Christian Courier

[Sobornost]

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

[Username1]

I hear what you’re saying, Jason. But you must admit that the present or past existence of living fossils, or Lazarus taxa ( a groovy term I learnt today from the great god wikipedia ) has little real bearing on the question of whether or not One Million Years BC was actually a documentary, not the bastard fictional offspring of a poor man’s Ray Harryhausen and Raquel Welch in a fur bikini . I think Dick treads a sensible path on this one. (Not that you’re not being sensible, old bean .)

The trace memory thing was rather a wild shot in the dark, I admit. (I nicked the idea from another brilliant Hammer film, Quatermass and the Pit - in which writer NIgel Kneale, incidentally, came up with an interesting take on the origin of the devil in folklore). I certainly wouldn’t put much weight on it.

But I do find all the various dragon myths throughout history, and across the globe, fascinating. Where do they come from?

Dick, have you heard of the legend of the Lampton Worm, by the way? It was brought to our cinema screens quite hilariously by Ken Russell in his execrable version of Bram Stoker’s Lair of the White Worm - a film Hugh Grant has undoubtedly erased from his CV .

All the best, chums

Johnny

[JasonPratt]

Sobor,

No, I’m definitely not going as far as a man/dino fully overlapping co-existence (although I’m willing to be agnostic about YE creationism – there are a lot of weird things, and old earth scientific claims don’t always add up cleanly, though I lean more toward OE currently). Primarily because at its best the evidence doesn’t point to that, even when the scriptural evidence (such as it is) is factored in. Taken altogether at most the evidence points toward rare animals, occasionally domesticated by humans in various ways perhaps (or that might be wishful/fantastic thinking), but not prevalent.

No doubt the cylinder is stylized for artistic purposes – obviously part of the point was to create “rolling art” with a stensil technique. Whether the animals are intended to be doing something representative of a ‘normal’ behavior is another question, and one that can’t be answered: it looks like a dominance fight or mating dance, and that might have been picked up and applied as part of the art motif, or someone might have thought they would look cool that way as part of the rolling art. Who knows? When cultures all over the world and across human history manage to randomly recreate identifiable morphologies, though, even accounting for art stylization, that starts to look to me less random.

The heads are definitely not leonine, btw. They might be based on skulls of something. (On closeup they don’t have trunks or proto trunks, but I’ve seen other art where that shows up.)

Johnny, I own all the Quatermass movies!–plus the modern finale two-part miniseries. (I don’t own the original TV miniseries the movies are based on, though.)

I do kind of think that the demonstrable existence of Lazarus taxa today and/or during human history has a bearing on the question of whether it’s ridiculous for Lazarus taxa to exist in significant numbers during human history (including up to today). But that’s as far as I would appeal to it.

I didn’t know Bram Stoker’s short story (which I haven’t read, though I’ve heard of it and Sarah Douglas’ infamous movie adaptation) was based on an actual folklore, but after studying the topic for the past several years neither can I say I’m all that surprised. Must remember to check on the legend of that particular Worm!

One of my Dad’s and my favorite British shows (sadly canceled) was Primeval, which had a clever take on the existence of out-of-place animals in human history, explaining why they seem to pop up and disappear in numbers too small to be breeding populations, although at first the writers seemed very nervous about actually running with that idea (which to me seemed odd. It was like they didn’t want to call attention to just how much folkore looks like dinos and other prehistoric animals. ) We’re about to finish the final season now.

[Sobornost]

OK Jason - I do have an open mind and will keep it open on this one.

Here’s’ the Lambton Worm - it made me laughed reading it again Johnny - love ‘the listen boys and shut your gobs’ chorus - very North England bluntness!!!

One Sunda morn young Lambton went
A-fishing in the Wear;
An’ catched a fish upon he’s heuk (=caught) (=his hook)
He thowt leuk’t vary queer. (=thought looked very strange)
But whatt’n a kind ov fish it was (=what kind of)
Young Lambton cudden’t tell-
He waddn’t fash te carry’d hyem, (=could not be bothered to carry it home)
So he hoyed it doon a well (=threw it down)

Chorus
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, (=Be quiet, boys, shut your mouths)
An’ aa’ll tell ye aall an aaful story, (=I’ll tell you all an awful)
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs,
An’ Aa’ll tel ye 'boot the worm. (=about)

Noo Lambton felt inclined te gan (=go)
An’ fight i’ foreign wars.
He joined a troop ov Knights that cared
For nowther woonds nor scars, (=neither wounds)
An’ off he went te Palestine
Where queer things him befel,
An varry seun forgat aboot (=very soon forgot about)
The queer worm i’ tha well.

But the worm got fat an’ grewed an’ grewed,
An’ grewed an aaful size;
He’d greet big teeth, a greet big gob,
An greet big goggly eyes.
An’ when at neets he craaled aboot (=nights) (=crawled around)
Te pick up bits o’ news,
If he felt dry upon the road,
He’d milk a dozen coos. (=cows)

This feorful worm would often feed (=fearful)
On caalves an’ lambs an’ sheep,
An’ swally little bairns alive (=swallow) (=children)
When they laid doon te sleep.
An when he’d eaten aall he cud (=all he could)
An’ he had had he’s fill,
He craaled away an’ lapped he’s tail (=wrapped)
Ten times roond Pensha Hill.

The news ov this myest aaful worm (=most)
An’ his queer gannins on (=goings-on)
Seun crossed the seas, gat te the ears (=soon) (=got to)
Ov brave an’ bowld Sor John.
So hyem he cam an’ catched the beast, (=home he came and caught)
An’ cut ‘im in twe haalves, (=cut him in two halves)
An’ that seun stopped hes eatin’ bairns
An’ sheep an’ lambs an’ caalves.

So noo ye knaa hoo aall the foaks (=now you know how all the folk)
On byeth sides ov the Wear (=both)
Lost lots o’ sheep an’ lots o’ sleep
An leeved i’ mortal feor. (=And lived in mortal fear)
So let’s hev one te brave Sor John (=let’s drink to brave Sir John)
That kept the bairns frae harm, (=from)
Saved coos an’ calves by myekin’ haalves (=making halves)
O’ the famis Lambton Worm. (=famous)

[JasonPratt]

^^ Great Ballad, Sobor! ^^

In regard to the Ica stones (which I read about years ago, but needed to look up again), their provenance is certainly suspicious, as the farmer who found (or created) and sold them told contradictory stories about them, and eventually was arrested by the Peruvian government and released on the agreement that he would confess to carving the stones himself. Which he confessed. After which they allowed him to continue selling the stones on the street to tourists and travelers.

This went on for 30 years (from around 1930 to the 60s), and while the man earned a good living by his standards, it was still poverty by most world standards, considering how vast the effort had to have been for carving at least 20 thousand and (by some accounts) around 50 thousand stones. He had picked up the attention of the BBC and some European experts along the way almost as a side effect, largely thanks to selling a batch of them to Dr. Javier Cabrera, who (and his father before him) had been collecting them at a smaller rate for years

There are a number of largescale collectors for the stones, and the largest collector (the late Dr. Cabrera) claimed to have had the stones officially analyzed by geologist Eric Wolf working for the laboratories of Mauricio Hochshild Mining Co. in 1967; and another large collector, Santiago Agurto Calvo, (who bought his from other local indigenous artifact miners, or huaqueros) one year previously supposedly had some of his stones analyzed by Fernando de las Casas and Cesar Sotillo, two engineers on the mining Faculty of the Universidad Nacional de Ingeneira, with results published by a Peruvian newspaper. These would be provenance trails worth checking, since the results of each study indicate that the stones had been carved (or their oxidation engraved rather) and buried soon after carving long before modern times (by checking the erosion of the edges, or rather the lack thereof, and uniform patinas covering the stones and the carvings. Radiometric datings cannot be used on actual stones.) Whether it is possible to create a patina that would fool professionals by baking the stones in cow dung (as the farmer claimed he did, on being asked by Peruvian police after his second arrest for selling archaeological items where the patina came from if he engraved them), is something I would like to see addressed. Certainly the (supposed) experts results fit burying without use and recovering either way.

But still no one is trying to make serious money off the stones. Dr. Cabrera just sort of got interested in them as a hobby because his dad collected them first, and spent his own money in the mid 90s when he retired setting up a public cultural museum for them, where anyone could literally walk in and back out again with a stone. (His grandiose personal theories about the stones are of no weight one way or another.)

So while the provenance for the stones is murky (at best), there’s a lack of profit motivation (at least proportionate to what the stones would be evidence for, compared to the work involved in creating them), and maybe even opportunity (depending on how kosher the patina studies were). The farmer and an accomplice testified in 1975 (and two years later in 1977) to carving some of the stones (not all of them) and selling them to Dr. Cabrera for his collection, but at most that’s testimony to locals taking advantage of a situation once it became established. (No doubt the stones would have to be carefully sorted now to eliminate the certain hoaxes, and to compare one set with another in cross-analysis.) What their testimony lends evidence for, is that Dr. Cabrera isn’t himself a hoaxer, or he would have known better to buy more stones from someone else. (He would have had them commissioned instead or made them himself if he wanted more.) But their story also sounds like an attempt at getting out of major jail time for committing a federal crime by selling real antiquities: engraving stones might be easier than farming land (for the same return?) but where does a farmer in the Peruvian backwater learn that he ought to even try to create a patina that would fool professional analysis?

Anyway, no, the Ica stones are too muddled with suspicion of fabrication to use as evidence.

(There is also the question of what they’d even be evidence for, although any legitimate stones would have to be identified and sequestered from modern forgeries first. It would be one thing for them to testify to living fossils, and quite another for them to testify to largescale technology that has managed to disappear from the face of the earth locally to the region. The former could conceivably fit the observable results, the latter doesn’t.)

[Sobornost]

Ah I see - yes it is just the provenance issue then. Yes it’s always a major factor in verifying a source

[Sobornost]

But just because these stones are dodgy sources doesn’t invalidate keeping an open mind about living fossils as part of an explanation for the universality of dragon myths.

[JasonPratt]

^^ Right. The well is rather poisioned for the Ica stones, but the overall cumulative case doesn’t hang on them.

Having said that, would two sets of professionals mistake a patina of cow dung for a normal stone patina?

Relatedly, a patina of cow dung (or chicken business, which was another story told by the farmers), would be confirmable or disconfirmable by analysis now (for example they should give off radiocarbon readings!–but probably an antiquities expert would be able to tell the difference.)

[corpselight]

as a huge and totally obsessive reptile fan, i think this thread has certainly taken a turn for the better!
and yes, Sobor…i would give my eye teeth to walk with baby dinosaurs…and adult ones. my particular flavour of universalism includes my belief that one day that will happen!
but until then, i will play with the reptiles God has gifted me with lol