|
Review from Scientific
American:
"Many
societies have a concept of and a word for the dragon, even though
the creature never existed. Why? Jones, professor of
anthropology at the University of Central Florida, thinks the
concept derives from the experience of ancestral humans and prehumans with three
kinds of predator: “Over millennia,” he writes, “the raptor, big
cat, and serpent began to form as a single construct – the dragon –
in the brain/mind of our ancient primate ancestors.” Jones got his
idea from the behavior of vervet monkeys in Africa. They have three
different alarm calls that provoke three different defensive
responses: one for the leopard, one for the martial eagle and one
for the python. Most of the 40 illustrations in the book portray
dragons as different societies envisioned them. The common theme is
that they look scary. “
From Scientific American. January
2001. Volume 284, Number 1. Pg 108. |
