Dragons On Ancient Maps Based On Real Animals

Dragons On Ancient Maps Based On Real Animals

By R. L. David Jolly

Have you even seen pictures of maps that were made hundreds of years ago in the medieval and Renaissance days?  Many of them have dragons and sea monsters drawn on them and for years evolutionists have believed that those dragons and sea monsters were nothing more than myths and legends.

But are they myth and legend or were those drawings based on real animals?

Chet Van Duzer from Brown University studies cartography, map making and specialized in maps from around 1000AD to about 1700AD.  He has recently written a book titled: Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps in which he proposes that the dragons and sea monsters on these early maps were inspired by real living animals.

In talk given last week, Van Duzer told an audience:

“The creatures look purely fantastic. They all look like they were just made up.  But, in fact, a lot of them come from what were considered, at the time, scientific sources.”

However, when reading about his book and what he says, he believes that the images of sea monsters were inspired by whales, large octopus, squid and possibly 30 foot long oarfish.  Then he says the artists embellished the drawings making the creatures look larger and more ferocious than they really were.  Van Duzer allowed his evolutionary beliefs in millions of years influence his understanding and interpretation of what inspired the early map makers to draw their sea monsters and dragons.

He does say that some map makers copied drawings from illustrated encyclopedias of the times.  What he doesn’t address is where the authors of the encyclopedias got their illustrations of real animals such as dragons from living dinosaurs.

When I did all of the research for Ken Ham’s book: The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved!, I found a substantial amount of references from the times of these map makers that provide evidence that dinosaurs were still living.  One of my favorite references was from a scientific book, Historia Animalium, written by an Italian naturalist by the name of Ulysses Aldrovandrus.  He described in detail all kinds of animals living in the area at the time.  He also recounted an encounter between peasant and creature that was about 3-4 feet tall, had a long neck and tail and hissed at the peasant as he was walking along a trail.  The peasant struck the creature in the head with his walking stick and killed it.

While doing the research on this particular account, a friend of mine, Kirk Toth, was able to access a copy of Historia Animalium, written around 1600 in Latin and he copied the pages of the account and sent them to me and I had them translated into English.  Aldrovandrus also had a drawing of the creature and it very closely resembles a dinosaur named Tanystropheus.

Another example of dinosaurs living at the time of the map makers can be found in Carlisle Cathedral, located in Cumbria, England.  Bishop Richard Bell died in 1496 and was buried in Carlisle Cathedral.  His tomb in the floor is marked with large brass plates.  The brass plates along the sides of the tomb depict real animals such as an eel, fish, dog, pig, bird and a one that looks very much like a large sauropod dinosaur.  One has to ask why they would depict a dinosaur along with real animals if they hadn’t seen them.  Another thing to realize is that the first sauropod dinosaur fossil discovered was in 1878 and named by famous dinosaur hunter Othniel Marsh.  The image of the sauropod on Bishop Bell’s tomb was created 380 years before Marsh discovered and coined the name sauropod.

The legends of St. George and the dragon in England yields a description of what the dragon looked like.  When you look at some of these drawings and paintings, the dragon looks very similar to a dinosaur called Baryonyx.  The fossil of Baryonx was discovered in England in 1983 and the earliest legends of St. George and the dragon date back to the tenth century, also in England.

Have you ever heard of the epic poem Beowulf?  The poem was written sometime prior to the tenth century by an Anglo-Saxon poet.  The poem talks about a monster named Grendel.  When doing research years ago, (unfortunately I don’t have access to that research these days), I saw a rock relief carving of Grendel that was carved sometime around the tenth or eleventh century.  The carving showed Grendel as a large animal that stood upright, had a large thick tail, a large head with a mouth full of sharp teeth and two very small forearms.  When I saw a photo of the stone relief carving, I instantly recognized it as a T. rex.  Yet, the first T. rex fossil wasn’t discovered until 1900 and named in 1906.  How did the artist who carved the image of Grendel know about the two very small forearms along with the rest of the T. rex features?

There are many other legends and depictions of living dragons and serpents that are very believable.  The only reason most people don’t believe them is that they have been too influenced by evolution, just like Van Duzer.  But I’m not influenced by the lies of evolution.  Instead, I’m influenced by the Word of God that says He created every creature that flies and swims on Day 5 of Creation and every land animal and man on Day 6.  Plesiosaurs and other aquatic animals were created one day before man and dinosaurs were created the same day as man.  Adam lived with and possibly named some of the dinosaurs.  That also means that some of the dinosaurs were on the Ark with Noah and that they got off the Ark and spread across the earth along with all of the other animals.  Since that time, most dinosaurs have been hunted to extinction and others probably died out because they could not adapt to different environments, climates and food sources.  Some of those dinosaurs lived to inspire legends of dinosaurs all over the world and even inspired some early map makers to draw their likenesses on their maps.

References:

Bell, Philip.  Bishop Bell’s Brass Behemoths, Creation, Vol 25(4), pp. 40-44, Sept. 2003.

Ham, Ken.  The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved!, Master Books, 1998. (Note, I did all of the research for this book and wrote the descriptions for the 8 Dinosaur Plates.  All my references can be found in pages 97-151.

Lewis, Tanya.  Here Be Dragons: The Evolution of Sea Monsters on Medieval Maps, Live Science, Sept 6, 2013.