Dragons and dinosaurs. Not only does a substantial amount of children make one of these their entire personality for a while, but many adults are still highly interested in anything related to these respectively magical and prehistoric organisms.¹ It is therefore only natural that both obsessions are regularly combined. And this has, amongst other things, led to the question we try to answer in this week’s blog: was it encounters with dinosaur bones that formed the basis for myths about dragons?

As usual, the real answer is something like: it depends! Dragon myths are numerous and widely attested throughout history. This has partly to do with the fact that we today think of a wide range of stories about, depictions of, and allusion to disparate mythical beasts as being dragon-related. But there are important differences between those entities that we refer to as dragons. And their ultimate origins will not necessarily be the same. Moreover, not all persons who dreamed up creatures that a modern person would recognize as a dragon will have encountered or heard of fossilized dinosaur remains specifically – at least, not that we can prove. To illustrate those difficulties and make these matters less abstract, I will elaborate on an interesting example: the presumed role of dinosaur bones in the myths of ancient Greece. So, let us hunt fossils and – maybe – find us some dragons.

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Dragons and Dinosaurs

The fascination with finding out the relationship between ancient myths and prehistoric fossils can be traced back to the 19^th century CE and is linked to the advent of the modern study of dinosaurs. It was the convergence between myth and history – dragon and dinosaur – which is even said to have helped to make the concept of dinosaurs itself palpable to Western publics. In their communication paleontologists have regularly played up the similarities between dragons and dinosaurs.² And other findings, like ancient human remains, could also receive ‘dragon’ as an epitaph.³ It was therefore perhaps just a logical next step for many to wonder if our forebears made a similar connection.

It is therefore important to realize that ours is viewed by most as a modern question. One that has repeatedly been dismissed, at that.⁴ Sometimes simply on account of definitions. Because the dragons of many myths appear to be fusion entities – combining aspects of different existing or fabled animals into one mythical being – and often function as representations of natural forces, while dinosaurs were simply animals and are part of our reconstruction of the history of actual life on earth.⁵ As a result, the role of fossilized animal remains, like our dinosaur bones, would be rather difficult to trace through the various stories that have come down to us from antiquity about all those entities which we today designate as dragons. And a search like that would, in large measure, be pointless.

Though such a summary dismissal would not answer our question satisfactorily, I think. As the ancients knew almost nothing tangible about the historical reality of dinosaurs – let alone the time scale these majestic animals operated on – they would not have a similar semantic reason to differentiate between the beings in their myths and any visible remains of dinosaurs.⁶ If they could have encountered the bones of the more impressive dinosaurs, it is not illogical to presume that one would associate these fossils with some of their larger dragons and perhaps even the ones that were fused entities. In fact, Boria Sax argues that this is the very reason that we have not more mentions of large fossilized bones in ancient texts. As the existence of mythical creatures was taken as a given, the bones would simply be associated with them and therefore not merit specific notice. Though we should keep in mind that not all dragons of the past were large – some were in fact rather small by our standards – and would therefore not automatically be associated with the more impressive fossilized remains of dinosaurs.⁷

Having said that, we also need to return to the second caveat I mentioned above. Even if dinosaur remains could indeed be connected to some mythical dragons by past persons, there is still the matter of whether those who had a role in shaping ancient stories actually had a chance to encounter fossils that were sufficiently impressive. Both matters are relevant if we aim to connect ancient Greek myths that feature what we would perceive as dragons with the potentially available fossils.

Fossils in Ancient Greece

The word we nowadays use for ‘dragon’ is actually derived from an ancient Greek designation for ‘serpent’, that is δράκων (drákōn).⁸ As such, we have to be careful not to confuse mentions of serpents or serpent-like creatures in ancient texts with dragons! And, as said, not all kinds of dragons would have fit our current idea of them and would not easily be associated with the larger fossilized bones that can be found around the world. But that such bones, be it from dinosaurs or mammoths, featured in the environments of Greek antiquity is well-known. Traveling through the ancient Mediterranean and West-Asia, one could indeed find conspicuous fossils which might be recognized as the skeletons of gigantic entities, including those that we would call dragons.⁹

But did those living in ancient Greece not simply view these features of the landscape as fossils – as remnants of a bygone era? They certainly did in some cases, if we can believe the late antique writer Herodian. He tells us that Xenophanes – a famous wandering philosopher who lived during the sixth and fifth century BCE – was known to have found the fossils of sea creatures inland and had subsequently postulated that the world was once covered in water.¹⁰ In addition, the fifth century writer Herodotus – and arguably one of the first historians!¹¹ – mentions that certain stone formations were perceived as the fossilized feet or sandal prints of well-known heroes.¹² And we have even found a coin from the first or second century before our common era that seems to depict a fossilized ammonite.¹³ Furthermore, at least from late antiquity on-wards, fossilized sediments where recognized as special and used in medicine.¹⁴ But many times, ancient people will presumably not have recognized that a peculiar rock pattern was an imprint or remnant of even more venerable beings.¹⁵ And even if they did, would dragons be one of the associations they made?

Bones and Myths in Ancient Greece

There are roughly two ways for us to gauge the role that fossils played in Greek daily and religious life in general and in their mythology in particular. Looking into the use of actual paaeontological remains and tracing the mentions of mythical creatures that we can somehow connect to fossils.

Let’s first discuss the uses of the aforementioned remains. This is something that humans are known to do as early as in paleolithic times.¹⁶ And throughout ancient literature, we find mentions of gigantic bones that were venerated and which, if they in fact did exist, were probably prehistoric fossils. Many of these objects of veneration were again connected to heroes, such as the Athenian hero Theseus and the tragically dismembered Pelops.¹⁷ In addition, what we know to be fossils were processed when making artifacts. We can see this in the materials archaeologists dug up. Because some bones had a special meaning to the people living and ancient time and certain fossils will have appeared like prevalent precious commodities.¹⁸ But can such remains, even if they were thought to have belonged to magical beings – venerated or otherwise – bring us closer to our known dragon myths?

For this, we need to turn to the mentions of relevant fantastical creatures, which we may try to connect to fossils. And not only dragons, mind you. One example that kept popping up during my readings were griffins. Of these magical beings, which on first glance appear to be fusions of the front of an eagle with the body of a lion, it is said that they might have been based on prehistoric remains from central-Asia.¹⁹ Though recent research on the distribution of the fossils most likely to have inspired the genesis of griffins, has thrown doubt on this theory.²⁰ It is nonetheless interesting, as Adrienne Mayor asserts, that the griffin mainly appeared in folklore instead of proper myths and also seems to have been seen as more natural than other fusion entities, like sphinxes and minotaurs.²¹ And griffins are far from the only mythical beasts that are mentioned in a context that may have involved fossils. They are even said to have been able to best those creatures that interest us today: dragons!²²

Dragons, as we have seen, did appear in the bestiary of ancient Greek myth.²³ We mainly find them in two capacities. Within stories that take place in the Aegean, the creatures that are designated with words that we translate as dragon are mostly mentioned when their teeth are used to create magical offspring from the soil. Occurrences that may tentatively be connected, it can be argued, to fossil finds in the ground.²⁴ Living dragons were primarily thought to be found further afield.²⁵ Especially India appears to have been regarded by the ancient Greeks as the birthplace of dragons.²⁶ Though it remains the question whether all these beings would have resembled what we perceive as dragons.

The entities that we read as being seen as dragons, were often the result of a fantastical parentage which created – you guessed it – fused entities in all shapes and sizes. Unsurprisingly when you consider where the word came from, one of these parents was regularly a snake.²⁷ As such, like I alluded to above, we always have to ask ourselves whether these creatures are dragons as we imagine them or just monsters with snaky attributes, so to say.²⁸ And this is in addition to the matter of their shape and size – as many of those beings that were designated as dragons in antiquity would not be considered as such today. These observations may also have consequences for the role large dinosaur bones played in the ultimate conception of many, if not most, of these fantastical animals.

In summation, it is safe to conclude that ancient Greeks knew about fossils – even though they often viewed them through the lens of myth – and that there are modern scholars that connect (some of) their mythology to encounters with or awareness of large paleontological remains. And there are learned speculations about all kinds of fantastical creatures in relation to fossils, from griffins to – indeed – dragons. Though, as with many questions regarding the ancient past, we cannot as yet be absolutely certain which dragon myths are to be connected to dinosaur bones.

Conclusion: Always Another Question

As said, Ancient Greece is not the only place where one could ask these questions regarding the relationship between (hypothetical) encounters with dinosaur bones and the local mythology. The ancient Egyptians, for example, are thought to have venerated what they took as being the remains of the god Seth when he took the guise of a giant crocodile.²⁹ And in nearby Mesopotamia, there was also a host of creatures that we today also denote as dragons. Including a number of fused or composite animals. Many of which – at least in my opinion – would be difficult to connect to recognizable dinosaur remains.³⁰ Lastly, further afield in ancient China, similarly labeled creatures are also researched with respect to the possible influence of dinosaur fossils. What’s more, we can confidently connect local legends to fossilized prehistoric tracks, including those made by dinosaurs.³¹ This blog could thus be part of an ongoing and seemingly never-ending series.

Considering the caveats I discussed with the ancient Greek dragons and the aforementioned variety of dragon myths, we may postulate that the connection between dragon myths and dinosaur bones will perhaps always be interesting to talk about. And the chance that there are more discoveries to come is considerable. Especially as the relationship between geological features like fossils and the world’s mythologies are the subject of increasing research efforts.³² Having said that – and even though we will undoubtedly know more in time – due to the (mostly) ephemeral nature of ancient storytelling, the diversity among ancient dragons, and the uncertainties regarding the knowledge surrounding dinosaur remains in those days, definitive answers to our questions today will probably never arrive. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. Because reconstructing the past is an always ongoing process, wherein the (partial) answer to one question inevitably poises another.³³ Besides, it is always good to have an excuse to talk about either dinosaurs or dragons!

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References

1. Boria Sax, Dinomania: Why We Love, Fear and Are Utterly Enchanted by Dinosaurs (London: Reaktion Books, 2018), p. 7-8.
2. John Mcgowan-Hartmann, “Shadow of the Dragon: The Convergence of Myth and Science in Nineteenth Century Paleontological Imagery”, Journal of Social History 2013, 47 (1), p. 49, 64-65; Sax, Dinomania, p. 16.
3. Louise Westling, Deep History, Climate Change, and the Evolution of Human Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), p. 31.
4. Mcgowan-Hartmann, “Shadow of the Dragon”, p. 48.
5. William J.T. Mitchell, The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), p. 11; Noel Carroll, Interpreting the Moving Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 119-120.
6. Adrienne Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 10. Jeremy A. Black & Anthony Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), p. 71.
7. Sax, Dinomania, p. 17-18.
8. Black & Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 71.
9. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. xiii-xiv, 3-4.
10. Geoffrey S. Kirk et al (eds.), G. S ; Raven, J. E ; Schofield, M, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 177; Marco Romano, “Fossils as a Source of Myths, Legends and Folklore”, Rendiconti Online Della Società Geologica Italiana 2024, 17 (62), p. 1–15. On Xenophanes, see: Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (New York: W.W. Norton, 2016), p. 56-57, 339.
11. For some of the nuances to this statement, see: John H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 16-18.
12. Adrienne Mayor & William A.S. Sarjeant, “The Folklore of Fooprints in Stone: from Classical Antiquity to the Present”, Ichnos 2001, 8 (2), p. 144; Lida Ling et al, “The Folklore of Dinosaur Trackways in China: Impact on Paleontology”, Ichnos 2011, 18 (4), p. 213.
13. Romano, “Fossils as a Source of Myths, Legends and Folklore”, p. 4.
14. Ibidem, p. 6-8.
15. Sax, Dinomania, p. 17; Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 8.
16. Mark P. Witton & Richard A. Hing, “Did the Horned Dinosaur Protoceratops Inspire the Griffin?”, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 2024, 49 (3-4), p. 363. See in general: Ken McNamara, Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones: The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils (London: Reaktion Books, 2020).
17. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 105; Sax, Dinomania, p. 18.
18. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 105.
19. David Norman, Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 4-5; Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. xiv; Sax, Dinomania, p. 18.
20. Witton & Hing, “Did the Horned Dinosaur Protoceratops Inspire the Griffin?”, p. 363-388.
21. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 16.
22. For an ancient source specifically about dragons from India, see: Frederick C. Conybeare, Philostratus’ The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (New York: Harvard University Press, 1912), p. 332-333.
23. Sarah Iles Johnston, The Story of Myth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), p. 126.
24. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 222.
25. On monsters in Greek myth, see: Johnston, The Story of Myth, p. 261. For India, see: Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 135. And this may have to do with the myths from outside the ancient Greek world that nonetheless appear to have influenced them – and vice versa, of course – see: Johnston, The Story of Myth, p. 234, 241-242.
26. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 130-131.
27. Johnston, The Story of Myth, p. 182, 185.
28. Ibidem, p. 263.
29. Sax, Dinomania, p. 18. A keen reader pointed me to a elaborate article which, among other things, reports on this finding. Sadly, there do not seem to be any dinosaurs involved, see: Eric Welvaert, “The Fossils of Qau el Kebir and their Role in the Mythology of the 10th Nome of Upper-Egypt”, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 2002, 129 (2), p. 166-183.
30. Chikako E. Watanabe, “Composite Animals in Mesopotamia as Cultural Symbols”, in: Silvana Di Paolo (ed.), Composite Artefacts in the Ancient Near East: Exhibiting an Imaginative Materiality, Showing a Genealogical Nature (Summertown: Archaeopress, 2018), p. 31.
31. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. 38; Ling et al, “The Folklore of Dinosaur Trackways in China”, p. 214.
32. Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters, p. xv. See specifically: Elizabeth Wayland Barber & Paul T. Barber, When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth (Princeton University Press, 2004); Luigi Piccardi & William B. Masse (eds.), Myth and Geology (London: The Geological Society, 2007).
33. Arnold, History, p. 5.