What are dragons? When did they first appear as part of the human psyche? When did they first appear in the waters and on the mountain tops of the world?

People have been asking themselves these same questions for thousands of years - with no definitive answer. Maybe there are no "final" answers to the question - maybe dragons are both 1) part of our collective history as a figment of our imaginations and 2) real monsters in the real world.

There are many theories for everything. Here are just a few.

Storytellers would often exaggerate details for effect.

David Jones, author of Instinct for Dragons, contends that dragons are a mix of the three great predators of primates in prehistoric time: the feline, the serpent, and the predatory bird. These three were the greatest threats and once Australapithicus started walking upright, he combined aspects of these predators into one great fearsome beast - the dragon. The author continues into greater detail and I would highly suggest this book, even if you don't believe in Evolution or that dragons may not be real.

The Catholic Church was instrumental in the vilification of dragons throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the Western World. You can see this in the stories of the Garden of Eden's serpent all the way to the hellspawned demon and virgin-eaters that St. George battled. It was an effective technique for controlling the fears of the peasant population of the times. Stories of dragonslayers became stories of heroes against the devil incarnate, and often those heroes were sainted in the Church (i.e. St. Margaret, St. Columba, St. George).

In the English Isles, the leaders of clans were called Dragons and their kings were Pendragons (ie the Pendragon Cycle - The Story of King Arthur). To slay a king or clan leader was to slay a dragon. But stories get told over and over and change a little bit over time. Perhaps this could be a reason for some of the dragons in that area?

Vikings were known to sail and terrorize much of the coastline. Oft times they would carve the prows of their ships to be even more effective coming out of the fog of the sea, including dragons. Through the mists and fog the dragons would glide over the water, wreck towns and victimize the population, then disappear back into the night. These dragons brought death and destruction. It is no wonder they became so hated and feared in the areas frequented by these people.

How about Marco Polo and his escapades while exploring? He was discovering new species and new animals, meeting people with languages he never heard (and maybe didn't bother to understand), and otherwise going where no European had gone before. No doubt he met several species that he could not name, so he named them dragons. Snakes, reptiles, lizards, large flying and scary animals, and a lot more. "Dragon" became a catch word much like "miscellaneous" is today. No unified definition of the word "dragon" created a lot of dragons that we would not think of as dragons today.

Some more confusion comes from the word Gewurm. In German it can mean any dangerous wild animal and has been used to reference dragons and everything else. Since most of the tales are very old, there can be no accurate determination if the animal was really a dragon, or just something large and scary. The word "dragon" was often used during the Medieval period for all sorts of reptiles, especially large ones. (Source: Book of Beasts pg 165-6.) and even The New English Dictionary first defined the word "dragon" to mean a "'huge serpent or snake, a python'". (Source: Book of Beasts pg 166.)

"Norman Douglas...in Old Calabria....He believes that the primordial dragon is the spring; for he says, springs are called 'eyes' in Italy and Arabia; and the eye must be upon a head, and the head upon a body; the snake suggested the proper animal shape for the spring to take because of his glassy eye, earth-swelling habit, cold blood, and tenacity of life; hence the dragon .... As springs flow night and day, so the dragons are sleepless .... The spring-dragon easily becomes a river dragon, who becomes a hungry and spreads out over the land in floods. There are heavenly springs, so that he becomes a cloud dragon that can fall in ruinous thunderstorms upon the fields. A volcanic crater is a spring of fire; so he becomes a fire-dragon that flows forth in lava torrents." (Source: Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins by Joseph Fontenrose.)

In Africa there's a dragon that may actually be a left-over dinosaur.

You will notice that a lot of dragons were involved in the creation of the world. Dragons became another supernatural being that could help explain the mysteries of the earth to the primitive and ancient peoples.

Dragon slayers may have come out of need for treasure and goals during the Dark Ages. Sure, there were heroes, but there was also the chance at great wealth and honor...if you could kill the dragon.

Virgil, after being attacked by a reptile, describes it in his memoirs as both a dragon and a serpent. (Source: Book of Beasts pg 165.)

Kingsley (1849) wonders why dragons couldn't just be worms and serpents as seen by the superstitious. (Source: Book of Beasts pg 165.)

Robert Blast, on the site Survive 2012, contends that a pole shift (where the earth's magnetic poles shifted) back 5,000 to 12,000 years ago was responsible for dragon-related flood myths, earthquakes, volcanos, mutations and extinction, and possibly even god-like humans that appeared among ancient peoples as civilizing forces.

The Dark Dragon site puts most western dragons developing during the Middle ages, but notes that their images were used so much that the population soon became used to them.

On the Kronia site, the author links comets with the creation and cataclysmic dragons as well as the Egyptian Uraeus.

Richard Freeman, in "The Dragons of Yorkshire" as presented on Brian Goodwin's site, sites Peter Dickinson's theory in The Flight of Dragons (1979) that dragons evolved from large dinosaurs with hydrogen gas in their stomachs that allowed them to fly. The hydrogen was a mix of HCl and Ca and the excess would burn off as flame.

Dragon and Ice Castle: "Dragon is a concept to define how impulses of the planetary energy field are stored up here and flow out there as channels and pools of terrestrial electromatnetism". Feng Shui?

What is your take on all this? Believable? Way out on a limb? Do you have thoughts on how it all began?