Myths of dragons are found all over the world but funnily enough the meaning of the dragon is not always the same. In the myths of the far East the dragon is a positive symbol – hence its use in the Chinese New Year ceremonies to drive away the evil spirits of the old year. IN the West the dragon is invariably a negative symbol – as in the Western legend of St George ,in Grendel and Grendel’s Nag from Beowulf and the Jörmungandr in Norse Legend that kills the god Thor in the Last Battle of Ragnarok. The chaos symbolised by the dragon often requires human sacrifice to avert – the examples here are legion. I remember the Arthurian story of how Merlin powers come to notice by diagnosing for Uther Pendragon that a city which is assailed by tremors and broken wall has a dragon beneath it (ancient cities invariably have a human skeleton buried in the foundation – in this case the sacrifice had not been carried out)
Chaos dragons feature in myths of creation and recreation – especially nit h near East – as the High god creates the ordered cosmos by defeating the chaos dragon and often creating order by cutting up its body. I understand biblical scholars who are experts on the Ancient Near East often argue that the Genesis account of creation take us out of mythology because it does not entail the slaying of a chaps dragon, although the account of the harpooning of Belial and leviathan in Job are views as an echo of an earlier creation story, because it corresponds to other Near Eastern myths.
Of course Ancient primitive and modern art serves a decorative function – this is part of the stylisation and however much the creatures in the Babylonian seals pictured above may look a bit like a modern reconstruction of a brontosaurus, I reckon the elongated necks obviously serve the decorative function of enabling decorative entwinement as you find in a Celtic key pattern (and they seem to have lion heads too). The Babylonian seal also is an experiment in repetition in frieze pattern.
Ancient art on the big scale invariably has a scared function. The pictures are windows onto a sacred world. For example, comparative anthropology suggests that cave paintings of hunts are probably sympathetic magic to ensure a successful hunt by depicting it and appease the souls of slain animals for example. So the fabulous beasts you see depicted are not normally an ancient or primitive attempt at taking a photo (although primitive people were/are capable of representational art if they turn their hand to it Gombrich give some good examples in Art and Illusion). They are rather an attempt to depict the world of the spirits, even if the spirit world and the natural world merge sometimes.
Now I’ve looked through a couple of sites that argue for human dinosaur co-existence. One should always keep an open mind However, I think the most I can say is that it is possible that there are/have been living fossils of land dinosaurs like the coelacanth of the oceans– but this is not the same as saying that men co-existed with dinosaurs when they were the dominant species of the earth (which the young earth creationists claim). This appears to be the most you are suggesting Jason –a very different argument from the one made with authoritative and assertive confidence by the Christian Courier bloke.
I think we have to be careful of these sites that promote human dinosaur coexistence (although I’m sure James would love to go walk a baby dinosaur)
The ica stones often feature in a big way on these sites– and these do seem to be forgeries with no provenance.
Oop finds – finds that seem to be in the wrong geological strata need careful scrutiny – there is often a simple explanation of these that gets covered up by those making claims about them
As well as creationists who visit theme parks to have a yabadaba do time riding a model of a stegosaurus, other people interested in these sites are people who believe in the extraterrestrial origins of the human race, and people who believe that ancient civilisations were scientifically advanced beyond the present time (the myth of Atlantis).
So I’ll stick with keeping open to the idea of living fossils that survived the destruction fo the dinosaurs – but feel uneasy about going further.
All the best
Dick