Fantasy Creatures - Dragons

As already stated dragons appear in nearly every ancient culture on Earth.

Egyptian hieroglyphs feature images of dragons, as does the Ishtat Gate of Babylon, ancient Chinese scrolls, Australian Aboriginal cave paintings and Aztec temple bas reliefs. They adorned the prows of viking ships and have been found on cliffs high above the Mississippi river. Inuits carved images of dragons on bones in a climate that no reptile could possibly survive in. The oldest paintings of dragons that we have are from the Sumerians, dating back to 5000 b.c.

In fact the name dragon comes from the ancient Greek word draca, meaning serpent. Dragons are quite prominent in ancient Greek writings.

The oldest surviving Greek account we have is from the Iliad where Agamemnon is said to have a blue dragon on his sword belt and a three headed dragon on his breastplate.

In 217 a.d. Philostratus wrote of Indian dragons in "The Life Of Apollonius Of Tynia"

Aelians, in his "On Animals" spoke of the Ethiopian dragons that hunted elephants and grew to 180 feet in length.

Dragons were descendants of dinosaurs, much like crocodiles and alligators. Being reptiles they were cold blooded and lived in burrows in the ground to conserve body heat. It takes a lot of heat to warm a body that large. This allowed the dragon to live in colder climates than the larger dinosaurs and saved them a lot of time not having to warm up so much in the mornings. This habit of living underground allowed them to survive while their larger cousins were wiped out in the ice age.

As the world warmed again the surviving dragons once more started to spread their territories outwards as their numbers increased.

Creatures evolve over time and dragons were no exception. Many had developed much larger front legs than their forefathers, now in proportion to its hind legs. The wyvern, amongst others, had lost its front legs entirely. Some species now had no legs, such as the woryms of Europe.

Some dragons no longer had wings, the most well known being the Chinese dragons. It is also believed that the dragons ability to breathe fire developed during the ice age. Rather than a weapon the inflammatory glands were originally a form of internal heating.