Jabrosky
Banned
Once I browsed through some old paintings and other artwork featuring dragons, and what jumped out at me were the dragons' sizes relative to their human adversaries. Some examples:
The dragons seldom exceed the horses or human beings in size. Everyone nowadays draws dragons as growing very large, but this appears to be a recent trend if old dragon art is anything to go by. Dragons in old mythology used to be fairly small.
I wonder if the recent growth in fantasy dragons' size has anything to do with modern paleontology. Most Europeans back in the Middle Ages probably couldn't imagine any land animal outsizing a horse or cow. Of course sailors who had exposure to whales probably knew that marine animals could grow colossal, hence giant sea serpents like Leviathan, but it probably took paleontologists to show that terrestrial creatures could get really big too.
The dragons seldom exceed the horses or human beings in size. Everyone nowadays draws dragons as growing very large, but this appears to be a recent trend if old dragon art is anything to go by. Dragons in old mythology used to be fairly small.
I wonder if the recent growth in fantasy dragons' size has anything to do with modern paleontology. Most Europeans back in the Middle Ages probably couldn't imagine any land animal outsizing a horse or cow. Of course sailors who had exposure to whales probably knew that marine animals could grow colossal, hence giant sea serpents like Leviathan, but it probably took paleontologists to show that terrestrial creatures could get really big too.