary monsters'. One case like that about unidentified creatures is the Egyptian god Seth - people often associate his head with that of a donkey or some sort of lizard but there is no consensus on this.

Anyway, to come back to the earlier dragons, the addition of limbs is, IIRC, fairly recent - and progressive. In certain cases, you only see two legs and two wings but no arms, etc, etc. And it also depends on which civilization we're talking about. In China it's frequent to see 'bearded' dragons while in Europe I'm not sure this feature is a quite common or familiar one. In Asia, the dragon is mainly considered as a benevolent, lucky beast while here it's considered as the devil's spawn and it's associated with Satan and whatnot - icons of such saint 'slaying the dragon' is another way of portraying him 'vanquishing the devil'.

Anyway, to take back a thought written above, it's not impossible for ancient civilizations to misinterpret unusual sightings (big eel or aquatic snake) or fossils as the remains or the silhouette of an unholy beast only come out of their wildest dreams - or should I say, nightmares. There are I don't know how many myths and conspiracies related to snakelike beasts (often underwater, mind you - not surprising) from either recent decades (Loch Ness, Ogopogo, Manipogo) or centuries ago (Jörmungandr, the Daedalus' sea serpent), some of them even leading to techno-myths about dinosaurs surviving the ice ages, the K-limit (the moment during the Cretacean where all those species suddenly disappeared) and a ton of other ordeals like environmental changes, etc.

One thing that is also easy to understand is that the aforementioned civilizations could easily mistake dinosaur fossils for bones of dead creatures and even deduce from there that such species might still be alive. It was only when a certain Baron Georges Cuvier first formulated the theory of extinction that people started thinking otherwise. The Bible stipulated - or more or less suggested - that God would have never let one of its beloved creations - species - die, meaning that the monsters whose fossilized bodies were found underground could still be roaming the planet. During the end of the Renaissance, it was 'trendy' to believe that dinosaurs were still hiding in South America and in Africa in some deep, hostile jungle far away from human sight.

Also, did you know that when Russians came in the Gobi Desert slightly after the Americans (in an expedition that showed that dinosaurs laid eggs instead of giving birth to fully-formed babies), the locals said that, if they were searching for bones, 'they just had to go to the Dragon's Grave'?

The mistake is easily done...the idea of extinction is also very recent...and that of evolution even more. And both met a lot of resistance from both popular and scientific communities. Heck, Darwinian theories aren't even taught in certain U.S. schools because they contradict the Bible, so...

And one last anecdote will be about the megalosaurus - a carnivorous dinosaur half the size of a T-rex and IIRC belonging to the same family (or one of the spinoffs/cousin branches of the family tree). When workers dug up megalosaurus bones back in the 18th century (I don't recall the date, but it was around that period), they all thought they belonged to a human giant...and not a lizard. It wasn't until a certain university professor took a look at a jawbone, examined the teeth and remarked that it looked a lot like that of a lizard, that they realized they were staring at the remains of a giant lizard.

chison · 2006-10-31, 17:19

the Mythical nine tails fox are one of my fav.
not as danger~

wingdarkness · 2006-10-31, 18:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rurik

I’m also a big fan of dragons, but if something like that existed it was not a fire breathing creature, I found highly impossible that a Living creature can spit Fire from its body.

If something like that existed in the past could had been a giant flying lizard. Those stories are just like Mermaids, people think they saw something, but it was just the imagination.

Well the Kimodo Dragon has a flesh burning bacteria in it's mouth that can melt human and animals bones with relative ease...Like most urban legends perhaps the legacy of the dragon thru time and word-of-mouth somehow got distorted...As for somewhat practical means lizards and snakes (the class of dragons) have an evolutionary bond that spans 200-300 MILLION YEARS...In that time frame I wouldn't say it's beyond belief that some version of the mythical dragons of legend perhaps existed in some limited form...I was reading up on it and hell only about 6,000 Komono dragons exist as they are becoming extinct...Maybe some larger forms of dragons became extinct hundreds of years ago...Snakes as evidenced in ancient paintings like Renegade334 said and the Book of Genesis were capable of flight (like legendary dragons) and even had feet before they were cursed by God (If you have faith in biblical lore--Even today if you seriously burn a snake where it's feet would have been they'll eventually pop out

)...Just until a few years ago we thought the T-Rex was the largest dinosaur of all-time until we found the fossils of even a bigger creature...If mythical type dragons were really scarce maybe, just maybe we have yet to find the geological evidence...With all the evolutionary connections with some mythical musings to fill in the gaps perhaps these creatures in some form really roamed the earth

...

Spoiler for Kimodo say "Ahhhhhh!!!":

Demongod86 · 2006-10-31, 21:24

The way I think of dragons--as majestic, sentient beings that instead of being reptilian had fluffy fur all over and could use magic...no, didn't exist.

Branding dragons as these winged fire-breathing dinos just doesn't do them justice, and nothing as large as a dragon can fly without magical force.

Aoie_Emesai · 2006-10-31, 23:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by mantidor

Im a big dragon fanboy, I love anything that has them in it, but I just can't believe they are or were remotely real, as much as I would like to. Is the flying aspect, flying is not an easy thing, the biggest bird, the condor, still weight a lot less than an average human, lifting up something big with just wings is pretty hard, and theres a limit to how big this creature can be before it meets a limit, after it is just physically impossible to fly.

You've seen "Reign Of Fire" right? Supposobly they could fly and breath fire because they produce Hydrogen inside their body and they force it their nostril at high speed for their fire effect ^_^. As you know Hydrogen is much lighter than air (meaning Oxygen, Nitrogen, Xeon, Carbon, Helium, etc.) and we are supposing that including the dragons body mass with the hydrogen, they are lighter than air. I can't provide and formula for it but we can just debate about it. Never mind half of my statement above. If we include the large wings of the dragons which is used for lift, then it might be possible for it to fly. (no propellers)

ps: I love Nessy.

Lord Raiden · 2006-11-01, 00:00

Oh, I fully believe it's possible that they existed. Probubly not in the manor we picture them today, but they definately existed in one form or another.

BTW, I'm a huge fan of dragons and if real dragons existed today, I'd probubly own one as a pet.

Xellos-_^ · 2006-11-01, 00:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

Since we're on the topic, I am also a dragon fanboy, like mantidor. I also find it fascinating how virtually every culture to ever exist has stories of dragons. That is rather amazing. No other myth is vaguely so worldwide.

While this inspires the belief that they are real, unfortunately, that is a trap. If they were so pervasive world-wide, then there would have to be some evidence of them somewhere. We aren't talking about a creature that only existed in a single geographic locale. Or even a single evolutionary niche. We have sea serpents, flying dragons, burrowing dragons, dragons that like fire, dragons that like cold...

I think I'm sticking with the racial memory theory. Running from those giant lizards must have been ingraned into our very genes. In the absence of scary giant lizards, our genetic memory still insists on scaring us with them.

speaking of racial memory i remeber this little article form foxnews about snakes and human evolution.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204977,00.html

I am a very big fan of dragons like most people here. but i am in the camp that think that early people call dragons are really just a really big snake. A boa or maybe a python.

http://www.szgdocent.org/resource/rr/c-record.htm

This site about snakes has the record for the longest snake at 10 metters.

looking some of photos of really big snakes you can easliy see how the legend of a dragon could have come form when the anceint a fishman is confronted with a 8-10 meter giant boa in the waters.

2006-10-30, 23:30	Link #1
aahhsin Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2003	Dragons and other Mythical Creatures Does anyone here believe Dragons and other mystical creatures could "have possibly" existed in one form or another? Many believe Dragons and such are just part of our imagination and it's impossible for them to exist. I disagree with such statement, for I do believe they have existed in one form or another. Currently the Fossil Record shows that there are millions of animals that are now currently extinct and come in various shapes and sizes. For example, the Trilobite. Currently extinct and never to come back, but they did once exist on this Earth. Could the same thing be for dragons? I think so. Dragons are a part of nearly every race's culture. For Europeans, tales of Dragons guarding treasures and kidnapping princesses are all part of some very nice stories. The Chinese have Dragons as long serpents, and carrying a precious pearl. However, lets disregard folk tales and look at the Dragons themselves. One characteristic of Dragons are Reptilian in nature. Could giant lizards roam the earth? Yes, Dinosaurs have been proven to done such deeds. How about flying? Once again the Dinosaurs come to mind, such as the Petreosaur (Or whatever that flying lizard is...). Heck Dinosaurs probably are Dragons in another name. Lizards aren't the only animals currently in the world that exibit flying, mostly associated with birds. Mammals such as Bats are able to fly also. Something very uncharacteristic of mammals. Another popular idea that Dragons could not exist is the idea of "fire-breathing". Although I am iffy about this idea also, two things spring to mind. 1. If an eel can discharge electricity and shock things, I wouldn't be too surprised if there were an animal that can spray fire. (Could be just poison that reacts violently to Oxygen?) 2. The damn lizard that can run on water. How about other myths? Such as the Unicorn? A horse with a Horn. That's probably more plausible than a Dragon. Sure granted there aren't any "horses" with horns, such as the Zebra. But how about a Deer that's been domesticated and bred with a horse? And all these deer like animals with long horns? Who knows?

2006-10-31, 00:04	Link #4
NoSanninWa Weapon of Mass Discussion Fansubber Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: New York, USA	Since we're on the topic, I am also a dragon fanboy, like mantidor. I also find it fascinating how virtually every culture to ever exist has stories of dragons. That is rather amazing. No other myth is vaguely so worldwide. While this inspires the belief that they are real, unfortunately, that is a trap. If they were so pervasive world-wide, then there would have to be some evidence of them somewhere. We aren't talking about a creature that only existed in a single geographic locale. Or even a single evolutionary niche. We have sea serpents, flying dragons, burrowing dragons, dragons that like fire, dragons that like cold... I think I'm sticking with the racial memory theory. Running from those giant lizards must have been ingraned into our very genes. In the absence of scary giant lizards, our genetic memory still insists on scaring us with them. __________________ There's not that fine a line between willing suspension of disbelief and something just being stupid.

2006-10-31, 10:23	Link #10
Spectacular_Insanity Ha ha ha ha ha... Graphic Designer Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Right behind you. Age: 35	My opinion is that dragons never existed. But that's just me. The only thing that comes close to such a thing would be the movie Ring of Fire (I think that's what it's called). I thought they did a pretty good job of making up stuff to rationalize how dragons could breath fire. That of course, doesn't explain how they could live off of ash, which is basically carbon. __________________

2006-10-31, 11:15	Link #11
Rurik Golden Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: 9th Temple Age: 45	I’m also a big fan of dragons, but if something like that existed it was not a fire breathing creature, I found highly impossible that a Living creature can spit Fire from its body. If something like that existed in the past could had been a giant flying lizard. Those stories are just like Mermaids, people think they saw something, but it was just the imagination. And Spectacular_Insanity, I think the Movie you are talking about is “Reing of Fire”, with Christian Bale. __________________ "when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -

2006-10-31, 17:04	Link #14
Renegade334 Sleepy Lurker Graphic Designer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Nun'yabiznehz Age: 38	Well, one thing that should be noted is that in the very beginning - a very long time ago, dragons were in fact pictured as giant snakes. The oldest frescoes and drawings around depict giant, snakelike bodies with wings but rarely with limbs - in most cases, as in certain instances it's hard to identify which creature we're talking about and it's not rare for certain ones to be written off as 'mythological demons' or merely 'legendary monsters'. One case like that about unidentified creatures is the Egyptian god Seth - people often associate his head with that of a donkey or some sort of lizard but there is no consensus on this. Anyway, to come back to the earlier dragons, the addition of limbs is, IIRC, fairly recent - and progressive. In certain cases, you only see two legs and two wings but no arms, etc, etc. And it also depends on which civilization we're talking about. In China it's frequent to see 'bearded' dragons while in Europe I'm not sure this feature is a quite common or familiar one. In Asia, the dragon is mainly considered as a benevolent, lucky beast while here it's considered as the devil's spawn and it's associated with Satan and whatnot - icons of such saint 'slaying the dragon' is another way of portraying him 'vanquishing the devil'. Anyway, to take back a thought written above, it's not impossible for ancient civilizations to misinterpret unusual sightings (big eel or aquatic snake) or fossils as the remains or the silhouette of an unholy beast only come out of their wildest dreams - or should I say, nightmares. There are I don't know how many myths and conspiracies related to snakelike beasts (often underwater, mind you - not surprising) from either recent decades (Loch Ness, Ogopogo, Manipogo) or centuries ago (Jörmungandr, the Daedalus' sea serpent), some of them even leading to techno-myths about dinosaurs surviving the ice ages, the K-limit (the moment during the Cretacean where all those species suddenly disappeared) and a ton of other ordeals like environmental changes, etc. One thing that is also easy to understand is that the aforementioned civilizations could easily mistake dinosaur fossils for bones of dead creatures and even deduce from there that such species might still be alive. It was only when a certain Baron Georges Cuvier first formulated the theory of extinction that people started thinking otherwise. The Bible stipulated - or more or less suggested - that God would have never let one of its beloved creations - species - die, meaning that the monsters whose fossilized bodies were found underground could still be roaming the planet. During the end of the Renaissance, it was 'trendy' to believe that dinosaurs were still hiding in South America and in Africa in some deep, hostile jungle far away from human sight. Also, did you know that when Russians came in the Gobi Desert slightly after the Americans (in an expedition that showed that dinosaurs laid eggs instead of giving birth to fully-formed babies), the locals said that, if they were searching for bones, 'they just had to go to the Dragon's Grave'? The mistake is easily done...the idea of extinction is also very recent...and that of evolution even more. And both met a lot of resistance from both popular and scientific communities. Heck, Darwinian theories aren't even taught in certain U.S. schools because they contradict the Bible, so... And one last anecdote will be about the megalosaurus - a carnivorous dinosaur half the size of a T-rex and IIRC belonging to the same family (or one of the spinoffs/cousin branches of the family tree). When workers dug up megalosaurus bones back in the 18th century (I don't recall the date, but it was around that period), they all thought they belonged to a human giant...and not a lizard. It wasn't until a certain university professor took a look at a jawbone, examined the teeth and remarked that it looked a lot like that of a lizard, that they realized they were staring at the remains of a giant lizard. __________________ << -- Click to enter my (dead) GFX thread.

2006-10-30, 23:59	Link #3
mantidor the Iniquitous Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: bogotá	Im a big dragon fanboy, I love anything that has them in it, but I just can't believe they are or were remotely real, as much as I would like to. Is the flying aspect, flying is not an easy thing, the biggest bird, the condor, still weight a lot less than an average human, lifting up something big with just wings is pretty hard, and theres a limit to how big this creature can be before it meets a limit, after it is just physically impossible to fly.

2006-10-31, 03:00	Link #6
Loniat Paranoid Android Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Wherever you go, there you are	Well, actually I read somewhere that stories about dragons started because people stumbled upon fossils and from there to imagining creatures like dragons, giants etc was just one step. Since fossils can be found nearly everywhere in this planet, it explains why there is the myth of such creatures in different cultures (not including cultural influence).

2006-10-31, 03:28	Link #7
Secca nya` Artist Join Date: Feb 2004	I've been a fan of dragon for a long time too. Altho I cannot find any evidence of a real dragon, but NSW pointed out, for something that just a myth and nobody seen it, surprisingly people in many cultures know this creature. ^^ Personally I'm a fan of fire breathing or flying dragon. But one of the coolest dragon myths I ever encountered was probably Nidhogg from Norse Mythology. Nidhogg ("tearer of corpses") is a monstrous serpent that dwell deep under the earth. He constantly eat the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil and one day threathen to destroy it. An important mark about Nidhogg myth that should the dragon ever reached the surface, it would be a herald of the incoming Ragnarok.

2006-10-31, 08:49	Link #8
JanthraX^ Ace Archer Join Date: Jan 2006 Age: 36	'Western' dragons have large wings and always seem to be very agile and fly like birds. 'Eastern' dragons seem to swim/slither through the air and make a great S shape. I like NSW's theory of a deep fear. Im a dragon fan too, ive seen instances where dragons have different powers not just fire breathing

2006-10-31, 14:53	Link #12
SilverChakra Nee-chan Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Finland Age: 37	I've been a fan of dragons and other mythical creatures as long as I can remember. Dragons have been one of my favourite creature I know. They are just so mythical and beautiful and I am so fascinated by the stories behind them. Personally I do believe that there have been or at this very moment are dragons alive (okay okay, I know you people may think I am stupid) and I do believe that there are other mythical creatures out there. The thing is...they don't exist in our world or our dimension. But I do believe if you believe in something hard enough, eventually it will exist. Also I belive in supernatural things as ghost and such. And it's the same thing. You just need to believe hard enough.

2006-10-31, 15:12	Link #13
Secca nya` Artist Join Date: Feb 2004	I think people been fascinated by dragon for a long time, for example let's see the basic of hero story. A knight rescue a princess that was guarded by a dragon. They could have put a bear guarding the princess. But that wouldn't be as formidable. Not that facing a bear would be anything easy either. It's just not as impressive as having to fight a fire breathing dragon first to get to your damsel in distress. I'm sorry, mr. Bear. xD

2006-10-31, 17:19	Link #15
chison GSNMaSter Artist Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Sheffield Age: 38	the Mythical nine tails fox are one of my fav. not as danger~

2006-10-31, 21:24	Link #17
Demongod86 Gundam Boobs and Boom FTW Join Date: Dec 2005	The way I think of dragons--as majestic, sentient beings that instead of being reptilian had fluffy fur all over and could use magic...no, didn't exist. Branding dragons as these winged fire-breathing dinos just doesn't do them justice, and nothing as large as a dragon can fly without magical force. __________________ Signature stolen by a horde of carnivorous bunnies. It is an unscientifically proven fact that they are attracted to signatures which break the signature rules.

2006-11-01, 00:00	Link #19
Lord Raiden Uber Coffee for da win! Join Date: May 2003 Location: Middle of insanity	Oh, I fully believe it's possible that they existed. Probubly not in the manor we picture them today, but they definately existed in one form or another. BTW, I'm a huge fan of dragons and if real dragons existed today, I'd probubly own one as a pet.