Dragon Mother of Schnauzers Shirt
The Goanna. Australia is home to a number of species of monitor lizards, also referred to as Goannas. The large, predatory animals have razor-sharp teeth and claws, and they are important figures in traditional Aboriginal folklore. Recent studies even indicate that Goannas may produce venom that causes bite victims’ wounds to develop infections after an attack. At least in Australia, these creatures may be responsible for the dragon myth.Whales. Others argue that the discovery of megafauna such as whales prompted stories of dragons. Ancient humans encountering whale bones would have no way of knowing that the animals were sea-based, and the idea of such gargantuan creatures might well have led people to assume that whales were predatory. Because live whales spend up to 90 percent of their time underwater, they were poorly understood for most of human history.The Human Brain. The most fascinating explanation involves an unexpected animal: the human. In his book An Instinct for Dragons, anthropologist David E. Jones argues that belief in dragons is so widespread among ancient cultures because evolution embedded an innate fear of predators in the human mind. Just as monkeys have been shown to exhibit a fear of snakes and large cats, Jones hypothesizes that the trait of fearing large predators—such as pythons, birds of prey and elephants—has been selected for in hominids. In more recent times, he argues, these universal fears have been frequently combined in folklore and created the myth of the dragon.
Dragon Mother of Schnauzers Shirt
For using dragon’s bones, first cook odorous plants; bathe the bones twice in hot water, pound them to powder and put this in bags of gauze. Take a couple of young swallows and, after taking out their intestines and stomach, put the bags in the swallows and hang them over a well. After one night take the bags out of the swallows, rub the powder and mix it into medicines for strengthening the kidneys. The efficacy of such a medicine is as it were divine!”Chinese medical scholar Lei Xiao (AD 420-477)Dragons in the DustIn legends and folktales, dragons are magical–yet early naturalists often treated these creatures as part of the natural world. Biologists in Europe once wrote accounts of the behavior and habitat of dragons, along with lizards and snakes. Chinese scholars have classified the dragon as one of the 369 animal species with scales. Long before the development of paleontology, people unearthed fossilized bones in Asia and Europe–and believed they had found the remains of dragons from an earlier age.etaa0000406_med.jpgKlagenfurt, Austria: The Lindwurmbrunnen (dragon fountain), its head the skull of a woolly rhinoceros
© A. Baker / AA World Travel / Topfoto / The Image WorksTown TrophyLegend has it that long ago, the marshes near Klagenfurt, Austria, were haunted by a fearsome Lindwurm–a serpentlike dragon. It devoured all the people and livestock who ventured its way. Finally, a local ruler called on his knights to destroy the dragon, and after many attempts it was slain. To commemorate the event, a “dragon” skull was placed in the town hall. In 1582, an artist borrowed the skull–really the fossil remains of an Ice Age woolly rhinoceros–to use as a model in shaping a massive sculpture of the Lindwurm, which still stands in the city today.
