When we look at dinosaur bones...?

Question

... and think "Those aren't dragons, silly medieval people, those are dinosaurs!"

If we told them that, would they say "Those aren't dinosaurs, silly future people, those are dragons!"

Answer 1

Dino bones only give us a rough idea as to what they really looked like. What I find interesting about dragons is that their mythology spans the globe from China, to the UK, to S. America and yet these people had no contact with each other that we know of. Makes ya wonder.

Answer 2

What bones people do find tend to follow what animals were in the best position to be preserved. Dont forget that many animals have the bad luck of dying in places that are not very conducive to long-term care, and thus it is no wonder that the bones we are finding are serendipitious, like a ancient fly landing in amber.

There are many animals that were alive during prehistoric times for whom bones simply no longer exist. Think about all the invertebrate sea creatures that were simply devoured, or slowly evolved, and thus had no way of leaving any sort of biological evidence behind. Its the whole 'if a tree falls in a foreest...' dilemna. Scientist know what they know based on what they have found, and what they can deduce. Hard to deduce about things when you can't find any evidence that you should even be looking for them.

Another thing people don't take into consideration is even if dragons did exist, there is no way of saying when they existed, which does suggest that they existed long before the dinosaurs and thus became extinct, erasing their presence, long before the dinosaurs became extinct. If its a crapshoot finding a dinosaur, how much more of a crapshoot would it be to find a pre-dinosaur dragon?

Answer 3

I completely agree. Both we and medieval people are correct. In our present culture, we classify those bones as dinosaurs, and in medieval culture, they classified them as dragons. Which one is wrong? Most people would probably say that the medieval people are wrong because dragons are and never have been real...but dinosaurs are real. Their dragons are our dinosaurs. The same thing, just called by a different name. Medieval people simply interpreted what they found and called them dragons, just as we interpret what we find and call them dinosaurs. Perception and interpretation change over time.