Talk:Dragon

As with all Talk pages, please add new discussions to the end and use a header with "==" "==". This will cause it to automatically appear in the table of contents.

• Talk:Dragon/Archive 1 - Archive of talk from creation - end of 2006.
• Talk:Dragon/Archive 2 - Archive from end of 2006 - mid 2007
• Talk:Dragon/Archive 3 - Archive from mid 2007 - late 2009.

Origin and etymology

Should "Origin and etymology" and "Overview" articles be merged?Babassu (talk) 20:27, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Two Legs

Following discovery of how pterosaurs walked on the ground, some dragons have been portrayed without front legs and using the wings as front legs pterosaur-fashion when on the ground, as in the movie Reign of Fire."

'Saint fart and the Dragon' painted about 1470, by Paolo Uccello features a two-legged dragon long before pterosaurs were known about. Link to British National Gallery.

Suggest this should simply therefore read:

Some dragons have been portrayed without front legs, some using the wings as front legs pterosaur-fashion when on the ground, as in the movie Reign of Fire —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.12.237.236 (talk) 19:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

'Saint fart and the Dragon' = 'Saint George and the Dragon': St George pierces a two-legged dragon in the head with his lance while an anorexic Maid stands helpless.--Felix folio secundus 23:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Where the Myth of Dragons Came from According to the History Channel

According to the History Channel, it happened like this.

Since our Australopithecine ancestors were about half our size, it was that much easier for crocodiles or anacondas to eat them. Back then, there were also hawk-like birds large enough to carry away an animal half what is now the size of a human.

As cultural memories of these predators passed from Australopithecines to humans, they melted together over the millions of years. This resulted in a mythical animal with the head of a crocodile, the neck of a snake, and the wings and claws of a large predatory bird. (If the History Channel holds any water at all, this makes dragons by far the oldest mythical monsters.) Since they were combined in the mind to be perfect predators, dragons are large enough to swallow humans whole, and in a fair number of stories that include them as characters, they do so.

As humans spread from Africa to inhabit most of the world, it came to pass that basically every culture has some type of dragon in its mythology.

I say we should include this tale in a section on "Origins of the myth." The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 03:55, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

It's not a reliable source, to say the least. Sounds like mere television twit speculation, of the unsupported kind whose peer or better will be found among any batch of college freshmen in late-night dorm gabfests. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:58, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

The Dragons of Probability

Do we really need this section. It seems to be a rant about a certain book rather than any true scientific research. It does seem to strech completley off topic similar to having an entire section devoted to a dragon such as Smaug. It really adds little to the article and even if we wanted to keep it in could be made not into an entire section but a couple sentences claiming that in some books Dragons are statistical creature that live outside of reality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.23.69.184 (talk) 18:26, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe merge it or reduce it?173.8.11.157 (talk) 20:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

unicode pictographs

When 6.0 goes final, we might want to mention 🐉 and 🐲. ⇔ ChristTrekker 18:45, 30 July 2010 (UTC)