Dragons: A History - Ronald Hutton

Summary

この講演では、世界中の伝説に共通して現れる怪物たちの存在を探求しています。特に、英語でドラゴンと呼ばれる巨大な爬虫類や蛇のような生き物、または大きな水棲獣について考察しています。欧州と中国では、これらの生き物が芸術や物語で特に顕著ですが、その性格は大きく異なります。欧州のドラゴンは人喰い超掠食者であり、英雄によって倒されることが求められます。一方、中国のドラゴンは人々に友好的で、尊敬されれば有益な存在です。講演者は、これらの伝説がどのようにして形成され、人々の間で共有されてきたのかを考察し、さらに現代の幻想文学や物語におけるドラゴンの役割とイメージの変化についても触れています。

Takeaways

• 🌏 全世界大部分地区都有着类似于英语中称为“龙”的怪物传统，包括巨人、有翼陆地爬行动物、蜥蜴或蛇类，以及巨大的水生蛇类。
• 🔍 可能存在一个真正古老的集体人类记忆，这种记忆在不同文化中以龙的形象出现。
• 📚 讲座强调了学习和知识传播的重要性，鼓励人们分享知识，培养对学习的热爱。
• 🐉 欧洲和远东（特别是中国）在艺术和故事中特别突出这类生物，但欧洲龙和中国龙的性质非常不同。
• 🦇 欧洲龙被描绘为超级掠食者，居住在人类社区附近，捕食人和牲畜，而中国龙则是友好的，如果受到尊重，对人类有益。
• 🔥 欧洲传说中的两种主要龙是火龙（Fire Drake）和冷龙（Cold Drake or Worm），它们在民间传说和中世纪文学中占有重要地位。
• 🏰 英格兰拥有世界上最多的龙传说，这些传说通常与英雄屠龙的故事联系在一起，屠龙被视为一种英雄行为。
• 🤴 典型的英国屠龙者包括圣人和贵族骑士，但也有工匠，显示了英雄可能来自社会各阶层。
• 🗡️ 屠龙的方法多种多样，包括让龙吞下自己然后从内部刺穿它，或者使用尖刺装备让龙自己受伤。
• 📉 讲座指出，龙在现代记忆中的形象发生了变化，从恐怖的怪物转变为智慧和敏感的生物，甚至在某些故事中成为人类的盟友。
• 🌟 讲座最后探讨了龙的起源，包括人类对顶级掠食者的普遍需求、对巨大化石的发现以及不同地区传统形成的过程。

Q & A

世界中の多くの地域で、人々はどのような怪物伝統を持っていますか？

世界中の多くの地域で、人々は巨人、翼のある陸生の爬虫類、巨大な水蛇など、英語でドラゴンと呼ばれる怪物の伝統を持っています。

欧州と中国のドラゴンの違いは何ですか？

欧州のドラゴンは超掠食者で、人々の近くに住み、人や家畜を食べます。一方、中国のドラゴンは人々に友好的で、尊敬されれば有益です。彼らは火を吐かず、すべての種類の水に住むとされています。

英国で最も多くドラゴン伝説がある理由は何ですか？

英国は聖ゲオルギウスがイギリスの国民的守护神として採用された後、その伝説が全国に広まって、ドラゴン退治の民間モチーフの絶大な人気を得るためです。

ドラゴンを倒す方法にはどのようなものがありますか？

ドラゴンを倒す方法には、ドラゴンの内部から刺す、口を通して突き刺す、毒を用いる、またはトゲのある鎧やトゲがはんだされたバレルに隠れて刺すなどがあります。

現代のフィクションでドラゴンはなぜ財宝を守るようになったのですか？

現代のフィクションでドラゴンが財宝を守るようになったのは、主にゲルマンの中世物語やベオウルフやボルソンガ・サーガなどの物語に由来するためです。

ドラゴン伝説が持続する理由は何ですか？

ドラゴン伝説が持続するのは、人類が古代の巨大な骨や神秘的な海の生き物を発見し、それらが既存の怪物に対する信仰を強化したためです。

中国古代文学における「騎士」と「工芸人」の間のドラゴン退治の違いは何ですか？

中国古代文学では、ドラゴン退治は騎士だけでなく、靴職人や裁縫のような工芸人によって行われることもあり、これらの工芸人も勇敢で独立した特性を持っています。

欧州のドラゴンと中国のドラゴンの性質の違いは文化的な背景にどのように反映されていますか？

欧州のドラゴンは悪を象徴し、英雄によって倒されるべき存在として描かれています。一方、中国のドラゴンは自然と調和し、人々に友好的であることが文化的な背景によって反映されています。

現代の幻想文学におけるドラゴンのイメージはどのように変化しましたか？

現代の幻想文学では、ドラゴンは主に人類の盟友であり、知能と感性に富んだ生き物として描かれるようになりました。

ドラゴン伝説が持続する中で、科学技術の進歩はどのような影響を与えていますか？

科学技術の進歩は、古代の骨や化石の発見を通じてドラゴン伝説の起源を解明し、人類が自然界と接する視点を変化させる影響を与えています。

Outlines

00:00

🐉 世界各地的龙传说

本文探讨了全球不同文化中关于类似龙的怪物传说的普遍性。提到了英语中称为'龙'的生物，包括巨人、有翼的陆地爬行动物、巨蛇等，暗示可能存在一个古老的共同人类记忆。作者通过Gresham College讲座分享了这一知识，并鼓励听众分享讲座链接，以促进学习的热情。讲座还讨论了非洲祖先可能遭遇的自然危险，如大型有毒蛇类、猛禽和鳄鱼，这些可能构成了怪物传说的基础。特别指出欧洲和远东（尤其是中国）在艺术和故事中突出了这类生物，但中国的龙与欧洲的有很大不同，它们通常对人类友好。

05:02

🔥 欧洲龙与中国文化中的龙

本段深入讨论了欧洲和中国文化中龙的形象和角色差异。欧洲的龙通常被描绘为超级掠食者，居住在人类社区附近，捕食人和牲畜，而英雄的任务则是杀死它们。文中提到了两种主要的欧洲龙：火龙和冷龙，以及在《哈利·波特》中出现的巨蛇形态的巴西利斯克。相比之下，中国的龙通常被描绘为友好的生物，它们不喷火，居住在各种水域中，与自然界的磁场能量和谐共存。此外，还探讨了为什么欧洲人如此相信龙的存在，以及为什么欧洲的龙如此恶劣，而中国的龙则相对温和。

10:05

🇬🇧 英国的龙传说与圣乔治

这一段专注于英国的龙传说，特别是圣乔治屠龙的故事。圣乔治可能是一个真实的罗马士兵，在戴克里先皇帝时期殉道，但他与龙的故事直到中世纪才被联系起来。英国有着世界上最多关于龙的传说，这些传说通常与当地的圣人或英雄有关，如圣乔治。英国的龙传说在1350年到1550年间特别盛行，这与圣乔治作为英格兰的守护圣人的地位有关。这些传说不仅体现了人类对怪物的古老叙事形式，也展现了英雄对抗强大邪恶的传统主题。

15:11

🏰 中世纪欧洲的龙与现代虚构作品中的变化

本段讨论了中世纪欧洲关于龙的传说以及它们在现代虚构作品中的变化。指出在许多现代故事中，龙不再仅仅是守护宝藏的生物，而是成为了具有智慧和敏感性的生物，甚至可以成为人类的盟友。这种变化反映了西方世界对自然和动物的态度变得更加友好和尊重。此外，还提到了在中世纪欧洲，龙作为alpha predator（顶级掠食者）的象征意义，以及它们在人类文化和精神体系中的地位。

20:18

🌐 龙的起源与自然现象的联系

这一段探讨了龙的起源可能与自然现象的联系，包括流星、彗星和大型的爬行动物。提出了一些理论，比如将龙与实际动物（如鳄鱼）联系起来，或者将它们视为对自然力量的一种象征。还讨论了在不同文化中，人们对龙的不同解释，包括将它们视为对人类掠食者的象征，或者是对古代巨大生物的想象。此外，还提到了在某些情况下，龙的传说可能与古代的化石发现有关。

25:25

🦕 化石与龙传说的联系

本段深入探讨了化石发现与龙传说之间的联系。提出在史前时期，人类可能已经注意到从岩石中风化的巨型动物骨头，这些骨头可能激发了对龙等巨型生物的想象。讨论了在欧洲和中国发现的化石，以及它们如何被解释为传说中的龙。特别提到了Adrian Mayer的工作，她指出古代文献中充满了关于在化石床上发现的巨型骨头的记载，这些骨头可能是龙传说的来源。

30:30

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 威尔士的龙与民族认同

这一段讨论了龙在威尔士文化和民族认同中的重要性。虽然威尔士的本地龙传说数量不多，但龙成为了威尔士的象征，这主要源于《不列颠历史》中的一个故事，其中提到了两个龙——红龙代表威尔士，白龙代表英格兰。此外，还提到了亨利·都铎如何将红龙作为威尔士的象征，以及这一象征如何随着时间的推移而深入人心。

35:37

🌈 全球各地的龙与神话生物

本段讨论了全球范围内不同文化中关于龙和其他神话生物的传说。指出大多数人类社会都有关于恶劣野兽的神话，因为这些社会在现实中也经历了恶劣的野兽。同时，也提到了人们对动物的复杂和矛盾的态度，既有敌意也有友谊。此外，还探讨了不同文化中对自然的不同看法，以及这些看法如何影响对龙和其他神话生物的描述。

40:38

🎨 文化对龙形象的塑造

这一段探讨了文化如何塑造我们对龙的看法。指出在短短几十年内，龙在流行文化中的形象发生了巨大变化，从必须被杀死的怪物变成了可以被爱、喂养、驯养和骑乘的生物。这种变化反映了文化如何不断地重新解释和适应传统符号以满足现代的需求。

45:40

🤔 龙的传说与自然力量

本段提出了一个观点，即龙可能被视为野性的自然力量，在不同文化中人们对这种力量的态度和应对方式各不相同。提到了中国的风水学，以及它如何影响建筑设计，以适应自然力量，而不是与之对抗。同时，也提到了在中世纪欧洲，人们可能将自然视为需要克服的威胁。

Keywords

💡伝説の怪物

伝説の怪物とは、世界各地の伝統や物語に共通して現れる存在で、龍や巨人、巨大な爬虫類や蛇のような生き物、または大きな水棲爬虫類が該当します。このビデオでは、これらの怪物が人類の古い集団的な記憶と関連している可能性について議論されています。

💡龍

龍は、英語圏で特定の怪物を指す言葉で、翼を持ち地を這い、時には炎を吐くというイメージがあります。ビデオでは、ヨーロッパの龍と中国の龍の性質の違いについて比較分析しています。ヨーロッパの龍は人や家畜を捕食する超掠食者として描かれ、一方で中国の龍は人々に友好的で有益な存在として扱われます。

💡火の竜（Fire Drake）

火の竜は、翼を持ち炎を吐く爬虫類のイメージであり、中世の紋章やロマンス物語、JRルトーキンやCSルイス、JKローリングの作品で典型的な龍として描かれています。このビデオでは、火の竜が中世の紋章や物語での主要な龍の形態であること、およびその背後にある文化的な意義について説明しています。

💡ワーム（worm）/コールドレイク（cold Drake）

ワームやコールドレイクは、ヨーロッパの伝統的な龍の別の形態で、巨大な蛇に毒を吐いたり毒ガスを発生させたりする能力を持ちます。ビデオでは、これらの龍がヨーロッパの民間伝承や文学にどのように登場し、どのように英雄に殺される役割を果たしているかについて触れています。

💡バサリス（Basilisk）

バサリスは、翼を持ち視線で殺害できるという特性を持つ伝説の蛇や鶏のような生き物です。ビデオでは、バサリスの特徴やその由来、およびハリーポッターシリーズでの描写との違いについて言及しています。

💡竜の退治

竜の退治は、英雄が強大な怪物を倒す物語の古くて普遍的な形式です。ビデオでは、竜を退治する様々な方法（例えば、竜の内側から刺す、毒で倒すなど）や、竜の退治が物語や民間伝承で重要な役割を果たす理由について説明しています。

💡聖ジョージ（Saint George）

聖ジョージは、実際にローマ帝政時代の兵士であり、基督教徒の大迫害時に殉教したとされています。ビデオでは、聖ジョージがどのように竜と関連づけられ、それが後にヨーロッパの竜退治伝説に影響を与えたかについて述べています。

💡化石

化石は、古生物の骨格や残骸が地層に埋まって保存されたもので、ビデオでは化石が古代人々に巨大な絶滅した生物の存在を示し、それが竜の伝説の根拠となった可能性について触れています。

💡アルファプレデター（Alpha Predator）

アルファプレデターとは、生態系の中で最も強力で恐ろしい捕食者であり、ビデオではヨーロッパの竜がそのような存在として捉えられ、人々に恐怖と畏敬の念を呼び起こした理由について説明しています。

💡文化的創作物

文化的創作物は、人間の創造性と想像力によって生まれたもので、ビデオでは竜のイメージがどのように文化的創作物として進化し、現代のフィクションや物語に影響を与えたかについて議論しています。

Highlights

世界各地的许多文化中都有类似于英语中称为“龙”的怪物传统。

Gresham College讲座提供了来自世界领先学术专家的知识和见解。

非洲祖先必须应对大型有毒蛇、大型猛禽和鳄鱼等自然危险。

欧洲和远东，特别是中国，特别突出了这类生物在艺术和故事中的地位，但龙的性质在两地截然不同。

欧洲龙是超级掠食者，而中国龙则是友好并有益于人类的生物。

欧洲民间传说中的两种主要类型的龙：火龙和冷龙。

英格兰拥有世界上最多关于龙的传说。

英国的龙故事中，英雄屠龙是困难的，通常需要特殊的技巧或策略。

屠龙故事在1350年至1550年间在英国特别流行，这与圣乔治作为英国守护圣人的地位有关。

在欧洲，龙几乎从不守护宝藏，这与现代小说中的描述不同。

古代希腊英雄杀死巨蛇，这些在英语翻译中被称为龙。

北欧版本的龙——林德虫，是一种巨大的蛇，最终会进入水中成为海怪或湖怪。

关于龙的现代记忆，经典的屠龙者是一位高贵的骑士。

龙的起源可能与《圣经》中的利维坦有关，它被描述为一种巨大的、有鳞的、喷火的海怪。

现代幻想文学和电影剧本中，龙通常被视为人类的朋友，具有智慧和敏感性。

人类对龙的信仰可能源于对史前怪物化石的发现以及对神秘海洋生物的目击。

龙的神话可能经历了三个阶段：人类对顶级掠食者的普遍需求、化石的发现以及地区传统形成。

在中国文化中，龙与风水艺术中的自然磁能和谐共存，被视为地球能量的体现。

讲座结束时，教授Rob分享了他最喜欢的龙——来自他居住和热爱的西乡村的Chill Compton的龙。

Transcripts

I will start with the proposition that  across most of the world, most peoples  

have traditions of monsters similar to those who  are called dragons in English. In other words,  

giants, winged land, reptiles of lizard or  snake kind, or giant water serpents. It may  

be that there is a genuinely ancient  collective human memory at work here.

The Gresham College lecture that you're listening  to right now is giving you knowledge and insight  

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subscribe button from wherever you are listening  right now. Now, let's get back to the lecture.

Our ancestors in Africa long ago would've  had to deal with big poisonous snakes,  

big constricting snakes, large birds of prey and  crocodiles. Moreover, venomous or crushing snakes  

are the only dangerous animal that every single  inhabited continent has in common. So monsters of  

the sort I've just described are a compound of  all those primordial natural hazards. However,  

two areas in the world have made such creatures,  especially prominent in art and story, and their  

Europe and the far East is especially China, but  the nature of the dragon is very different. In  

each European dragons are super predators who take  up residents near a human community and eat the  

people and their livestock. Their functional role  is then to get killed by heroes. Chinese dragons  

look like elongated versions of European dragons  with lizard bodies, four legs, clawed feet and  

wings and fangs, but otherwise they have nothing  in common with them. Chinese dragons are friendly  

and beneficial to humans if treated with respect.  They don't breathe fire and they inhabit water of  

all kinds. They exist in harmony with the natural  magnetic energies of the earth as reflected in the  

Chinese art of Feng shui or Feng. I therefore  have two questions to answer in this talk. Why  

did Europeans believe in dragons so much and why  are European dragons so nasty and Chinese dragons  

so nice to go to Europe first, there are two main  kinds of European dragon in popular folk law and  

medieval literature. One is the fire Drake,  a reptile with wings, a horn or crested head,  

a spine tail and fiery breath. The fire Drake is  the classic dragon of medieval heraldry Chronicles  

and romances, but also of JR R Tolkien, CS Lewis  and JK Rowling. The other traditional European  

dragon is the worm or cold Drake A. That is a  huge snake which spits venom or breeds poisonous  

gas and can sometimes crush with its coils. There  are however many other kinds of dragon that appear  

in European folklore, literature and heraldry.  The one that I'll mention here is the basals or  

cock. There's a thoroughly glorious but misleading  description of one in Harry Potter and the chamber  

of secrets where it takes the form of a gigantic  serpent. The classic medieval basals was a winged  

snake or a scaly cocker only a few feet long. It  was formed from an egg hatched by a toad. What JK  

Row got absolutely right was its most famous  characteristic that it kills with its stare.  

England has the largest number of dragon legends  for a country its size anywhere in the world, 68  

in all Somerset, my local county has most followed  by Yorkshire. The chief narrative function of  

English dragons is to get killed, and the whole  point of the typical dragon story is that slaying  

one is difficult. There are no specialists and no  kit Dragon slaying. Dracony is a one off ad hoc  

business with no prose. English dragon slayers  include five saints ranging from the local to  

the truly international, such as Saint George.  George was probably a real Roman soldier who  

got martyred during the great persecution of  Christians under the emperor Diocletian, but  

he's not actually mentioned by anybody until the  sixth century. A couple of hundred years later,  

he's first mixed up with a dragon. However, 600  years later in the time of the Crusades, this is  

almost certainly because Jaffa in Palestine, which  became part of the crusader kingdom, was both one  

of George's cult centers and the setting for the  ancient legend of Perseus and Andromeda. Perseus  

rescued Andromeda from a sea monster and his  legend got built into George's with the sea beast  

turned into the more familiar European monster by  the Middle Ages. The dragon and the crusaders then  

brought the story home to Europe. In modern  memory, the classic dragon slayer is a noble  

knight and there are 24 of those in England. There  are, however, also 26 stories in which the slayer  

is a young artisan, like a tailor or a cobbler.  Now those trades rely on skill and independence,  

so the majority of English dragon slayers are  working class lads made good. Both traits are  

needed for the job because a dragon always has  a hide too tough to be pierced by conventional  

weapons. One solution is to get the dragon to  swallow you and then pierce it from the inside.  

This is clearly risky , but it's still a  trick. Obvious enough to be found worldwide as a  

way for really hard heroes to kill huge monsters.  The ancient Gods Indra in India and Marduk in  

Babylon both used it. Another node is to stab the  dragon through the mouth. As it's opens its jaws  

to swallow you Also tricky. A third, which is the  cowardly way, is to poison the beast. The least  

obvious is to put on spiked armor or get into  a barrel studded with spikes. The dragon then,  

if it's stupid enough, charges you and impales  itself on the spikes if they're long enough. This  

idea actually came from watching hedgehogs deal  with vipers by rolling into a spiked ball against  

which the striking serpent got injured or killed.  Whatever the method employed, dragon slaying  

served two different purposes. One is a monster  killing, which is one of the oldest and most  

timeless forms of human narrative. The other is  a heroic how done it in which the good characters  

are pitted against much more powerful and evil.  Foes good is expected to win, but until the end,  

it seems impossible to see how it can just think.  James Bond, star Wars or the Lord of the Rings.  

It is clear there's a particular boom period in  the creation of English dragon legends. This was  

between 1350 and 1550 when they had got attached  to a range of families and communities got carved  

in churches and appeared in games and processions.  The reason for this is simply that the period  

followed the adoption of George as the English  national patron saint. His legend then got spread  

across the country and started the huge popularity  of dragon slaying as an English folk motif. But  

the basic point of the dragon remains that dragons  are there to eat people and their livestock and  

then come to a sticky end. In Europe, what they  almost never do is guard treasure as they do in a  

lot of modern fiction. This is simply because they  do guard treasure in a narrow range of Germanic  

medieval tales and the most famous a Beowulf and  the Volson ga saga where Beowulf and Siegfried  

become the dragon killers and two Oxford Dawns who  had to teach Beowulf and the Volson ga saga every  

week where JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, and that's  why treasure guarding dragons are so big in modern  

fiction. But behind all these traditions lay  much older precursors. The ancient Greek heroes  

killed giant snakes, which English translators of  the stories called dragons. The Greeks, however  

called them pythons, a term employed in the modern  world for a class of real snakes. Of course, the  

Romans use the term Draco for a mythical kind of  winged snake, and this is the root of the English  

word dragon. These beasts do things like pulling  the chariot of the sorceress Madea. There's also  

a distinctively Norse version of the dragon, the  lindworm. This is a giant snake like the English  

and Germanic worm, but after it grows to a certain  size it takes to water there it becomes the sea  

serpent or lake monster. The greatest in Norse  legend was the mid guard serpent, which encircled  

the whole earth. Unlike dragons in general, Norse  Lind worms continued to be cited right up to the  

present. In 1894. Two of them were reported  in a newspaper as blocking the entrance to  

the harbor of the north fishing village of Ervin.  The nearest one was dark yellow and 180 feet long,  

a whaling ship set out from the nearest  big port, very bravely to fight the snakes,  

but both sensibly vanished as it approached. Now  all this sounds amazingly real, but if it is,  

then Norse Lind worms are scrupulously  nationalist. Once you cross into Finland,  

they're absent. Even though Finland has lots of  lakes and an enormous seacoast finished dragons  

live on hills and only eat fat people and hate  eggs . So children, if you eat up your  

eggs and stay slim, you are safe. In other words,  a creature that on one side of the border can  

block a modern fishing port on the other is  equivalent to AA mill's bears who only eats  

children who tread on the lines between paving  stones, . So what were dragons, I'm going  

to start with some fun answers, really attractive  answers, but also I think are wrong answers. And  

the first issue to settle when dealing with  these is whether dragons actually existed as  

portrayed zoologists were long confident that fire  Drakes were physically impossible, but in 1979,  

a cryptozoologist called Peter Dickinson showed  that they were not. He suggested that they  

produced hydrogen gas from hydrochloric acid in  their stomachs, which was burned off through their  

mouths. This enabled them to descend in flight  like balloons burning off gas, and of course,  

the acid completely consumed their bodies  after death, which is why we never find their  

remains . The theory is wonderful. It is  also however incapable of proof, and it's hard  

to see how stomach acid could consume an entire  huge body. Moreover, no dragon legend describes  

a fire Drake imploding after death. Instead, were  often told how parts of the body were preserved  

as trophies. Another theory was popularized by  John Michel in 1969, which imposed the Chinese  

view of dragons on the entire world. It picked  up on the Chinese idea that dragons moved along  

currents of natural energy that crossed the earth.  John gave these currents the English name of Lays,  

lay lines and declared that the Chinese belief  had been held across the whole planet. He  

declared that also the European hostility towards  dragons have been imposed by repressive medieval  

Christianity. This turned benevolent earth  energies into satanic monsters. His book was  

the main force in catalyzing the whole late 20th  century enthusiasm for mapping and dowsing lay  

lines. I acknowledge readily that this has given  great pleasure and re enchanted the landscape for  

many people in dragon law. However, John got  things the wrong way round. It's the Chinese  

belief in benevolent dragon light creatures,  which is anomalous in a world context. Most  

peoples have treated giants, reptilian beasts as  monsters, and the European antipathy towards them  

goes as indicated way back before Christianity.  There's also a psychological explanation for  

dragon stories that they are simply metaphors  for predatory human beings. They're certainly  

used as such. In history, the Romans had  dragon standards like wind socks on poles,  

which made a roaring sound as cavalry charged.  This is incidentally the only historical detail  

which Jerry Bruckheimer filmed about King Arthur  got right, but we were treated to Keira Knightly  

in a leather bikini to console those looking for  historical accuracy. the Vikings famously  

had dragon figureheads on the ships. Both groups  ravaged lands and demanded tribute. The trouble  

here is that Romans and Vikings used the dragon  for as a symbol for ferocity because the concept  

of it already existed. It's also not obvious that  dragons function well as a metaphor for armed  

bands of humans. They seem to be much more like  animal predators. So we now come to explanations,  

which I think to be credible, but marginal. One is  that dragons are the result of freak meteorology.  

Medieval chronicles are bound in references to  fiery dragons seen high in the air and meteors and  

comets could account for all of these. Medieval  and early modern night skies were very bright  

as there was though little human lighting. Some  dragons could also have been misidentified real  

animals. The closest real beast to dragons are  crocodiles, which can grow up to 30 feet in length  

and way three tons. They're also highly predatory.  Even today, they kill an average 5,000 people a  

year more than any other species except humans.  A so-called dragon exhibited Durham in 1569 was  

a crocodile and escaped crocodilians would explain  some local medieval dragon legends. The dragon of  

St. Leonard's Forest described in a pamphlet  of 1614. The foresters in Sussex was a giant  

snake which reared up and approached, killed  people and dogs with its bite ate rabbits and  

vanished when winter came. Now, this would fit an  escaped king cobra or mamba in all those details,  

including not being able to survive. Frost  accidents of natural history can also plausibly  

explain bits of dragon law. Hems are sometimes  born with insufficient estrogen and develop the  

physical characteristics of Cox. Sometimes the  hormonal balance is rectified and they lay eggs  

in pre-Modern societies also hens often suffered  from roundworms, which could get from the animal  

into its eggs. When such an egg was cracked, the  riving worm was revealed. A newborn basal lisc,  

which you may remember, was supposed to be hatched  from an egg laid by a cock. All these factors,  

in my opinion, do indeed credibly explain certain  dragon legends or classes of reference to dragons.  

There is, however, an obvious problem with  them as a general source of explanation,  

even when they're all rolled together. That is  all the comets, meteors, crocodilians, cobras,  

and worm infested eggs presuppose an existing  idea. When you look up into a medieval sky and  

see a meteor, you don't think it's a flying  fire, breathing reptile unless you already  

believe in such beasts. To get to the real roots  of the belief in dragons, we're going to have to  

dig deeper, but first I need to do two bits of  tidying up. The first is to suggest an origin for  

the most distinctive and classic form of European  dragon, the fire Drake. No other culture and time  

has produced a predatory big reptilian monster  that breathes fire. I'd suggest it comes from  

just one source, and that happens to be the book  that medieval and early modern Europeans read,  

respected and believed more than any other. The  Bible. The relevant passage isn't the Book of  

Job chapter 41, and it's spoken by God himself.  This is actually very rare. Jehovah almost never  

speaks in the first person in the Bible, and  it begins Leviathan and it then goes on to say,  

have you draw? Can you draw out to Leviathan with  a hook or his tongue with a cord? And it then goes  

on for a number of verses to portray a gigantic  monster with terrible, sharp teeth scales so  

close together that no weapon can possibly pierce  them and out of his mouth go burning lamps and  

sparks of fire, leap out out of his nostrils, go  with smoke as out of a seething pot or cauldron.  

And it then goes on to say about, uh, his heart  being like a stone, about how swords and spears  

are useless against him and how he makes the deep  boil like a pot, the deep being the sea. He makes  

the sea like a pot of ointment. He makes a path to  shine after him. He is a king over the kingdom of  

pride. By the 17th century when Christians were  starting to understand the natural world better,  

it became generally concluded that the leviathan  as a sperm whale, this is probably correct if a  

plume of water from its blowhole was mistaken for  smoke and that therefore it was concluded that an  

animal blowing smoke out of its head must have a  fire in its mouth to medieval readers. Therefore,  

what you have here is a huge scaly fire breathing  monster with terrible teeth apparently found in  

both land and sea with a hide impervious to  conventional weapons apart from the wings,  

which could be added to account for the way in  which it spans environments. This is a blueprint.  

Fire drag leviathans are mentioned briefly  elsewhere in the Old Testament, such as an Isaiah,  

and always with the reputation of being the  most terrifying of animals, more powerful and  

deadly than lions. To those who regarded the  Bible as the literal word of God, which is  

most Christians till the 19th century, something  that he speaks in the first person is going to  

carry particular weight. No wonder the fire Drake  became the classic monster of the Christian world  

from the Anglo-Saxon Times onwards. This isn't  a theory of mine, it's uh, shared widely among  

crypto zoologists and I'm simply endorsing it.  There's a final loose end to be tied that dragons  

are now once again really big business in fantasy  literature and screenplays. There have been dozens  

of fantasy novels with Dragon or Dragons in the  title published since 1970. What is striking about  

them is that most regard dragons as a good thing  as essentially intelligent and sensitive beasts  

that can be allies of humans. I am your dragon  Aragon, in particular. The 1970s threw up a new  

sort of hero or heroine, the dragon rider who  treats the beasts both as steeds and companions.  

These were the work of Anne McCaffery, an Irish  woman who moved to America and who really loved  

horses. And so her flying dragons are actually  horses that breathe fire and look like dragons and  

have horse like characteristics. What has happened  is that the physical form of the classic European  

dragon, the fire Drake, has been combined with  the spiritual form of the classic Chinese dragon  

in a western world that is kinder and greener and  doesn't have to worry any longer about predators.  

This combination has taken place logically enough  in the nation, which is both the current leader of  

the globe and lies midway between Europe and  China America. Now it's time to discuss the  

most fundamental aspects of the concept of the  dragon. European dragons occupy a very specific  

animal relationship with humanity. They're what  the American eco journalists David Kwaman has  

named the Alpha Predator. Great and terrible  flesh eating beasts were part of the ecological  

matrix within which our species evolved. They  were part of the psychological context within  

which we formed our identity. They were part  of the spiritual systems that we developed for  

coping with the cosmos. Their ferocity and hunger  and complete violation of our sense of self and  

of self-worth were grim realities that could be  alluded but not forgotten to nearly all early  

humanity and to traditional peoples right up until  almost the present. They were a familiar kind of  

capricious misfortune. Among the earliest forms of  human self-awareness must have been the awareness  

of being prey, even in the most modernized and  well-protected modern societies. Zoological,  

mellow drama Aja described by detractors  as predator porn, whether it be Jaws alien,  

deep Blue Sea, lake Placid, or Jurassic Park is a  well-established form of entertainment. An alpha  

predator, however, is not just any animal  that eats humans. It's a solitary hunter,  

which makes a one-to-one relationship with its  prey. Predators that hunt in packs like cowards,  

however dangerous to humans such as hyenas, wild  dogs and wolves do not qualify. On the other hand,  

a lone big rogue wolf does in a region which has  no more frightening wildlife. Elephants kill more  

people every year than any other mammal, but they  don't count because they don't eat their victims.  

They have never been made. The mythological  alpha predator. The very real human fear of  

predators means that a good Lord or chief in a  traditional human society is at least in theory,  

in the position of a shepherd to his flock. He  is there to guard its members against both human  

and animal foes. And the greater the hero, the  more spectacular is the predator against which  

he has matched the oldest surviving piece of  literature, the epic of Gilgamesh has a battle  

between a king and a monster. At the center  of the story, the greatest heroes of their  

respective peoples Hercules, alias, Hercules,  and Beowulf were serious killers of pre serial  

killers of predators. It also matters that human  societies tend to have room for only one alpha  

predator in their imaginative space. Across most  of the old world, the predator of human symbolic  

choice is the lion. It features as such in both  Greek myth, hence Heracles and the Bible, hence  

Samson. And one of the chief duties of an ancient  near Eastern king was to kill lions personally as  

a sign of royal prowess, and so an ability to  defend his people. Lions always stood in for  

foreign foes when none of the latter are currently  available in ancient India and Persia and tribal  

Africa. To be a ruler, likewise meant being a lion  killer. Other predators took over only where lions  

didn't exist. For example, in India, outside  Lion country where the tiger stood in across  

most of the rest of East Asia and eastern Siberia  where there were tigers. And in West Africa where  

the next cat down the pecking or biting order was  the leopard, you can go on down the scale it lands  

with no big cats. The bear is the alpha predator  and where there are no big land animals at all,  

the crocodile or the shark takes over In medieval  Europe, however, the alpha predator was missing.  

Lions disappeared from almost all of Europe at  the end of the ice age. The European brown bear  

is much less dangerous than other species, and  very rarely do European wolves produce the giant  

lone serial killer of humans that is needed to  qualify as a mythological. Alpha predator lions  

stayed pretty close. They survived in Turkey until  the 1870s and an Algerian Morocco till the 1920s,  

but they were never even by the new stone age,  an actual menace to most Europeans. Instead,  

the lion's reputation as the nce of great kings  and the lordly appearance and flamboyant behavior  

of the male lion made it the royal beast par  excellence to Europeans. In the medieval besties,  

it stood for courage and regality. It became  the most common symbol of West European rulers,  

especially in Britain, Spain and Germany.  The British lions still roars for us today.  

Europeans therefore had an imaginative need  for an alpha predator that was even more  

powerful and terrifying than the lion, and  which could be treated as an emblem of evil  

as well as a ferocity. The dragon filled  that conceptual gap. This does, however,  

invite the question of why medieval Europeans  would've thought that the dragon was more native  

to their lambs than the lion, so it could be  appropriated for the job and why they thought  

it was so real. There is absolutely no evidence  for dragon like creatures actually surviving on  

land in Europe during historic times. Things get  a lot trickier and more interesting, however, as  

soon as we hit deep water, whereas nobody nowadays  claims to see fire, Drakes worms or Basalis lake  

and sea monsters are regularly reported across  the world, including Britain. Hence Lochness  

zoological. There's still a lot of mileage and a  lindworm or a sea serpent. We do have some good  

candidates for these among real creatures. One is  the ribbon fish, which is the fish on the screen,  

which is a rare species of eel that often grows to  more than 20 feet and has red spines running down  

its back, which rise to a crest on its head. In  addition, the natural decomposition of carcasses  

can turn even well-known marine species studied  at close quarters into fabulous beasts. In 1977,  

the Japanese National Museum of Natural Science  identified photographs of a huge corpse trawled  

up by fishermen off New Zealand as showing a  prehistoric CIA saw only when tissues saved from  

the body and its merciful tissues were saved, were  examined. Did it turn out to be a badly rotted  

blue shark whom decomposition had turned into the  shape of aple? Saw many reports of sea serpents  

are now attributed by marine biologists to  sightings of the giant squid, the long tentacles  

of which can easily be taken for the body of a  huge serpent. Giant squids can grow to more than  

a hundred feet in length, over half of which are  the tentacles. And mistaking a giant squid for a  

sea serpent is even easier if the squid concerned  is dead and dismembered and the tentacles appear  

to form one continuous creature on the surface of  the sea. Having said that, however, we still face  

two puzzles. One is that there are simply no known  animals that correspond to some of the detailed  

descriptions of sea and lake monsters provided  by observers over the centuries. There's still  

a mystery here. Remember that 180 foot yellow  serpent just off the harbor of air vCAN and its  

mate. The other is that we're still no nearer  finding real animals which correspond to the  

European land dragons so prominent in tradition,  I'd suggest they were indeed prehistoric monsters,  

but safely dead, not living fossils, just  fossils. Since Homosapiens first acquired  

its capacity for reasoning, humans will have noted  that huge bones weather out of the rocks offered  

of creatures with teeth like steak knives in  powerful jaws plus grasping claws and horns.  

It's would have been obvious to the observers  that such beasts no longer lived in the lands,  

concerned to humans before the sciences of geology  and paleontology and the concept of evolution had  

appeared. The obvious explanation was they'd been  exterminated, given their size and ferocity. It  

had to have been heroes who did it at times. In  the case of dragons, we can be much more specific  

Every time that a relic of a historic dragon has  actually been preserved, it turns out to be a long  

extinct animal. One of the most famous European  dragons was that of klar and foot in Austria,  

slain by a duke of Austria. Its skull was  displayed in the town hall until the 19th  

century when it was identified as that of a woolly  rhinoceros. Another Austrian, the paleontologist  

EO arbel studied dragon legends in 1914. He  realized that the cave systems traditionally  

identifies the layers of the beasts, often contain  the bones of cave bears, massive ice age predators  

with sharp teeth. The head of the dragon of kil  Somerset was preserved and as that of one of the  

Jurassic marine reptiles called IAOs. The reason  why Somerset is richer in dragon legends than  

any other county may simply be that its limestone  rocks preserve fossil remains is especially those  

of IAOs police souls and ply saws with great  clarity. And ply saws, just for the record,  

are the biggest carnivorous animals that the  planet has ever produced, truly terrifying beasts,  

and they look at in their skeletons. We can be a  lot more sure of this now because of the work of  

Adrian Maya, a classicist who also understands  paleontology, a rare combination. She points out  

that ancient literature is full of references to  giant bones where skeletons are found in fossil  

beds superimposed on each other. It would be  easy to see how these could reasonably give  

rise to tales of hybrid beefs, such as cental  and the chime era. She has also pointed to two  

specific sources of dragon legends. One is that  of the griffin, the half lion, half eagle beast of  

European legend. The ancient Greeks invented the  idea of griffins and they placed their homeland  

in central Asia. Now that region is full of  fossils of beaked dinosaurs, which look very  

much like the griffins of myth. The other is much  more particular to dragons and consists of one of  

the most influential sources of dragon law, the  biography of the philosopher Apollonius of Tiana,  

written by Philosophists in the imperial Roman  period. It included a description of a journey  

that Apollonius had made to northern India, in  which he described huge scaly serpentine monsters  

in two main species, one smooth headed and the  other larger and crested this account, the result  

of one Greek taking the hippie trail across Persia  to India in the first centuries of the common  

era became the basis of a considerable amount of  medieval and early modern dragon law. His account  

repeated wholesale and works on dragons right up  to the 17th century. Adrian and Mayer pointed out  

that apollonius route into India along the  old Persian royal road would've taken him  

under the SWA hills, which are full of bones  of huge extinct crocodiles and mammals. One  

vivid detail in Apollonius story has a direct  parallel in the swale. This is the information  

that one kind of Indian dragon had a jewel in  the center of its skull. Again, a motif that  

passed into European dragon law. As it happens,  the rocks of the swale form crystals and these  

often grow inside the larger fossil skulls in the  hills. Adrian Mayer picked up and other certain  

or probable connections between ancient myths and  fossil remains. She noted that the Greek historian  

Herodotus had said that great flying serpents  lived in the Egyptian desert. This may have been  

inspired by the sight of the bones of the enormous  sail backed predatory dinosaur spinosaurus,  

which is the super nasty of Steven Spielberg's  film, Jurassic Park. Three more certain is  

the alleged discovery of the skeleton of the  monster slain by Perseus to rescue Andromeda,  

which was dug up in imperial Roman times at the  traditional setting of the tale at dropper, the  

modern Jaffa in Palestine. It was brought to Rome  and had a 40 foot backbone. Clearly this was some  

kind of prehistoric beast. It's notable that China  and Europe lands of dragon law par excellence,  

a both exceptionally rich in fossil bearing rocks  that produce big ferocious looking extinct beasts.  

Chinese fossils have been called dragons bones  since records begin, but China didn't make the  

dragon the alpha predator of its myths because  it had enormous striped alpha predators on its  

premises already, the tigers that ate the Chinese  in large numbers until the 1930s. And so the tiger  

hunter became the classic hero of China's. China's  mythology and legend, and these harmless, enormous  

bony beasts weathering outta the rock became  associated with the energies of the earth from  

which they came and regarded as benevolent. It is  time to conclude. I would suggest three stages of  

creation of dragon myth. The first is the general  human need for stories about alpha predators and  

the ancestral fear of great reptilian beasts,  crocodiles and snakes from our emost human past  

in the Africa from which our species came. The  second is the discovery of giant fossils and the  

sighting of mysterious sea beasts supplying the  apparent objective evidence that these things  

had been and still were around. And the third is  that regional traditions then form Europe gets  

dragons as alpha predators because it lacks them  in reality. And then the Christian fire Drake,  

out of the Book of Job China got benevolent  dragons moving along energy lines. So I think  

I've answered my last two questions, and I think  that if you want to go dragon hunting or communing  

with dragons, all you need to do is go fossil  hunting, but just stay out of the water. ,

Do you have a favorite dragon ?

Yes, it's, uh, I, I am a great west country  patriot. I spent so many years living and  

working there and loving the land, and I like  a humdrum local Somerset dragon , uh,  

the dragon of chill compton. And, uh, it  was a dozy dragon and the hero who went  

to kill it didn't actually realize it was  a dragon until he'd been sitting on it for  

about half an hour thinking it was a log. Uh,  and eventually and some versions of the story,  

they felt they had to come to terms and they did.  So there's a happy ending possible to the storm

. Excellent. The gentleman just, just say,  

if you wait for the microphone to get to  you, then the people online can hear as well.

Fine. Uh, thank you for that. That was amazing.  Um, I noticed at the beginning you were talking  

about English dragons. Yeah. And I noticed  that whales and Scotland were absent in that.  

And yet whales is very well known for a dragon.  Yeah. Is there any more to do with whales? Happy

To answer Scotland that there are Scottish  dragons, but many fewer than in England because  

the lack of a catalyzing national saint, uh,  Wales, uh, is a different matter. Wales actually  

has fewer local dragon legends by far than  England, although there are some cute examples,  

my favorites, the Ber, which is a small dragon  England Morgan that eats chickens and is in  

traditional folk law. Uh, the reason why dragons  became central to Welsh identity and heraldry is  

because of one story, which is in the British  history, published in 8 29, uh, in which the  

boy who's called Ambrosius, who is later going to  become Merlin, explains the subsidence of a tower  

built by a tyrant because there are two dragons,  white and red fighting underneath. And the red  

one stands for whales, and the white ones stands  for the English. And so naturally the red one's  

gonna win eventually, but they keep fighting  for the time being, and the Welsh likes that,  

and we all do. But the lion was the symbol used  by Welsh medieval princes on their coats of arms,  

their banners, their heraldry. Until that  splendid Welshman, Henry Tudor killed Richard  

II at the Battle of Bosworth with a largely  Welsh and French army, and conquered England,  

thereby fulfilling the Welsh prophecy that a, a  Welsh prince would do this. It actually happened  

the moment they'd been waiting for, since 8 29,  but there's now a heraldic problem because Henry's  

beast should be the lion, but it's already the  royal beast of England. So what are the Welsh  

gonna get? And so overnight the Tudors decided  the dragon should be the symbol of Wales because  

of the story and the British history. Um, the Red  Dragon has been the symbol of Wales ever since.  

I'm, I'm a member of the, the Learned Society of  Wales. I have a patriarchic investment in that

,

The

Gentleman at the back. Um, thank you. It  was very interesting. Um, out of curiosity,  

like when we have a broader viewpoint  as to beasts in general Yes. Uh, in, uh,  

let's say just specifically in this context,  let's say European versus Chinese. Uh,  

do we know the distribution of say, the nasty  beasts versus nice beasts? And do they overlap?  

Are they similar? Are they very different  across European and, uh, Chinese landscape?

Most human societies have nasty beasts in  mythology, and that's because most human societies  

have had nasty beasts in reality. So it's a trans  position, very easy to make, but they're also good  

beasts in the mythology of most nations. Uh, the  affection given to the raven by the northwestern  

Pacific peoples, or the coyote by the peoples, the  American southwest, the reverence for the bear all  

the way across the circumpolar region from, uh,  the saami lands, the lap lands right through to  

the northern most island of Japan is, uh, again,  an example of this. So there's a tendency among  

humans to regard animals as in a constant  relationship with us, which they were and are,  

and to pick out friends and foes among them.  They then get frozen in mythology for all time.

I'm just curious if any other country pursues its  myths in the way that we pursue lochness, and are  

people going around actual with scientific,  uh, processes trying to discover a myth?

Yeah, there are lake monsters all over  the globe. Uh, notable examples in the  

North American continent, and there's  a favorite lake monster in the Congo,  

uh, which was Zaire. Now the Democratic  republic, uh, sometimes it's possible  

to identify sources for these. Uh, in  the case of the Congolese Lake monster,  

which got a lot of, uh, attention from  scholars in the eighties and nineties,  

it was realized that it's actually the now almost  extinct northern white rhinoceros, which had lived  

in the land and become extinct. And in mythology,  it had got it transferred to water to explain why  

you no longer saw it. So it must have come out of  the lake and go back in at a particular lake. Uh,  

and there at least we can pin down the origins  of a, a lake monster legend, but they're found  

all over the globe, including Polynesia like  New Zealand and every inhabited continent high.

Are there any differences in the personalities  

of different colored dragons,  like red versus green versus

Black?

Not, not really. Uh, dragons are lots of  different colors. That's a point on which  

the imagination of the individual  storyteller is given free reign.  

There's nothing canonical about dragons  colors, and there are no moral qualities,  

no local loyalties attached to them except for the  famous case of Wales, because of that one tail.

Thank you so much for this lecture. Um,  if I may, two very quick questions. One,  

uh, I noticed when you were talking about Bazel  Lisk that the look that kills not very typical.  

And the only one other one that comes to my mind  is Medusa. Yes. Where does the look that kills  

come from? It's obvious for the jaws and the teeth  and the claws, but where does the look that kills

Come from? Uh, the answer is we haven't The  faintest idea, somebody fought it up. I mean,  

there, there's, there's actually much crazier  stuff about the basal than I had time to describe  

in the lecture. For example, not only were  medieval people convinced that it existed and came  

outta this egg laid by a cock hatch by a toad,  but that the only animal, which it really feared  

was the weasel, which is why there's a weasel  in the picture that I flashed up there with a,  

a basalis looking distinctly wary. And nobody  knows why weasels should be picked, but it became  

canonical. Everybody knew that if you kept a  weasel around, you'd be safe from a basalis.  

So, but there, there is, uh, a, an absolutely  glorious, uh, cultural fertility in all this,  

which sometimes borders on the absolutely crazy  and, and therefore all the more wonderful.

So if you will allow me that second  question. Yeah. I think it kind of  

ties nicely into what you just said. Do you  notice any differences in dragon myths across  

the European tribes tribe? Tribal lines?  No, absolutely. Versus Germanic versus,

No. Uh, it's amazingly standard. Uh, every  European people by the beginning of history had  

picked up on the idea of dragon light creatures  and embedded them in their mythology. And, uh,  

we, we were kind of baffled as to  why this should be, which is why I,  

this is actually one of my ideas, I can  take credit for it. Good or bad, is, uh,  

the idea of the absence of alpha predator  in historic Europe and late prehistory.  

You really have to go back as far as, uh,  the paleolithic the ice age before you live  

in a world which has credible alpha predators  of the kind farm pretty well everywhere else.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Um, let, let's  take a couple from Slido,  

which I've been silently neglecting. Um,  a couple of people have asked, uh, similar  

questions about how did the city of  London end up with dragons as its crest

That I don't actually know. Uh, I've never found  a book that could tell me, although I'm certain  

there must be one. Uh, certainly the incredible  popularity of dragon legends in the late middle  

Ages, we're talking 1350 to 1500 produces dragons  across the landscape. They appear everywhere,  

and that's when they appear as, um, a symbol  of London. So perhaps the corny explanation,  

which may actually be right, is at a time when  the country was going Dragon Mad London had  

to have one too or perhaps one in  every post, uh, leading in. And of course,  

the, the locals here were just outside  Gresham, just opposite the city of York. Pub

Everywhere needs a dragon. Um,  a couple of people have asked questions  

about how sort of popular imagination kicks  from a dragon. So the combination of whether  

it's artists, creative people, or just  people in the pub exaggerating what's,  

what's the role of, um, of, of culture  in creating what we've ended up with

The role of culture and creating everything  else. We end up with , uh, which is  

that we have this stock of primeval loves and  fears that focus on certain symbolic shapes  

and forms and traditions. And then this  gets reworked millennium after millennium  

and century after century, and adapted to modern  needs, uh, which is why in Hollywood, uh, within,  

uh, within about 10 years, dragons turned from  being things that even in Walt Disney had to be  

killed to being things, uh, whom you love feed  domesticate and ride around the sky. ,

Thank you so much for another brilliant,  and, and very, yeah, interested lecture.  

What just came to my mind, the dragon maybe  seen as the Wild Nature force, and in China,  

they have Feng Shu of fng shui. So they learn to  live with the nature force as they build their  

buildings. So the nature spirits aren't disturbed,  so they, they build buildings so the dragon can,  

can go from the mountains to the, to the  lake and and drink also. And maybe Europeans,  

especially in the Middle Ages, have seen  nature as a forces that have to be overcome  

because they are threatening. Just, just  my idea, I just don't know. So question,

I, I don't think that the Chinese traditional  relationship with nature was that different from  

the European. Uh, because the same Chinese who  are, uh, celebrating dragons as wonderful forces,  

the earth are exterminating tigers as fast as  they can, uh, and usually not very successfully  

until the 19th, 20th century as mortal predator  enemies. And in the same way in Europe, uh,  

you can have the ancient Greeks and Romans having  dracos and pythons as symbols of, uh, the terror  

of nature. And, uh, hees bumping off the maayan  lion and other natural monsters. But venerating  

rocks, trees, and water as the home of nymphs  and of, uh, rather beautiful spirits. So the  

human relationship with nature is very complex  and deeply ambivalent right across the grove,  

but the world, the, well, the, uh, the globe.  But the, the fun thing here is it manifests in  

such different ways that it provides something  really creative, fascinating, and it's wonderful  

seeing the different way the kaleidoscope  re patterns itself in culture after culture.

Um, I'm afraid I have to break the news,  uh, that, that we're out of time. Um, uh,  

the, uh, uh, ladies and gentlemen, we have had  a absolute tour divorce, as said, uh, earlier,  

we, we have been informed, we've been entertained,  and we have had a series of important life lessons  

about how to kill a dragon and the importance  of retaining a weasel at all times. , uh,  

would you please join me in thanking the Gresham  College Professor of Divinity, professor Rob.