Dragons!

[pitbulllady]

Originally Posted by Kzinistzerg

I think they'd come from several sources; 1) dinosaur bones, 2) tales of dragons carried by storytellers and merchants, and 3) crocodiles. Those people you mentioned in lousiana seems more like they beieved in somehtingmore like an intelligent crocodile rather than dragons per say, htough I haven't researched it, so I don't know.

There are no crocodiles in Louisiana, have never been dinosaurs, and the beliefs and stories of the LeTeche pre-date any contact with Europeans. There ARE alligators, but alligators were simply another animal to the native tribes of that area, and the LeTeche were not thought of as simply intelligent, anthromomorphic alligators, but as a race of reptilian "people", if you will, with their own tribal customs, language, etc. As I pointed out earlier, even the Inuit have traditional dragon stories that also pre-date European contact, so there's no way that their beliefs could have been influenced by tales told by travelers, and there have been no reptiles indigenous to that area for millions of years. At that time that they first arrived in North American via the Berring Land Bridge, virtually the entire upper portion of the Northern Hemispere was coverd in ice, so even those who pushed further south, and might later encounter tribes who'd remained in the far north, would not have so much as encountered a small skink that they could somehow "twist" into a "dragon". It's THAT sort of thing that makes the whole dragon concept so fascinating-just WHAT did the universal belief in dragons stem from?

pitbulllady

[Kzinistzerg]

Ahhhh, I see. I stand corrected. It is indeed a fascinating subject...

[koosie]

Space-lizards! Heehee! That's what David Icke thinks and he's nuts. He believes they already control the planet like in THEY LIVE (80s sci-fi film)and are causing global warming to make Earth more like their home-world.

There is something inherently fascinating about Reptiles. When I was kid I was obsessed with seeking out Slow-Worms which look like baby snakes but are your basic lizard without legs. One time my dad told me he'd seen one dart under a shrub in our garden so I dived in there only to be faced with a Grass Snake - Britains biggest snake. I very nearly soiled myself.

[pitbulllady]

Originally Posted by koosie

Space-lizards! Heehee! That's what David Icke thinks and he's nuts. He believes they already control the planet like in THEY LIVE (80s sci-fi film)and are causing global warming to make Earth more like their home-world.

There is something inherently fascinating about Reptiles. When I was kid I was obsessed with seeking out Slow-Worms which look like baby snakes but are your basic lizard without legs. One time my dad told me he'd seen one dart under a shrub in our garden so I dived in there only to be faced with a Grass Snake - Britains biggest snake. I very nearly soiled myself.

Isn't David Icke the guy who thinks that Britain's Royal family, along with the Bush family and many other prominent Americans, are really "Lizard People", who can shape-shift to look like humans when they are in public and wish to avoid detection? If so, I've heard of that guy! I guess it would suffice to say that HE isn't a big fan of Randall Boggs, either, huh?

Speaking of Boggs, one of the members on our Boggs Board is in England, and she often laments the scarcity of reptiles in England. She's never even encountered a Grass Snake! She gets sorta jealous every time I post about catching a Corn Snake in my driveway(found one crossing the highway recently, but she's in shed, so once she changes her outfit, I'll post some pics), or post pics of alligators in the wild. I really do have to feel sorry for people who live in reptile-deprived areas, since finding a snake under a shrub in the garden is one of the highlights of any day for me! Grass Snakes are so cute, very much like our Garters, that would have been a great find. It is odd, though, that the belief in dragons is especially traditionally powerful in the British Isle, which have very few native reptiles themselves, and none that actually get to be large or impressive. There's only one venomous snake, the Adder, and it is not even life-threateningly venomous, but more lilke our Copperheads. The Celts of the British Isle had many tales of dragons, and this was before any contact with large, dangerous reptiles by any Brits, which would have been with Nile crocs and monitors during the Crusades.

pitbulllady

[koosie]

I once saved an Adder's life on the Quantock Hills by having well-maintained drum-brakes on my bike. Really nicely marked. Only Adder I ever seen. One is placed in a prosthetic leg as a murder-weapon in Ian Banks' The Wasp Factory.

The hilly Celtic land of Wales still has the red dragon on it's flag. Again, no idea why. Perhaps they're waiting for me to return and free them from the English. I reckon.

["C" the Dragon]

Are you kidding? I LOVE dragons! They're so cool! In fact, that's my user name, of course!