Almost every culture on Earth has imagined dragons, from fire-breathing monsters in Europe to wise water spirits in China.
But why did humans, separated by oceans and centuries, create such similar creatures?
In this episode, we'll try to understand the origins of humanity's universal monster.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it's part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of animals.
[00:00:29] In part one, we learned about man's best friend, the loyal dog.
[00:00:34] In part two, we explored the enigmatic cat.
[00:00:38] And today, in part three, we're going to talk about an animal that never existed at all.
[00:00:45] The dragon.
[00:00:46] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:52] Imagine you're a peasant farmer in medieval England, around the year 1200.
[00:00:59] You've never travelled more than a few kilometres from the village where you were born.
[00:01:04] You can't read. You've never seen a map. You have little idea what lies beyond the forest at the edge of your world.
[00:01:12] But you know, with absolute certainty, that dragons exist.
[00:01:18] You know they're serpentine creatures with scales like armour.
[00:01:24] You know they breathe fire.
[00:01:26] You know they often hoard treasure in caves.
[00:01:30] You know that knights sometimes hunt them, and that slaying a dragon is the ultimate test of courage. And in fact, just 150 years later, your country, England, would make a dragon slayer its patron saint.
[00:01:48] Now, imagine you're a scholar in Song Dynasty China, at a similar time.
[00:01:55] You live thousands of kilometres from England. Your civilisation has had no meaningful contact with Europe, and will not do so for several hundred years.
[00:02:06] You too have never travelled far from home.
[00:02:10] But like the English peasant on the other side of the world, you know that dragons exist.
[00:02:18] For you, they are slightly different.
[00:02:21] They are still long, serpentine creatures with scales.
[00:02:25] But their bodies are longer, they don’t have wings, and they live in rivers and seas, not caves.
[00:02:34] And they don’t typically breathe fire, but they do have magical powers.
[00:02:41] In your culture, dragons control the weather and bring rain.
[00:02:47] They represent imperial power and ancient wisdom.
[00:02:52] And you certainly wouldn’t dream of killing one – for you, dragons are benevolent, helpful and wise.
[00:03:02] But both you and the English peasant are thinking of fundamentally the same type of creature.
[00:03:10] And it's not just England and China.
[00:03:13] Medieval Wales had dragons. So did ancient Greece. And Rome. And India. And Japan. And Vietnam. And the Vikings. And the Slavic peoples. And pre-Columbian Mexico.
[00:03:26] Nearly every human culture, across every continent, across thousands of years of history, has some version of the dragon.
[00:03:36] And this is one of the most remarkable patterns in all of mythology: almost every civilisation has independently decided dragons existed, despite no evidence they ever did.
[00:03:51] And today, we're going to talk about some of the theories as to why.
[00:03:58] Let's start by taking a mini tour of dragons around the world, because while they share some common features, they are fascinatingly different in their details.
[00:04:10] And this might give us a few clues about their origins.
[00:04:16] In China, the dragon—or lóng in Mandarin—is one of the most important symbols in the entire culture.
[00:04:26] It's a creature of water and weather, associated with rain, rivers, and the sea.
[00:04:35] It's typically depicted as an enormously long, serpentine creature with four legs, antler-like horns, and a somewhat feline, cat-like face.
[00:04:48] Crucially, Chinese dragons don't usually have wings. They fly anyway, through some kind of supernatural power.
[00:04:59] And unlike Western dragons, Chinese dragons are generally benevolent.
[00:05:06] They bring rain to farmers. They represent wisdom and power. They were the symbol of the emperor himself—the emperor sat on the Dragon Throne, wore robes embroidered with dragons, and was sometimes called the "son of the dragon."
[00:05:25] To kill a dragon in Chinese mythology would be unthinkable. You might seek the favour of a dragon, or fear its wrath if you angered it, but dragons were fundamentally good, or at least neutral forces of nature.
[00:05:44] And this concept of the benevolent dragon is one we see spread throughout East Asia.
[00:05:51] In Japan, the dragon is called ryū, and it's very similar to the Chinese version—a sort of water deity, a bringer of rain, associated with the sea.
[00:06:05] In Korea, it's called yong. In Vietnam, rồng.
[00:06:10] All serpentine, like snakes, all powerful, all connected to water.
[00:06:17] Now, European dragons, as you will probably know, were very different.
[00:06:23] In medieval European mythology, dragons were almost uniformly evil.
[00:06:30] They were destroyers, not protectors.
[00:06:33] They breathed fire, not water.
[00:06:36] They hoarded gold and treasure in caves, jealously guarding it from humans.
[00:06:42] They kidnapped princesses, demanded virgin sacrifices, and terrorised villages.
[00:06:50] And their role, their purpose, and what almost always happens to a dragon in a story, was to be slain, killed by some kind of brave warrior; they were a threat to be extinguished.
[00:07:06] In terms of its appearance, the classic European dragon typically had four legs and two wings.
[00:07:15] It was reptilian, covered in impenetrable scales, often with a long tail it could use as a weapon.
[00:07:24] Its breath was its most dangerous feature: fire, of course, flames that could incinerate a knight even when wearing full armour.
[00:07:34] We see this type of dragon throughout European mythology.
[00:07:39] In the Old English epic Beowulf, the hero faces a dragon in his final battle. The dragon has been sleeping on a hoard of treasure for three hundred years. When a thief steals a single cup from the hoard, the dragon wakes in fury and begins burning the countryside.
[00:08:01] Beowulf kills the dragon, but is mortally wounded in the process.
[00:08:07] In Germanic mythology, the hero Siegfried kills the dragon Fafnir, who guards a cursed treasure. He then proceeds to bathe in the dragon's blood.
[00:08:19] In Greek mythology, dragons, or large serpents, appear throughout the legends, from Apollo killing the Python to Heracles fighting the many-headed Hydra.
[00:08:32] And in the Christian tradition, dragons became explicitly associated with evil and Satan.
[00:08:39] The Book of Revelation describes Satan as a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns.
[00:08:47] Saint George, the patron saint of England, is famous for slaying a dragon that was terrorising a town and demanding human sacrifices.
[00:08:57] The dragon in Christian symbolism represented paganism, chaos, the devil himself.
[00:09:04] To slay a dragon was to defeat evil.
[00:09:09] But dragons weren't confined to Asia and Europe.
[00:09:13] In Mesoamerica, the Aztec and Maya worshipped Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, a dragon-like deity associated with wind, air, and learning.
[00:09:26] And similar creatures appear in Aboriginal Australian mythology, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian mythology, and ancient Norse mythology.
[00:09:37] Nearly every culture has one.
[00:09:40] They're almost always serpentine or reptilian.
[00:09:44] They're almost always ancient and powerful.
[00:09:48] They're frequently associated with water—rivers, seas, rain, the primordial ocean.
[00:09:56] They often represent chaos, or primordial forces, or the power of nature itself.
[00:10:03] So the question remains: why?
[00:10:07] Why did humans, independently, across thousands of kilometres and thousands of years, all imagine similar creatures?
[00:10:17] Well, there are several theories, some of them more plausible than others.
[00:10:24] The first and most obvious explanation is the one you may know already, or might be able to hazard a guess: ancient people found dinosaur fossils.
[00:10:36] This theory has been around for a while, and it makes intuitive sense.
[00:10:43] Dinosaur bones have of course existed for all of human history, but it wasn't until the 19th century that humans understood what they were.
[00:10:54] So, imagine you’re a shepherd in ancient Greece and while digging a well for your village, you uncover an enormous skull with a large snout and teeth like daggers.
[00:11:09] Perfectly understandably, your first reaction might be that you’ve found the remains of some kind of reptilian beast. A terrifying monster. A dragon.
[00:11:20] And we know this happened because we have historical records of ancient people finding fossils and interpreting them as mythological creatures.
[00:11:31] The ancient Greeks found large fossils in quarries and mines and interpreted them as evidence of giants and monsters.
[00:11:42] In China, fossilised bones have been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years, where they're still called "dragon bones"—lóng gǔ.
[00:11:53] Even today, you can go to traditional Chinese medicine shops and buy powdered "dragon bone," which is actually fossilised animal remains, usually from Ice Age mammals.
[00:12:07] The ancient Chinese clearly found these bones, and attributed them to dragons.
[00:12:14] So fossils were definitely part of the inspiration.
[00:12:19] But here's the problem: fossils alone don't explain all the specific features of dragons.
[00:12:27] No fossil breathes fire.
[00:12:29] No fossil hoards gold.
[00:12:32] No fossil has wings and four legs.
[00:12:36] Fossils might explain why ancient people believed in large, extinct reptiles.
[00:12:42] But they don't fully explain why those reptiles, across different cultures, all had such similar supernatural abilities and behaviours.
[00:12:54] For that, we need to look deeper.
[00:12:58] And this brings us to theory number two, which is perhaps a little more out there, controversial and implausible, but worth mentioning in any case. And that’s that dragons somehow represent our deepest, most ancient fears.
[00:13:16] Specifically, dragons might be a combination of the predators that hunted our ancestors for millions of years, and that somehow, somewhere in our DNA is hardwired this primordial fear of the various predators that pursued us.
[00:13:35] Think about it this way.
[00:13:37] For most of human evolutionary history—so going back hundreds of thousands of years—our early ancestors lived in constant fear of being killed and eaten.
[00:13:49] And the predators that ate us fell into three main categories.
[00:13:55] First: large snakes.
[00:13:58] Venomous snakes and constricting pythons killed our ancestors. Even today, humans have an instinctive fear of snakes. Children as young as six months old show fear responses to snake images, even if they've never seen a snake before.
[00:14:17] This fear is hardwired into our brains through millions of years of evolution.
[00:14:24] Second: large cats.
[00:14:28] Leopards, in particular, were among the most dangerous predators early humans faced.
[00:14:34] They're ambush predators. They're incredibly strong. They drag their prey into trees.
[00:14:42] Fossil evidence shows that leopards hunted our ancestors regularly.
[00:14:47] We evolved an instinctive fear of their eyes, their fangs, their roar.
[00:14:54] And third: large birds of prey.
[00:14:58] Eagles and hawks could snatch children. Even today, raptors will occasionally attack small humans.
[00:15:07] Our ancestors would have feared attack from above, feared talons and beaks and wings.
[00:15:15] Now, here's the theory: what if the dragon is a synthesis, a mixture, of all three?
[00:15:24] A dragon has the body of a snake—long, serpentine, scaled.
[00:15:29] It has the roar and the fierce, predatory nature of a big cat.
[00:15:34] It has the wings and the ability to attack from above like a bird of prey.
[00:15:40] It's the ultimate predator, combining everything our ancestors feared most.
[00:15:46] Some evolutionary psychologists go even further.
[00:15:50] They suggest that humans might have a kind of deep evolutionary memory, not of dinosaurs per se, as humans never lived alongside dinosaurs, but of large reptilian predators like crocodiles and monitor lizards, which absolutely did coexist with early humans.
[00:16:11] Crocodiles are ancient, terrifying, and nearly impossible to kill.
[00:16:16] They lurk in water and explode into sudden, devastating violence.
[00:16:23] They're basically living dragons.
[00:16:27] And here's what makes this theory somewhat more compelling: it explains why children instinctively understand dragons without being taught.
[00:16:38] You don't have to explain to a child what a dragon is. You can show them a picture of a dragon, and even if they've never encountered the concept before, most children will understand immediately that it's dangerous, powerful, something to be feared.
[00:16:57] This suggests that the dragon might be tapping into something primal in our psychology.
[00:17:04] An archetype. A universal symbol of predatory threat.
[00:17:09] The monster that our ancestors feared in the dark.
[00:17:13] But again, even if this were true, it only goes part of the way to explaining things.
[00:17:21] Even if our brains are wired to fear dragon-like predators, this still doesn't fully explain the stories we tell about them—why dragons hoard gold, demand virgins, or represent chaos.
[00:17:37] For that, we need to talk about dragons as symbols.
[00:17:42] Because dragons were never just animals, even when people believed they were real.
[00:17:48] They were always symbols.
[00:17:51] Symbols of chaos. Of nature's power. Of greed. Of knowledge. Of transformation.
[00:17:59] In many ancient myths, dragons represented primordial chaos—the forces that existed before the ordered world.
[00:18:10] In Babylonian mythology, the god Marduk kills Tiamat, the dragon of saltwater and chaos, and from her corpse creates the heavens and the earth.
[00:18:22] The act of killing the dragon literally creates order from chaos.
[00:18:28] This pattern repeats across cultures.
[00:18:31] The hero kills the dragon, and in doing so, brings order to the world.
[00:18:37] Apollo kills the Python and establishes his oracle at Delphi.
[00:18:43] Saint George kills the dragon and saves the town.
[00:18:46] Beowulf kills the dragon and dies a hero.
[00:18:50] The dragon is the obstacle that must be overcome for civilisation to flourish.
[00:18:57] But dragons also represent other things.
[00:19:02] In many legends, dragons hoard treasure—specifically gold.
[00:19:09] Why?
[00:19:10] Well, gold in mythology often represents more than just wealth. It represents knowledge, power, immortality.
[00:19:21] The dragon guarding treasure is the dragon guarding knowledge that humans aren't ready for.
[00:19:27] To claim the treasure, the hero must prove himself worthy by defeating the dragon.
[00:19:35] In Christian symbolism, dragons became explicitly associated with Satan and evil.
[00:19:42] The dragon was paganism, the old gods, the forces of darkness.
[00:19:48] Saint George slaying the dragon was Christianity conquering paganism.
[00:19:53] It was good triumphing over evil. It was the new order replacing the old.
[00:20:00] But, you may well be thinking, this might make sense if we’re talking about the archetype of the bad, evil dragon. But what about the East Asian traditions of the good dragons, the dragons that help and provide?
[00:20:15] Well, here’s an interesting theory put forward by a man named Professor Ronald Hutton.
[00:20:23] In Europe, by the time humans were creating legends about things like dragons, humans faced no real threats from predators. Not giant snakes or leopards. And humans like to have large predators to tell stories about, predators who get killed by brave knights. In Europe, we had none, so we created dragons.
[00:20:48] In China, however, there was a large predator in the form of the tiger, which would kill humans and was very scary, so the Chinese had no need to create another.
[00:21:02] And therefore Chinese dragons became wise and benevolent.
[00:21:08] Now, you might be thinking, “ok, so people told stories about dragons, but did they actually believe in them? And if so, when did we stop believing?”
[00:21:19] The answer is: yes they did, and surprisingly recently.
[00:21:25] In medieval Europe, dragons were included in bestiaries—books that catalogued animals and their properties.
[00:21:34] These bestiaries listed dragons right alongside elephants, lions, and crocodiles.
[00:21:41] There was no distinction between "real" animals and "mythological" ones, because to medieval people, dragons were real.
[00:21:51] They were rare, certainly. Dangerous. Hard to find.
[00:21:55] But real.
[00:21:57] Medieval maps are often believed to have marked unexplored regions with the phrase "Here be dragons", although interestingly, this phrase appears on very few actual historical maps.
[00:22:11] So it's mostly a modern myth about medieval maps.
[00:22:15] But the sentiment was real: the edges of the known world were dangerous, mysterious, possibly full of dragons.
[00:22:25] Yet, as European explorers began mapping the world in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the spaces where dragons could exist began shrinking.
[00:22:38] Explorers sailed to the Americas. No dragons.
[00:22:41] They mapped the coast of Africa. No dragons.
[00:22:44] They travelled to Asia, to the Pacific islands. No dragons.
[00:22:49] By the 18th century, educated people were growing sceptical.
[00:22:53] The Age of Enlightenment brought a more scientific approach to the natural world.
[00:22:59] Carolus Linnaeus created his system of taxonomy, classifying all known animals.
[00:23:06] Dragons didn't make the list.
[00:23:10] And then, in the 19th century, came a revolution in our understanding of the past.
[00:23:16] Paleontology emerged as a science.
[00:23:20] People began correctly identifying fossilised bones as extinct animals: dinosaurs, mammoths, giant sloths.
[00:23:29] Suddenly, we had an explanation for the mysterious giant bones people had been finding for millennia.
[00:23:37] They weren't dragons.
[00:23:38] They were animals that had died millions of years ago, long before humans existed.
[00:23:45] Then, when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, there was a framework for understanding how life on Earth had evolved.
[00:23:56] And by the end of the 19th century, dragons had been firmly relegated to the realm of mythology.
[00:24:05] But, perhaps funnily enough, this shift from the “scary but real” to the “a good source for myths and stories” propelled dragons to new heights, and they started to appear much more frequently in stories, in books and then in films.
[00:24:23] J.R.R. Tolkien loved dragon mythology as a child, and dragons feature prominently in his fantasy worlds.
[00:24:32] And most recently, Game of Thrones brought dragons back into mainstream popular culture in a massive way.
[00:24:41] So, to wrap things up, we haven't abandoned dragons. If anything, we've embraced them more enthusiastically than ever.
[00:24:50] Why?
[00:24:51] Well, perhaps because dragons fulfill a psychological need that facts and science can't quite satisfy.
[00:24:59] Dragons represent the ultimate challenge. The ultimate obstacle to overcome.
[00:25:05] When you defeat a dragon in a game, or read about a hero slaying a dragon, you're not just enjoying a story.
[00:25:13] You're engaging with an archetype that resonates with something deep in human psychology.
[00:25:19] The dragon is the fear you must face. The challenge that seems impossible. The transformation you must undergo to become who you're meant to be.
[00:25:30] And perhaps that's why dragons appear in every culture.
[00:25:33] Not because ancient people found dinosaur bones, though they did.
[00:25:38] Not because they encountered large reptiles, though they did.
[00:25:43] But because the dragon represents something fundamental about the human experience.
[00:25:49] The struggle against chaos.
[00:25:51] The fight against our fears.
[00:25:53] The journey from ordinary to extraordinary.
[00:25:57] Dragons never existed.
[00:25:59] But in a sense, they've always existed, and they always will.
[00:26:04] Not in caves or mountains or the depths of the sea.
[00:26:08] But in here. In our stories. In our imaginations.
[00:26:13] And perhaps that's the only place they ever needed to be.
[00:26:18] OK then, that is it for today's episode on dragons, the creatures that never existed but that every culture imagined anyway.
[00:26:27] And that brings us to the end of this three-part mini-series on animals throughout history.
[00:26:33] We've covered the loyal dog, the enigmatic cat, and the mythical dragon—three very different relationships between humans and animals, three very different stories.
[00:26:44] I hope you've enjoyed this journey through history, mythology, and evolutionary psychology.
[00:26:50] As always, you’ve been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:26:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it's part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of animals.
[00:00:29] In part one, we learned about man's best friend, the loyal dog.
[00:00:34] In part two, we explored the enigmatic cat.
[00:00:38] And today, in part three, we're going to talk about an animal that never existed at all.
[00:00:45] The dragon.
[00:00:46] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:52] Imagine you're a peasant farmer in medieval England, around the year 1200.
[00:00:59] You've never travelled more than a few kilometres from the village where you were born.
[00:01:04] You can't read. You've never seen a map. You have little idea what lies beyond the forest at the edge of your world.
[00:01:12] But you know, with absolute certainty, that dragons exist.
[00:01:18] You know they're serpentine creatures with scales like armour.
[00:01:24] You know they breathe fire.
[00:01:26] You know they often hoard treasure in caves.
[00:01:30] You know that knights sometimes hunt them, and that slaying a dragon is the ultimate test of courage. And in fact, just 150 years later, your country, England, would make a dragon slayer its patron saint.
[00:01:48] Now, imagine you're a scholar in Song Dynasty China, at a similar time.
[00:01:55] You live thousands of kilometres from England. Your civilisation has had no meaningful contact with Europe, and will not do so for several hundred years.
[00:02:06] You too have never travelled far from home.
[00:02:10] But like the English peasant on the other side of the world, you know that dragons exist.
[00:02:18] For you, they are slightly different.
[00:02:21] They are still long, serpentine creatures with scales.
[00:02:25] But their bodies are longer, they don’t have wings, and they live in rivers and seas, not caves.
[00:02:34] And they don’t typically breathe fire, but they do have magical powers.
[00:02:41] In your culture, dragons control the weather and bring rain.
[00:02:47] They represent imperial power and ancient wisdom.
[00:02:52] And you certainly wouldn’t dream of killing one – for you, dragons are benevolent, helpful and wise.
[00:03:02] But both you and the English peasant are thinking of fundamentally the same type of creature.
[00:03:10] And it's not just England and China.
[00:03:13] Medieval Wales had dragons. So did ancient Greece. And Rome. And India. And Japan. And Vietnam. And the Vikings. And the Slavic peoples. And pre-Columbian Mexico.
[00:03:26] Nearly every human culture, across every continent, across thousands of years of history, has some version of the dragon.
[00:03:36] And this is one of the most remarkable patterns in all of mythology: almost every civilisation has independently decided dragons existed, despite no evidence they ever did.
[00:03:51] And today, we're going to talk about some of the theories as to why.
[00:03:58] Let's start by taking a mini tour of dragons around the world, because while they share some common features, they are fascinatingly different in their details.
[00:04:10] And this might give us a few clues about their origins.
[00:04:16] In China, the dragon—or lóng in Mandarin—is one of the most important symbols in the entire culture.
[00:04:26] It's a creature of water and weather, associated with rain, rivers, and the sea.
[00:04:35] It's typically depicted as an enormously long, serpentine creature with four legs, antler-like horns, and a somewhat feline, cat-like face.
[00:04:48] Crucially, Chinese dragons don't usually have wings. They fly anyway, through some kind of supernatural power.
[00:04:59] And unlike Western dragons, Chinese dragons are generally benevolent.
[00:05:06] They bring rain to farmers. They represent wisdom and power. They were the symbol of the emperor himself—the emperor sat on the Dragon Throne, wore robes embroidered with dragons, and was sometimes called the "son of the dragon."
[00:05:25] To kill a dragon in Chinese mythology would be unthinkable. You might seek the favour of a dragon, or fear its wrath if you angered it, but dragons were fundamentally good, or at least neutral forces of nature.
[00:05:44] And this concept of the benevolent dragon is one we see spread throughout East Asia.
[00:05:51] In Japan, the dragon is called ryū, and it's very similar to the Chinese version—a sort of water deity, a bringer of rain, associated with the sea.
[00:06:05] In Korea, it's called yong. In Vietnam, rồng.
[00:06:10] All serpentine, like snakes, all powerful, all connected to water.
[00:06:17] Now, European dragons, as you will probably know, were very different.
[00:06:23] In medieval European mythology, dragons were almost uniformly evil.
[00:06:30] They were destroyers, not protectors.
[00:06:33] They breathed fire, not water.
[00:06:36] They hoarded gold and treasure in caves, jealously guarding it from humans.
[00:06:42] They kidnapped princesses, demanded virgin sacrifices, and terrorised villages.
[00:06:50] And their role, their purpose, and what almost always happens to a dragon in a story, was to be slain, killed by some kind of brave warrior; they were a threat to be extinguished.
[00:07:06] In terms of its appearance, the classic European dragon typically had four legs and two wings.
[00:07:15] It was reptilian, covered in impenetrable scales, often with a long tail it could use as a weapon.
[00:07:24] Its breath was its most dangerous feature: fire, of course, flames that could incinerate a knight even when wearing full armour.
[00:07:34] We see this type of dragon throughout European mythology.
[00:07:39] In the Old English epic Beowulf, the hero faces a dragon in his final battle. The dragon has been sleeping on a hoard of treasure for three hundred years. When a thief steals a single cup from the hoard, the dragon wakes in fury and begins burning the countryside.
[00:08:01] Beowulf kills the dragon, but is mortally wounded in the process.
[00:08:07] In Germanic mythology, the hero Siegfried kills the dragon Fafnir, who guards a cursed treasure. He then proceeds to bathe in the dragon's blood.
[00:08:19] In Greek mythology, dragons, or large serpents, appear throughout the legends, from Apollo killing the Python to Heracles fighting the many-headed Hydra.
[00:08:32] And in the Christian tradition, dragons became explicitly associated with evil and Satan.
[00:08:39] The Book of Revelation describes Satan as a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns.
[00:08:47] Saint George, the patron saint of England, is famous for slaying a dragon that was terrorising a town and demanding human sacrifices.
[00:08:57] The dragon in Christian symbolism represented paganism, chaos, the devil himself.
[00:09:04] To slay a dragon was to defeat evil.
[00:09:09] But dragons weren't confined to Asia and Europe.
[00:09:13] In Mesoamerica, the Aztec and Maya worshipped Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, a dragon-like deity associated with wind, air, and learning.
[00:09:26] And similar creatures appear in Aboriginal Australian mythology, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian mythology, and ancient Norse mythology.
[00:09:37] Nearly every culture has one.
[00:09:40] They're almost always serpentine or reptilian.
[00:09:44] They're almost always ancient and powerful.
[00:09:48] They're frequently associated with water—rivers, seas, rain, the primordial ocean.
[00:09:56] They often represent chaos, or primordial forces, or the power of nature itself.
[00:10:03] So the question remains: why?
[00:10:07] Why did humans, independently, across thousands of kilometres and thousands of years, all imagine similar creatures?
[00:10:17] Well, there are several theories, some of them more plausible than others.
[00:10:24] The first and most obvious explanation is the one you may know already, or might be able to hazard a guess: ancient people found dinosaur fossils.
[00:10:36] This theory has been around for a while, and it makes intuitive sense.
[00:10:43] Dinosaur bones have of course existed for all of human history, but it wasn't until the 19th century that humans understood what they were.
[00:10:54] So, imagine you’re a shepherd in ancient Greece and while digging a well for your village, you uncover an enormous skull with a large snout and teeth like daggers.
[00:11:09] Perfectly understandably, your first reaction might be that you’ve found the remains of some kind of reptilian beast. A terrifying monster. A dragon.
[00:11:20] And we know this happened because we have historical records of ancient people finding fossils and interpreting them as mythological creatures.
[00:11:31] The ancient Greeks found large fossils in quarries and mines and interpreted them as evidence of giants and monsters.
[00:11:42] In China, fossilised bones have been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years, where they're still called "dragon bones"—lóng gǔ.
[00:11:53] Even today, you can go to traditional Chinese medicine shops and buy powdered "dragon bone," which is actually fossilised animal remains, usually from Ice Age mammals.
[00:12:07] The ancient Chinese clearly found these bones, and attributed them to dragons.
[00:12:14] So fossils were definitely part of the inspiration.
[00:12:19] But here's the problem: fossils alone don't explain all the specific features of dragons.
[00:12:27] No fossil breathes fire.
[00:12:29] No fossil hoards gold.
[00:12:32] No fossil has wings and four legs.
[00:12:36] Fossils might explain why ancient people believed in large, extinct reptiles.
[00:12:42] But they don't fully explain why those reptiles, across different cultures, all had such similar supernatural abilities and behaviours.
[00:12:54] For that, we need to look deeper.
[00:12:58] And this brings us to theory number two, which is perhaps a little more out there, controversial and implausible, but worth mentioning in any case. And that’s that dragons somehow represent our deepest, most ancient fears.
[00:13:16] Specifically, dragons might be a combination of the predators that hunted our ancestors for millions of years, and that somehow, somewhere in our DNA is hardwired this primordial fear of the various predators that pursued us.
[00:13:35] Think about it this way.
[00:13:37] For most of human evolutionary history—so going back hundreds of thousands of years—our early ancestors lived in constant fear of being killed and eaten.
[00:13:49] And the predators that ate us fell into three main categories.
[00:13:55] First: large snakes.
[00:13:58] Venomous snakes and constricting pythons killed our ancestors. Even today, humans have an instinctive fear of snakes. Children as young as six months old show fear responses to snake images, even if they've never seen a snake before.
[00:14:17] This fear is hardwired into our brains through millions of years of evolution.
[00:14:24] Second: large cats.
[00:14:28] Leopards, in particular, were among the most dangerous predators early humans faced.
[00:14:34] They're ambush predators. They're incredibly strong. They drag their prey into trees.
[00:14:42] Fossil evidence shows that leopards hunted our ancestors regularly.
[00:14:47] We evolved an instinctive fear of their eyes, their fangs, their roar.
[00:14:54] And third: large birds of prey.
[00:14:58] Eagles and hawks could snatch children. Even today, raptors will occasionally attack small humans.
[00:15:07] Our ancestors would have feared attack from above, feared talons and beaks and wings.
[00:15:15] Now, here's the theory: what if the dragon is a synthesis, a mixture, of all three?
[00:15:24] A dragon has the body of a snake—long, serpentine, scaled.
[00:15:29] It has the roar and the fierce, predatory nature of a big cat.
[00:15:34] It has the wings and the ability to attack from above like a bird of prey.
[00:15:40] It's the ultimate predator, combining everything our ancestors feared most.
[00:15:46] Some evolutionary psychologists go even further.
[00:15:50] They suggest that humans might have a kind of deep evolutionary memory, not of dinosaurs per se, as humans never lived alongside dinosaurs, but of large reptilian predators like crocodiles and monitor lizards, which absolutely did coexist with early humans.
[00:16:11] Crocodiles are ancient, terrifying, and nearly impossible to kill.
[00:16:16] They lurk in water and explode into sudden, devastating violence.
[00:16:23] They're basically living dragons.
[00:16:27] And here's what makes this theory somewhat more compelling: it explains why children instinctively understand dragons without being taught.
[00:16:38] You don't have to explain to a child what a dragon is. You can show them a picture of a dragon, and even if they've never encountered the concept before, most children will understand immediately that it's dangerous, powerful, something to be feared.
[00:16:57] This suggests that the dragon might be tapping into something primal in our psychology.
[00:17:04] An archetype. A universal symbol of predatory threat.
[00:17:09] The monster that our ancestors feared in the dark.
[00:17:13] But again, even if this were true, it only goes part of the way to explaining things.
[00:17:21] Even if our brains are wired to fear dragon-like predators, this still doesn't fully explain the stories we tell about them—why dragons hoard gold, demand virgins, or represent chaos.
[00:17:37] For that, we need to talk about dragons as symbols.
[00:17:42] Because dragons were never just animals, even when people believed they were real.
[00:17:48] They were always symbols.
[00:17:51] Symbols of chaos. Of nature's power. Of greed. Of knowledge. Of transformation.
[00:17:59] In many ancient myths, dragons represented primordial chaos—the forces that existed before the ordered world.
[00:18:10] In Babylonian mythology, the god Marduk kills Tiamat, the dragon of saltwater and chaos, and from her corpse creates the heavens and the earth.
[00:18:22] The act of killing the dragon literally creates order from chaos.
[00:18:28] This pattern repeats across cultures.
[00:18:31] The hero kills the dragon, and in doing so, brings order to the world.
[00:18:37] Apollo kills the Python and establishes his oracle at Delphi.
[00:18:43] Saint George kills the dragon and saves the town.
[00:18:46] Beowulf kills the dragon and dies a hero.
[00:18:50] The dragon is the obstacle that must be overcome for civilisation to flourish.
[00:18:57] But dragons also represent other things.
[00:19:02] In many legends, dragons hoard treasure—specifically gold.
[00:19:09] Why?
[00:19:10] Well, gold in mythology often represents more than just wealth. It represents knowledge, power, immortality.
[00:19:21] The dragon guarding treasure is the dragon guarding knowledge that humans aren't ready for.
[00:19:27] To claim the treasure, the hero must prove himself worthy by defeating the dragon.
[00:19:35] In Christian symbolism, dragons became explicitly associated with Satan and evil.
[00:19:42] The dragon was paganism, the old gods, the forces of darkness.
[00:19:48] Saint George slaying the dragon was Christianity conquering paganism.
[00:19:53] It was good triumphing over evil. It was the new order replacing the old.
[00:20:00] But, you may well be thinking, this might make sense if we’re talking about the archetype of the bad, evil dragon. But what about the East Asian traditions of the good dragons, the dragons that help and provide?
[00:20:15] Well, here’s an interesting theory put forward by a man named Professor Ronald Hutton.
[00:20:23] In Europe, by the time humans were creating legends about things like dragons, humans faced no real threats from predators. Not giant snakes or leopards. And humans like to have large predators to tell stories about, predators who get killed by brave knights. In Europe, we had none, so we created dragons.
[00:20:48] In China, however, there was a large predator in the form of the tiger, which would kill humans and was very scary, so the Chinese had no need to create another.
[00:21:02] And therefore Chinese dragons became wise and benevolent.
[00:21:08] Now, you might be thinking, “ok, so people told stories about dragons, but did they actually believe in them? And if so, when did we stop believing?”
[00:21:19] The answer is: yes they did, and surprisingly recently.
[00:21:25] In medieval Europe, dragons were included in bestiaries—books that catalogued animals and their properties.
[00:21:34] These bestiaries listed dragons right alongside elephants, lions, and crocodiles.
[00:21:41] There was no distinction between "real" animals and "mythological" ones, because to medieval people, dragons were real.
[00:21:51] They were rare, certainly. Dangerous. Hard to find.
[00:21:55] But real.
[00:21:57] Medieval maps are often believed to have marked unexplored regions with the phrase "Here be dragons", although interestingly, this phrase appears on very few actual historical maps.
[00:22:11] So it's mostly a modern myth about medieval maps.
[00:22:15] But the sentiment was real: the edges of the known world were dangerous, mysterious, possibly full of dragons.
[00:22:25] Yet, as European explorers began mapping the world in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the spaces where dragons could exist began shrinking.
[00:22:38] Explorers sailed to the Americas. No dragons.
[00:22:41] They mapped the coast of Africa. No dragons.
[00:22:44] They travelled to Asia, to the Pacific islands. No dragons.
[00:22:49] By the 18th century, educated people were growing sceptical.
[00:22:53] The Age of Enlightenment brought a more scientific approach to the natural world.
[00:22:59] Carolus Linnaeus created his system of taxonomy, classifying all known animals.
[00:23:06] Dragons didn't make the list.
[00:23:10] And then, in the 19th century, came a revolution in our understanding of the past.
[00:23:16] Paleontology emerged as a science.
[00:23:20] People began correctly identifying fossilised bones as extinct animals: dinosaurs, mammoths, giant sloths.
[00:23:29] Suddenly, we had an explanation for the mysterious giant bones people had been finding for millennia.
[00:23:37] They weren't dragons.
[00:23:38] They were animals that had died millions of years ago, long before humans existed.
[00:23:45] Then, when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, there was a framework for understanding how life on Earth had evolved.
[00:23:56] And by the end of the 19th century, dragons had been firmly relegated to the realm of mythology.
[00:24:05] But, perhaps funnily enough, this shift from the “scary but real” to the “a good source for myths and stories” propelled dragons to new heights, and they started to appear much more frequently in stories, in books and then in films.
[00:24:23] J.R.R. Tolkien loved dragon mythology as a child, and dragons feature prominently in his fantasy worlds.
[00:24:32] And most recently, Game of Thrones brought dragons back into mainstream popular culture in a massive way.
[00:24:41] So, to wrap things up, we haven't abandoned dragons. If anything, we've embraced them more enthusiastically than ever.
[00:24:50] Why?
[00:24:51] Well, perhaps because dragons fulfill a psychological need that facts and science can't quite satisfy.
[00:24:59] Dragons represent the ultimate challenge. The ultimate obstacle to overcome.
[00:25:05] When you defeat a dragon in a game, or read about a hero slaying a dragon, you're not just enjoying a story.
[00:25:13] You're engaging with an archetype that resonates with something deep in human psychology.
[00:25:19] The dragon is the fear you must face. The challenge that seems impossible. The transformation you must undergo to become who you're meant to be.
[00:25:30] And perhaps that's why dragons appear in every culture.
[00:25:33] Not because ancient people found dinosaur bones, though they did.
[00:25:38] Not because they encountered large reptiles, though they did.
[00:25:43] But because the dragon represents something fundamental about the human experience.
[00:25:49] The struggle against chaos.
[00:25:51] The fight against our fears.
[00:25:53] The journey from ordinary to extraordinary.
[00:25:57] Dragons never existed.
[00:25:59] But in a sense, they've always existed, and they always will.
[00:26:04] Not in caves or mountains or the depths of the sea.
[00:26:08] But in here. In our stories. In our imaginations.
[00:26:13] And perhaps that's the only place they ever needed to be.
[00:26:18] OK then, that is it for today's episode on dragons, the creatures that never existed but that every culture imagined anyway.
[00:26:27] And that brings us to the end of this three-part mini-series on animals throughout history.
[00:26:33] We've covered the loyal dog, the enigmatic cat, and the mythical dragon—three very different relationships between humans and animals, three very different stories.
[00:26:44] I hope you've enjoyed this journey through history, mythology, and evolutionary psychology.
[00:26:50] As always, you’ve been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:26:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it's part three of our three-part mini-series on the theme of animals.
[00:00:29] In part one, we learned about man's best friend, the loyal dog.
[00:00:34] In part two, we explored the enigmatic cat.
[00:00:38] And today, in part three, we're going to talk about an animal that never existed at all.
[00:00:45] The dragon.
[00:00:46] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:52] Imagine you're a peasant farmer in medieval England, around the year 1200.
[00:00:59] You've never travelled more than a few kilometres from the village where you were born.
[00:01:04] You can't read. You've never seen a map. You have little idea what lies beyond the forest at the edge of your world.
[00:01:12] But you know, with absolute certainty, that dragons exist.
[00:01:18] You know they're serpentine creatures with scales like armour.
[00:01:24] You know they breathe fire.
[00:01:26] You know they often hoard treasure in caves.
[00:01:30] You know that knights sometimes hunt them, and that slaying a dragon is the ultimate test of courage. And in fact, just 150 years later, your country, England, would make a dragon slayer its patron saint.
[00:01:48] Now, imagine you're a scholar in Song Dynasty China, at a similar time.
[00:01:55] You live thousands of kilometres from England. Your civilisation has had no meaningful contact with Europe, and will not do so for several hundred years.
[00:02:06] You too have never travelled far from home.
[00:02:10] But like the English peasant on the other side of the world, you know that dragons exist.
[00:02:18] For you, they are slightly different.
[00:02:21] They are still long, serpentine creatures with scales.
[00:02:25] But their bodies are longer, they don’t have wings, and they live in rivers and seas, not caves.
[00:02:34] And they don’t typically breathe fire, but they do have magical powers.
[00:02:41] In your culture, dragons control the weather and bring rain.
[00:02:47] They represent imperial power and ancient wisdom.
[00:02:52] And you certainly wouldn’t dream of killing one – for you, dragons are benevolent, helpful and wise.
[00:03:02] But both you and the English peasant are thinking of fundamentally the same type of creature.
[00:03:10] And it's not just England and China.
[00:03:13] Medieval Wales had dragons. So did ancient Greece. And Rome. And India. And Japan. And Vietnam. And the Vikings. And the Slavic peoples. And pre-Columbian Mexico.
[00:03:26] Nearly every human culture, across every continent, across thousands of years of history, has some version of the dragon.
[00:03:36] And this is one of the most remarkable patterns in all of mythology: almost every civilisation has independently decided dragons existed, despite no evidence they ever did.
[00:03:51] And today, we're going to talk about some of the theories as to why.
[00:03:58] Let's start by taking a mini tour of dragons around the world, because while they share some common features, they are fascinatingly different in their details.
[00:04:10] And this might give us a few clues about their origins.
[00:04:16] In China, the dragon—or lóng in Mandarin—is one of the most important symbols in the entire culture.
[00:04:26] It's a creature of water and weather, associated with rain, rivers, and the sea.
[00:04:35] It's typically depicted as an enormously long, serpentine creature with four legs, antler-like horns, and a somewhat feline, cat-like face.
[00:04:48] Crucially, Chinese dragons don't usually have wings. They fly anyway, through some kind of supernatural power.
[00:04:59] And unlike Western dragons, Chinese dragons are generally benevolent.
[00:05:06] They bring rain to farmers. They represent wisdom and power. They were the symbol of the emperor himself—the emperor sat on the Dragon Throne, wore robes embroidered with dragons, and was sometimes called the "son of the dragon."
[00:05:25] To kill a dragon in Chinese mythology would be unthinkable. You might seek the favour of a dragon, or fear its wrath if you angered it, but dragons were fundamentally good, or at least neutral forces of nature.
[00:05:44] And this concept of the benevolent dragon is one we see spread throughout East Asia.
[00:05:51] In Japan, the dragon is called ryū, and it's very similar to the Chinese version—a sort of water deity, a bringer of rain, associated with the sea.
[00:06:05] In Korea, it's called yong. In Vietnam, rồng.
[00:06:10] All serpentine, like snakes, all powerful, all connected to water.
[00:06:17] Now, European dragons, as you will probably know, were very different.
[00:06:23] In medieval European mythology, dragons were almost uniformly evil.
[00:06:30] They were destroyers, not protectors.
[00:06:33] They breathed fire, not water.
[00:06:36] They hoarded gold and treasure in caves, jealously guarding it from humans.
[00:06:42] They kidnapped princesses, demanded virgin sacrifices, and terrorised villages.
[00:06:50] And their role, their purpose, and what almost always happens to a dragon in a story, was to be slain, killed by some kind of brave warrior; they were a threat to be extinguished.
[00:07:06] In terms of its appearance, the classic European dragon typically had four legs and two wings.
[00:07:15] It was reptilian, covered in impenetrable scales, often with a long tail it could use as a weapon.
[00:07:24] Its breath was its most dangerous feature: fire, of course, flames that could incinerate a knight even when wearing full armour.
[00:07:34] We see this type of dragon throughout European mythology.
[00:07:39] In the Old English epic Beowulf, the hero faces a dragon in his final battle. The dragon has been sleeping on a hoard of treasure for three hundred years. When a thief steals a single cup from the hoard, the dragon wakes in fury and begins burning the countryside.
[00:08:01] Beowulf kills the dragon, but is mortally wounded in the process.
[00:08:07] In Germanic mythology, the hero Siegfried kills the dragon Fafnir, who guards a cursed treasure. He then proceeds to bathe in the dragon's blood.
[00:08:19] In Greek mythology, dragons, or large serpents, appear throughout the legends, from Apollo killing the Python to Heracles fighting the many-headed Hydra.
[00:08:32] And in the Christian tradition, dragons became explicitly associated with evil and Satan.
[00:08:39] The Book of Revelation describes Satan as a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns.
[00:08:47] Saint George, the patron saint of England, is famous for slaying a dragon that was terrorising a town and demanding human sacrifices.
[00:08:57] The dragon in Christian symbolism represented paganism, chaos, the devil himself.
[00:09:04] To slay a dragon was to defeat evil.
[00:09:09] But dragons weren't confined to Asia and Europe.
[00:09:13] In Mesoamerica, the Aztec and Maya worshipped Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, a dragon-like deity associated with wind, air, and learning.
[00:09:26] And similar creatures appear in Aboriginal Australian mythology, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian mythology, and ancient Norse mythology.
[00:09:37] Nearly every culture has one.
[00:09:40] They're almost always serpentine or reptilian.
[00:09:44] They're almost always ancient and powerful.
[00:09:48] They're frequently associated with water—rivers, seas, rain, the primordial ocean.
[00:09:56] They often represent chaos, or primordial forces, or the power of nature itself.
[00:10:03] So the question remains: why?
[00:10:07] Why did humans, independently, across thousands of kilometres and thousands of years, all imagine similar creatures?
[00:10:17] Well, there are several theories, some of them more plausible than others.
[00:10:24] The first and most obvious explanation is the one you may know already, or might be able to hazard a guess: ancient people found dinosaur fossils.
[00:10:36] This theory has been around for a while, and it makes intuitive sense.
[00:10:43] Dinosaur bones have of course existed for all of human history, but it wasn't until the 19th century that humans understood what they were.
[00:10:54] So, imagine you’re a shepherd in ancient Greece and while digging a well for your village, you uncover an enormous skull with a large snout and teeth like daggers.
[00:11:09] Perfectly understandably, your first reaction might be that you’ve found the remains of some kind of reptilian beast. A terrifying monster. A dragon.
[00:11:20] And we know this happened because we have historical records of ancient people finding fossils and interpreting them as mythological creatures.
[00:11:31] The ancient Greeks found large fossils in quarries and mines and interpreted them as evidence of giants and monsters.
[00:11:42] In China, fossilised bones have been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years, where they're still called "dragon bones"—lóng gǔ.
[00:11:53] Even today, you can go to traditional Chinese medicine shops and buy powdered "dragon bone," which is actually fossilised animal remains, usually from Ice Age mammals.
[00:12:07] The ancient Chinese clearly found these bones, and attributed them to dragons.
[00:12:14] So fossils were definitely part of the inspiration.
[00:12:19] But here's the problem: fossils alone don't explain all the specific features of dragons.
[00:12:27] No fossil breathes fire.
[00:12:29] No fossil hoards gold.
[00:12:32] No fossil has wings and four legs.
[00:12:36] Fossils might explain why ancient people believed in large, extinct reptiles.
[00:12:42] But they don't fully explain why those reptiles, across different cultures, all had such similar supernatural abilities and behaviours.
[00:12:54] For that, we need to look deeper.
[00:12:58] And this brings us to theory number two, which is perhaps a little more out there, controversial and implausible, but worth mentioning in any case. And that’s that dragons somehow represent our deepest, most ancient fears.
[00:13:16] Specifically, dragons might be a combination of the predators that hunted our ancestors for millions of years, and that somehow, somewhere in our DNA is hardwired this primordial fear of the various predators that pursued us.
[00:13:35] Think about it this way.
[00:13:37] For most of human evolutionary history—so going back hundreds of thousands of years—our early ancestors lived in constant fear of being killed and eaten.
[00:13:49] And the predators that ate us fell into three main categories.
[00:13:55] First: large snakes.
[00:13:58] Venomous snakes and constricting pythons killed our ancestors. Even today, humans have an instinctive fear of snakes. Children as young as six months old show fear responses to snake images, even if they've never seen a snake before.
[00:14:17] This fear is hardwired into our brains through millions of years of evolution.
[00:14:24] Second: large cats.
[00:14:28] Leopards, in particular, were among the most dangerous predators early humans faced.
[00:14:34] They're ambush predators. They're incredibly strong. They drag their prey into trees.
[00:14:42] Fossil evidence shows that leopards hunted our ancestors regularly.
[00:14:47] We evolved an instinctive fear of their eyes, their fangs, their roar.
[00:14:54] And third: large birds of prey.
[00:14:58] Eagles and hawks could snatch children. Even today, raptors will occasionally attack small humans.
[00:15:07] Our ancestors would have feared attack from above, feared talons and beaks and wings.
[00:15:15] Now, here's the theory: what if the dragon is a synthesis, a mixture, of all three?
[00:15:24] A dragon has the body of a snake—long, serpentine, scaled.
[00:15:29] It has the roar and the fierce, predatory nature of a big cat.
[00:15:34] It has the wings and the ability to attack from above like a bird of prey.
[00:15:40] It's the ultimate predator, combining everything our ancestors feared most.
[00:15:46] Some evolutionary psychologists go even further.
[00:15:50] They suggest that humans might have a kind of deep evolutionary memory, not of dinosaurs per se, as humans never lived alongside dinosaurs, but of large reptilian predators like crocodiles and monitor lizards, which absolutely did coexist with early humans.
[00:16:11] Crocodiles are ancient, terrifying, and nearly impossible to kill.
[00:16:16] They lurk in water and explode into sudden, devastating violence.
[00:16:23] They're basically living dragons.
[00:16:27] And here's what makes this theory somewhat more compelling: it explains why children instinctively understand dragons without being taught.
[00:16:38] You don't have to explain to a child what a dragon is. You can show them a picture of a dragon, and even if they've never encountered the concept before, most children will understand immediately that it's dangerous, powerful, something to be feared.
[00:16:57] This suggests that the dragon might be tapping into something primal in our psychology.
[00:17:04] An archetype. A universal symbol of predatory threat.
[00:17:09] The monster that our ancestors feared in the dark.
[00:17:13] But again, even if this were true, it only goes part of the way to explaining things.
[00:17:21] Even if our brains are wired to fear dragon-like predators, this still doesn't fully explain the stories we tell about them—why dragons hoard gold, demand virgins, or represent chaos.
[00:17:37] For that, we need to talk about dragons as symbols.
[00:17:42] Because dragons were never just animals, even when people believed they were real.
[00:17:48] They were always symbols.
[00:17:51] Symbols of chaos. Of nature's power. Of greed. Of knowledge. Of transformation.
[00:17:59] In many ancient myths, dragons represented primordial chaos—the forces that existed before the ordered world.
[00:18:10] In Babylonian mythology, the god Marduk kills Tiamat, the dragon of saltwater and chaos, and from her corpse creates the heavens and the earth.
[00:18:22] The act of killing the dragon literally creates order from chaos.
[00:18:28] This pattern repeats across cultures.
[00:18:31] The hero kills the dragon, and in doing so, brings order to the world.
[00:18:37] Apollo kills the Python and establishes his oracle at Delphi.
[00:18:43] Saint George kills the dragon and saves the town.
[00:18:46] Beowulf kills the dragon and dies a hero.
[00:18:50] The dragon is the obstacle that must be overcome for civilisation to flourish.
[00:18:57] But dragons also represent other things.
[00:19:02] In many legends, dragons hoard treasure—specifically gold.
[00:19:09] Why?
[00:19:10] Well, gold in mythology often represents more than just wealth. It represents knowledge, power, immortality.
[00:19:21] The dragon guarding treasure is the dragon guarding knowledge that humans aren't ready for.
[00:19:27] To claim the treasure, the hero must prove himself worthy by defeating the dragon.
[00:19:35] In Christian symbolism, dragons became explicitly associated with Satan and evil.
[00:19:42] The dragon was paganism, the old gods, the forces of darkness.
[00:19:48] Saint George slaying the dragon was Christianity conquering paganism.
[00:19:53] It was good triumphing over evil. It was the new order replacing the old.
[00:20:00] But, you may well be thinking, this might make sense if we’re talking about the archetype of the bad, evil dragon. But what about the East Asian traditions of the good dragons, the dragons that help and provide?
[00:20:15] Well, here’s an interesting theory put forward by a man named Professor Ronald Hutton.
[00:20:23] In Europe, by the time humans were creating legends about things like dragons, humans faced no real threats from predators. Not giant snakes or leopards. And humans like to have large predators to tell stories about, predators who get killed by brave knights. In Europe, we had none, so we created dragons.
[00:20:48] In China, however, there was a large predator in the form of the tiger, which would kill humans and was very scary, so the Chinese had no need to create another.
[00:21:02] And therefore Chinese dragons became wise and benevolent.
[00:21:08] Now, you might be thinking, “ok, so people told stories about dragons, but did they actually believe in them? And if so, when did we stop believing?”
[00:21:19] The answer is: yes they did, and surprisingly recently.
[00:21:25] In medieval Europe, dragons were included in bestiaries—books that catalogued animals and their properties.
[00:21:34] These bestiaries listed dragons right alongside elephants, lions, and crocodiles.
[00:21:41] There was no distinction between "real" animals and "mythological" ones, because to medieval people, dragons were real.
[00:21:51] They were rare, certainly. Dangerous. Hard to find.
[00:21:55] But real.
[00:21:57] Medieval maps are often believed to have marked unexplored regions with the phrase "Here be dragons", although interestingly, this phrase appears on very few actual historical maps.
[00:22:11] So it's mostly a modern myth about medieval maps.
[00:22:15] But the sentiment was real: the edges of the known world were dangerous, mysterious, possibly full of dragons.
[00:22:25] Yet, as European explorers began mapping the world in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the spaces where dragons could exist began shrinking.
[00:22:38] Explorers sailed to the Americas. No dragons.
[00:22:41] They mapped the coast of Africa. No dragons.
[00:22:44] They travelled to Asia, to the Pacific islands. No dragons.
[00:22:49] By the 18th century, educated people were growing sceptical.
[00:22:53] The Age of Enlightenment brought a more scientific approach to the natural world.
[00:22:59] Carolus Linnaeus created his system of taxonomy, classifying all known animals.
[00:23:06] Dragons didn't make the list.
[00:23:10] And then, in the 19th century, came a revolution in our understanding of the past.
[00:23:16] Paleontology emerged as a science.
[00:23:20] People began correctly identifying fossilised bones as extinct animals: dinosaurs, mammoths, giant sloths.
[00:23:29] Suddenly, we had an explanation for the mysterious giant bones people had been finding for millennia.
[00:23:37] They weren't dragons.
[00:23:38] They were animals that had died millions of years ago, long before humans existed.
[00:23:45] Then, when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, there was a framework for understanding how life on Earth had evolved.
[00:23:56] And by the end of the 19th century, dragons had been firmly relegated to the realm of mythology.
[00:24:05] But, perhaps funnily enough, this shift from the “scary but real” to the “a good source for myths and stories” propelled dragons to new heights, and they started to appear much more frequently in stories, in books and then in films.
[00:24:23] J.R.R. Tolkien loved dragon mythology as a child, and dragons feature prominently in his fantasy worlds.
[00:24:32] And most recently, Game of Thrones brought dragons back into mainstream popular culture in a massive way.
[00:24:41] So, to wrap things up, we haven't abandoned dragons. If anything, we've embraced them more enthusiastically than ever.
[00:24:50] Why?
[00:24:51] Well, perhaps because dragons fulfill a psychological need that facts and science can't quite satisfy.
[00:24:59] Dragons represent the ultimate challenge. The ultimate obstacle to overcome.
[00:25:05] When you defeat a dragon in a game, or read about a hero slaying a dragon, you're not just enjoying a story.
[00:25:13] You're engaging with an archetype that resonates with something deep in human psychology.
[00:25:19] The dragon is the fear you must face. The challenge that seems impossible. The transformation you must undergo to become who you're meant to be.
[00:25:30] And perhaps that's why dragons appear in every culture.
[00:25:33] Not because ancient people found dinosaur bones, though they did.
[00:25:38] Not because they encountered large reptiles, though they did.
[00:25:43] But because the dragon represents something fundamental about the human experience.
[00:25:49] The struggle against chaos.
[00:25:51] The fight against our fears.
[00:25:53] The journey from ordinary to extraordinary.
[00:25:57] Dragons never existed.
[00:25:59] But in a sense, they've always existed, and they always will.
[00:26:04] Not in caves or mountains or the depths of the sea.
[00:26:08] But in here. In our stories. In our imaginations.
[00:26:13] And perhaps that's the only place they ever needed to be.
[00:26:18] OK then, that is it for today's episode on dragons, the creatures that never existed but that every culture imagined anyway.
[00:26:27] And that brings us to the end of this three-part mini-series on animals throughout history.
[00:26:33] We've covered the loyal dog, the enigmatic cat, and the mythical dragon—three very different relationships between humans and animals, three very different stories.
[00:26:44] I hope you've enjoyed this journey through history, mythology, and evolutionary psychology.
[00:26:50] As always, you’ve been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:26:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
