Dragons
There is scarce a culture or civilization in history that does not have legends of dragons. They are, by far, the most deadly of all animals, and more terrifying than their cousins, sea serpents, by merit of living on land, where people also thrive. The reason for their ubiquity in disparate human cultures is still something of a mystery, but may be because of people worldwide finding huge dinosaur bones in the earth, or due to the nebulous phenomenon of oral transmission, by nature impossible to quantify or trace. What is certain, however, is their hostility to people.
Dragons live on the fringes of the known world, specifically in Ethiopia and India, with the Cynocephali. Not all dragons breathe fire, but are able to coil around their prey and crush them to death before eating them. If the former reminds you of a constrictor snake, you are on the right track, for the dragon from earliest times is associated with snakes, as in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies: ‘the dragon is the largest serpent, and in fact the largest animal on earth… it has a crest, a small mouth, and a narrow throat… it kills by entangling’.
European cartographers depicting dragons on maps were Christians, and drew from a Biblical tradition of the dragon. In the Book of Revelation, which describes the Christian Apocalypse, the dragon is Satan, mankind’s great enemy: ‘behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and on his heads seven diadems’ (12:3); ‘and there was a great battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels’ (12:7); ‘and that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world’ (12:9).
The devil is like the dragon that lives in Ethiopia and India because he is the worst of all serpents. The dragon’s crest superficially resembles a crown, which also reflects Satan’s overwhelming pride, which offended God and caused his fall from heaven. Just as Christ defeats Satan, so too the panther is the only animal that can defeat the dragon, by merit of its sweet breath. Its long-attested method of catching elephants, its favorite food, also recalls Satan’s tricks for catching souls: the dragon hides in a tree on the elephant’s favored path and catches them by the tail.
The message of the dragon on maps is thus doubly to avoid certain areas, and to beware the wiles of Satan. However, it is a myth that medieval maps bear the legend ‘here be dragons’. The only historical instances of the inscription are the Hunt-Lenox Globe, which dates from c.1503-07, and an ostrich egg from c.1504. Through their images, however, medieval maps do imply the statement by placing dragons in uncharted areas as an indication of their uncivilized nature. Being uncharted and unexplored, these areas were unlikely to be Christian, and thus must be evil, and hence full of dragons.