RE: [asa] dinos

Don,
I agree with your comment about the possibility of dragon lore resulting from Pterosaur remains or the like. Up until just a couple years ago I was under the illusion that man didn't recognize fossils for what they may be until the middle ages or after. I think I got this impression from Rudwicks classic book on fossils. I just read a book that really opened up my eyes to seeing the importance of fossils an ancient civilizations. The book The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor contains some fascinating accounts and speculations about paleontology in the Greek and roman times. Mayor, I believe, makes an effective case that the fantastic creatures of classical mythology resulted from the imaginations of people who found bones of mammoths and other large megafauna. These bones were attributed to long dead heroes and were collected and treated as relics of importance.

Especially relevant is the legend of the griffins in which these dragon-like creatures where said to guard gold deposits in the east. Mayor makes a nice case for this legend to have come about via the stories of travelers who came by skeletons of protoceretops which are common in the southern Gobi desert. It seems likely that seeing these great fully articulated skeletons that it would be assumed that they represented dragons that had died but that there must be others that yet remained alive.
Joel

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Don Perrett
Sent: Tue 1/9/2007 5:59 PM
To: burgytwo@juno.com
Cc: ASA Discussions
Subject: RE: [asa] dinos
 
Normally I don't get into the YEC/ID discussions. HOWEVER

IMHO I feel that more likely than a direct descendancy from Noah, which
cannot account for Native Americans being here before the flood, I believe
it is more likely that the flood stories from around the world are in
reference to past human experiences (tales) of the floods which likely
occurred at the end of the last ice age which would have been seen globally
but would not have been global. Being that it would more likely be at a
more recent time, it may have been as a result of mountain glaciers melting
rapidly and not the larger glaciers that may have cut the Grand Canyon for
example. Any area in a low land near mountains with remaining ice age
glacier caps would have experience localized (regional) flooding.

As for the flying dinos, is it not likely that the tales may have originated
from hypotheses drawn from those that found Ptero remains?

Don
 

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of burgytwo@juno.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 3:35 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: [asa] dinos

AIG recently tossed out the following:

Q: Were dragons just mythological?

A: You may have heard about the flood legends that have come down from many
different people groups around the world, many of which are very similar to
the Bible's account of Noah's Flood.

For instance, the Australian Aborigines, before they even met missionaries,
had stories about a global flood. The stories included many similarities to
the Bible's account. The same can be said of the legends of the American
Indians, Fijians, Eskimos, and other cultures all around the world.

The reason for this is that these people are all descendants of Noah.
They handed down the story of the Flood to succeeding generations. The
stories changed over the years, but the similarities to the Bible are still
there.

The same sort of thing likely happened with dragon legends. These stories
are based on real encounters with real beasts. The stories exist all over
the world, handed down from generation to generation.

What were the dragons? When you read about the descriptions of many of these
dragons in the old history books, you will see that they fit with many of
the descriptions we have today of dinosaurs.

Yes, dragons were probably dinosaurs!

-----------------------------------------------------------

Now I'm going to confess that the first time I saw this argument, it argued
(for me) somewhat persuasively that -- perhaps -- dinos and humanity existed
at the same 6time. The stories in the book of Job reinforced this. Then when
I saw dino tracks in a river in San Rose
(?) Texas, the credibility increased. Those tracks "looked" fresh -- not 100
MY old. (They still do).

So to a limited extent I stll hold a small chance (.01% perhaps) that dinos
did survive into recent times.

Of course, that possibility has nothing to do with the YEC view, I think.
Should a living T Rex be found in -- say -- S America, it WOULD be
interesting. I keep hoping ... .

Burgy

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Received on Wed Jan 10 13:25:30 2007