Migrating to Prehistoric Australia: Part Two

The first human inhabitants of the island continent of Australia arrived perhaps as long ago as 60,000 years – just 10,000 years after some nomadic band(s) kissed their African homeland good day. Since there is, and never has been in human prehistory, a land bridge between the two geographical continents, the first Australians had to have mastered the ‘art’ of sailing. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to back up what must be the obvious.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Fast-forward tens of thousands of years later.

Aborigines in the northeast of Australia, starting roughly 2500 years ago, had contact with Melanesian seafarers, the Torres Strait Islanders, who could island and reef-hop over the newly created Torres Strait. Post Ice Age sea level rise created that 150 km Torres Strait marine barrier by flooding that former land connection that separated Australia from New Guinea. However, Melanesian seafaring technology apparently wasn’t readily adopted by the Aborigines. In any event, it doesn’t assist in explaining the arrival(s) – one or more waves – of Aborigines that many tens of thousands of years ago.

Prior to white settlement, less than three centuries ago, there is no archaeological or pictorial evidence for sophisticated Aboriginal maritime activities in Australia. Dugout canoes is about as sophisticated as you get, technology which apparently came via Makassan traders from Sulawesi (an Indonesian island), and then only since the early 18^th Century, or shortly prior to white settlement. That’s not much help is getting Aborigines to Australia 40,000 to 60,000 years ago.

All up, it was non-Australian seafarers who discovered the Aborigines (the Dutch in 1606, the English in 1688, all culminating with Captain Cook’s visit in 1770, hence white settlement in 1788) and never the other way around.

So, if there is one thing one doesn’t associate with the Australian Aborigine, its seafaring and ocean navigation abilities. Aborigines are nomadic landlubbers with at best bark canoes. Aborigines go walkabout, not sailabout. If the Aborigines really had halfway decent maritime abilities, you’d of thought they would have discovered and colonized Lord Howe Island or Norfolk Island, even New Zealand several tens of thousands of years ago. [Tasmania doesn’t count since that island was connected to the Australian mainland during the drop in sea levels during the Ice Ages.] But New Zealand only dates human inhabitation back to just roughly 1300 AD or CE if you like, and the Maoris aren’t the Australian Aborigines.

It’s a similar mystery as the one as to why the ancient prehistoric east African Homo sapiens or Homo erectus didn’t discover that rather large island target off their own eastern coast – Madagascar. Madagascar wasn’t inhabited until roughly between 350 BCE and 550 CE, and then from Borneo. Native Africans (the Bantu) didn’t hit town until 1000 CE. The evidence suggests to me that prehistoric nomadic hunter-gatherers just didn’t have the seamanship skills everyone assumes they must have had.

So, the $64,000 question is, how did they, the Aborigines, arrive in Australia? By boat stupid! It’s an axiomatic response that in prehistoric times to get from Point A to Point B, when Point A and Point B are separated by reasonably vast oceanic distances, that our ‘primitive’ ancestors must have constructed rafts or boats and used same to cross said vast oceanic distances. It just has to be, no other explanation is possible. But is it logical? No, IMHO. They, our prehistoric ancestors didn’t have boat or raft building know-how, or navigation skills nor seamanship abilities. Is there actual evidence they did? Again, the answer is in the negative.

The first boats found in the archaeological record only date to about 7000 BCE, the historical era, way, way after they are required in way earlier prehistoric times. That’s probably because ‘modern’ sailing, as in lengthy ocean voyages involving maritime crossings with nothing but the ocean in view, only took off in historical times, post the Agricultural Revolution which dates to roughly 10,000 years ago. That’s now well documented in the archaeological and pictorial record. The main outcomes were establishing trade routes and the opening up of Oceania (Hawaii, Easter Island, New Zealand, Madagascar, etc.) to both initial discovery and colonization. Perhaps that was a logical outcome due to the stability and population growth caused by establishing settlements. Or, perhaps like agriculture itself, maritime skills were a gift from the ‘gods’.

One other bit of evidence that it isn’t easy to reach Australia from S.E. Asia, despite a theory that it would have been relatively easy via island hopping, is that Australia has a very unique fauna. You don’t find the kangaroo, koala, or platypus in S.E. Asia, and you don’t find fauna from S.E. Asia in Australia’s natural environment. Seeds, insects, birds, etc. can cross over of course, carried on the winds or under their own power, but not anything that’s larger and fully terrestrial. 

In conclusion, in prehistoric times, in order to migrate to certain geographical locations, like Australia, it’s traditional to assume, actually stating the bleeding obvious, that primitive humans from that era had to stick their toes in the water and cross on over by building rafts or boats, acquiring various maritime skills and sailing the ocean blue. However, there is no evidence, far less proof for this assertion. Rather, IMHO, you’d be a bloody idiot to stick your toe in the water unless practically forced at ‘gunpoint’. It’s a Catch-22: Before you risk your all sailing the ocean blue, you’d better first have or acquire motive, means and opportunity. But, you can only become comfortable with having motive, means and opportunity after you’ve already risked your all by having first sailed the ocean blue and become skilled professional sailors. Or, in other words, before you’re at all comfortable sticking your toes in the water, you’ve got to stick you toes in the water. Faced with that sort of choice, the sane decision is to keep your toes out of the water from the get-go. That’s also stating the bleeding obvious. When two sides state the bleeding obvious, and both those sides are contradictory, well that’s a Catch-22.

So how did the Australian Aborigine get to Australia, or Sahul? Well, maybe they just flapped their arms and flew, or were flown, but they didn’t swim the distance nor did they sail it. It’s time to think outside of the box.

Further reading:

Flood, Josephine; Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and Its People; Angus & Robertson, Sydney; Revised Edition, 1995:

Isaacs, Jennifer (Compiler & Editor); Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History;  Lansdowne Press, Sydney; 1980:

Kamminga, Johan & Mulvaney, John; Prehistory of Australia; Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.; 1999:

Mountford, Charles P. & Roberts, Ainslie; Legends of the Dreamtime; International Limited Editions, Hong Kong; 1975:

The Enigma That Is Tunguska (1908)

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs. If UFOs aren’t mystery enough, there’s that enigmatic 30 June 1908 explosion of ‘something’ over the Tunguska region of Siberia. Might the two anomalies be connected? Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. Whodunit or whatdunit is the $64,000 question.

Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. It was heard up to 1,200 kilometres away; witnessed up to 700 kilometres away. The after-effects, from air pressure waves, ground shockwaves to unusual bright skies at night (quasi-auroras in the sky) viewed throughout Europe in the days (or nights) that followed are well documented. From that, and the evidence as observed from on-site scientific expeditions at ground zero (the epicentre) and the 1908 eyewitness reports, strongly suggest that something several tens of meters across exploded, and totally vaporized some 8 to 8.5 kilometres above ground level with a minimum force of 5 megatons, an accepted average force of between 12.5 to 15 megatons, at the other extreme perhaps up to 30 megatons (1000 times the force unleashed on Hiroshima). 

Because of the political turmoil’s Russia and the world were experiencing (WW I; the Russian Revolution), but mainly because the affected region was just about inaccessible due to the harsh climate, distance from civilization and wilderness terrain, it was many years before an actual scientific investigation was launched and travelled into the region to investigate into what actually happened – what impacted this vast forested region of Siberia where (fortunately) there were few inhabitants and witnesses. The main and initial scientific investigator was a Russian scientist, Leonid Kulik. His first expedition in 1921 didn’t actually reach ground zero; but later expeditions of his in 1927 (the first to reach the epicentre), with follow-ups in 1928 and 1929 and finally in 1939 got the scientific ball rolling. Of course everyone expected that eye-witnesses would be irrelevant because the object was obviously a natural celestial object, a meteor or a small comet, and there would be a crater. Samples of the extraterrestrial object would be collected, analysed back in civilization, fragments put on display in museums – mystery solved. That’s what everyone expected, but at times Mother Nature can be a real bitch!

Well, to make a long story shorter, initial and subsequent on-site teams of researchers (there were further Russian expeditions in 1958 and 1961 with the first post Cold War international teams hitting the ground in 1989 and 1991) found no crater; no chunks of extraterrestrial debris. Whatever ‘hit’ the Tunguska region of Siberia in June 1908 didn’t really apparently impact, but exploded high up in the atmosphere, a resulting blast wave flattening the trees in a radial pattern out from ground zero, ultimately covering an area associated with a large city. Even that wouldn’t have been all that anomalous were it not for some witnesses who claimed that the object as it descended, changed direction. You wouldn’t have expected that from a natural object. And thus was born the idea that the object wasn’t natural, but artificial, probably, well certainly, since terrestrial technology had no equivalents, extraterrestrial – an alien spaceship.

Seeing as how there’s evidence that UFOs, or ‘flying discs’ as they were called in the late 1940’, could run into difficulty and crash, as in Roswell (July 1947) for example, well that lent additional credibility that in 1908, a ‘flying disc’ also ran into technical difficulty, but exploded, probably a nuclear-type explosion,  relative to actually crash-landing.

Well, whatever it was, it was vaporized to the extent that there wasn’t enough solid residue left behind to establish once and for all that the object actually was. And so other exotic, though natural, theories were spawned to account for the overall Tunguska event anomalies.

So, some scientists have suggested that what hit Tunguska was a mini Black Hole that just kept right on keeping on and passed through the entire Earth, exiting out the opposite side (commonly postulated to be the North Atlantic). There are good theoretical reasons to suspect that mini Black Holes exist in space – ‘theoretical’ needs to be stressed however.

Even more far out, it was a tiny piece of antimatter. Antimatter, when impacting Earth’s atmosphere composed of normal matter, well its ka-boom time as there will be an annihilation of equal parts of our atmospheric matter and whatever the amount of antimatter was – gram for gram; ounce for ounce. When matter meets antimatter, stuff is turned into pure energy, and thus no solid residue left behind at the ‘crime’ scene.   

Even more far out there’s been speculations that the Tunguska Event was caused by a concentration of methane (natural) gas released naturally into the atmosphere which exploded; an extraterrestrial laser beam attack or scientific test on a relatively uninhabited region; giant ball lightning; even a terrestrial death ray or early nuclear experiment that went very wrong. Those make the alien spaceship / UFO blowing up theories seem mundane and commonplace. 

The disturbing bit about the Tunguska Event was that if the explosion / impact had happened slightly earlier or later, it could just as easily have exploded / impacted over a far more densely inhabited region. Hitting the ocean might have generated a tsunami, and we know the sort of havoc they can cause. More frightening, if it had happened, right out of the proverbial blue, no warning at all, in say 1958 instead of 1908, what would Russia’s immediate reaction have been? Maybe an assumption that there had been a nuclear strike, the first of many pre-emptive or unprovoked nuclear strikes on Russian soil. Their reaction, and response, could easily have been, in that Cold War, high tension era, shoot back now and ask questions later – assuming a later after all out nuclear war.

Back to 1908, maybe the Tunguska Event was a comet, or meteor, or a mini black hole, or a bit of anti-matter. Experts remain uncertain and undecided to this very day. Or, maybe it was a spaceship – obviously not of terrestrial origin. Lots of authors have written tomes advocating that explanation (and others even more exotic as we’ve seen). And in fact, although scoffed at by the experts, I’m not quite ready to write off the spaceship theory quite yet. If Roswell, why not Tunguska? However, I’d be being unrealistic if I didn’t admit that theory is a long shot. At the least, it’s still a marvelous scientific mystery. 

Further readings on the Tunguska Incident:

Atkins, Thomas & Baxter, John; The Fire Came By: The Riddle of the Great Siberian Explosion; Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York; 1976: 

Furneaux, Rupert; The Tungus Event: The Great Siberian Catastrophe of 1908; Panther Books, Frogmore, St Albans, Herts; 1977:

Rubtsov, Vladimir; The Tunguska Mystery; Springer, New York; 2009:

Stoneley, Jack; Tunguska: Cauldron of Hell; Star Book, London; 1977:

Verma, Surendra; The Tunguska Fireball: Solving One of the Great Mysteries of the 20^th Century; Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd., Crows Nest, NSW; 2005:

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Part Two

If the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a viable experiment and not a waste of time; if UFOs and ancient astronauts are facets that help document the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then the very existence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence with technology has to be plausible in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s a long hard road to get from inorganic chemistry through to E.T. and there are many possible bottleneck hurdles that have to be overcome before the one evolves into the other. Goldilocks factors – not too this, not too that, but just right – have to be with you every step of the way. IMHO the major bottlenecks are the transition from unicellular to multicellular life and the evolutionary development and use of technology.

It’s been pointed out by others, and based on my readings I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe (extraterrestrial intelligence) are a dime-a-dozen relative to biologists (life scientists), who hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

There are apparently just too many planetary Goldilocks factors at play to grant the probability that complex, multicellular, animal, life is common throughout the cosmos. You need to be in a quiet part of the galaxy – no nearby supernovas, black holes to suck you in, gamma ray bursters, etc. You need a long lived stable single star. You need a gravitationally stable solar system so that planets are not gravitationally disturbed out of their orbit and either plunged into the parent star or cast out of the parent system altogether. You should have a good Jupiter(s) to absorb and/or gravitational deflect comets and asteroids that would otherwise slam into your otherwise environmentally-friendly planet causing havoc to established life forms. You need a planet that’s in a pretty circular orbit, one that doesn’t stray too close or too far from the habitable zone surrounding the parent star. The planet must have a fairly stable temperature range over geologic time periods, and so you must have an atmosphere, and thus has to be massive enough to retain an atmosphere, without being so massive that you end up with a brown dwarf - a quasi-stellar body. The axis can’t have an extreme tilt, and it would greatly assist if the planet had a large moon around it to assist its long term stability. You need some sort of plate tectonics to ensure land building and the recycling of materials. If it’s intelligence, with technology you seek, the planet can’t be a water world. The planet must have formed in a region abundant in the heavier chemical elements (oxygen, sulphur, carbon, silicon, nitrogen, various metals, etc.). When you take all those factors (and more) into account, the number of suitable abodes where simple life can slowly evolve into complex life decreases rather quickly. And there’s no guarantee that there is really any directed purpose to evolution in that evolution doesn’t require simple life to become complex life. Survival and leaving offspring is what it’s all about, and if single cell critters do that what more is needed?

One note about planetary disasters or catastrophes is that these cut both ways. They can’t be frequent enough and/or large enough to wipe out the entire biosphere in total, especially the biosphere comprised of complex life forms, but on the other hand, infrequent small disasters can spur on evolutionary change by opening up environmental niches, but depending on who or what you are, when you are, and where you are, a disaster can be a double edged sword. I mean if you’re a T-Rex sixty five million years ago, its bad news. On the other hand, without the bad news for T-Rex, we wouldn’t be here, so for us, an asteroid impact 65 million years ago turned out to be good news!

It’s also difficult to naturally transport complex life around the galaxy, unlike microbial life. If a meteor hit Earth and blasted a chunk of terra firma off towards Mars, pity the poor cockroach going along for the ride. Cockroaches are tough, but not that tough. And even if a cockroach did make it alive to the surface of, say Mars, it wouldn’t survive long.

Anyway, once you have multicellular critters that have survived and thrived in a reasonably stable part of the Universe over many generations, will they evolve intelligence? I mean finding an extraterrestrial equivalent of a trilobite is all well and good, but we want to find beings more like ourselves.

IMHO, intelligence, the ability to figure things out, has evolutionary survival value and will tend to be selected for, and thus over time, there will tend to have evolved life forms with ever higher IQ’s. Here on Earth, just about all mammals and birds, and some exceptional invertebrates (the cephalopods like squid and the octopus), have reasonable IQ’s at least when compared to bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc. Of course just as some kinds of organisms are faster than others, or have keener senses of sight or smell or hearing, not all advanced organisms are going to end up equal in the IQ stakes. But, the fact remains, the ability to think, to figure things out, can only increase your odds of survival and leaving behind more offspring.

Finally, for SETI to succeed, for UFOs to be alien spaceships, one needs our intelligent species to develop technology, and here’s where I see bottleneck number two. The evolution of technology isn’t inevitable and has a lot of just-so factors attached.

Firstly, your home planet has got to come equipped with the right sorts of materials like oxygen and metal ores and other objects than can be turned into useful tools, and of course a suitable supply of various energy sources. That’s not a given.

Water worlds are out of the running since it’s difficult to discover and utilise fire in that sort of environment.

You can’t have all your required locomotive appendages in contact with the ground – some have to be free to manipulate objects in your environment. Birds have wings that are off the ground, but since wings aren’t good at making tools, that seems to rule out wings and birds of a feather pretty much as well

So, we’ve already ruled out dolphins and whales and the cephalopods being water based creatures, and the birds with their useless wings as far as building things is concerned, and all the four-footed walking mammals.

It might be conceivable that you can build up a technology using your mouth parts and/or using a tail to manipulate and build things, but we don’t have obvious terrestrial case studies, although you might argue that bees and wasps and termites and ants and birds can build elaborate structures using just their mouths.

It’s not all that obvious that technology actually adds all that much value towards ultimate long-term survival. Lots of technological advancements do, like controlling fire, developing agriculture, the rise of modern medicine and food technologies. But then lots of modern technological wonders, the automobile, CDs, sofas, microwave ovens, and thousands of other consumer products don’t really contribute to our overall survival – certainly cars don’t when considering the road toll! Then that brings up the fact that things technological can sometimes work in the opposite direction. Toxic this, pollutant that, nuclear the next thing; then throw in a bit of global warming; the rise of urban city living with overcrowding and in general overpopulation; chemical, biological and radiological warfare/terrorism; instruments of warfare in general, like guns; the overuse of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic resistant germs; exposure to electromagnetic fields – well, the list of horrors or potential horrors goes on and on.

It makes for an interesting question: would mankind ultimately survive longer had technology never entered the equation, or not? It’s an unanswerable question in that 1) we can’t run the contrary as a controlled experiment, and 2) that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there’s probably no turning back now.

So, overall, SETI might not be able to detect our technological and communicating kin out there, and UFOs might not be alien spaceships right here, because it’s 1) hard to evolve multicellular organisms, and 2) technology isn’t inevitable and might even be counterproductive. Thus, Earth, with its multicellular critters and humanity with its technology, is quite the rare planet within the Universe – according to some.   

The main proponents of what is now called the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’ are the scientists Brownlee and Ward (see below), and they have certainly stirred up an astrobiological hornet’s nest with the idea. That’s good for science in the long term. The belief in an unproved but accepted scientific proposition, in this case that that there are lots of complex alien critters out there, needs to be challenged if fields of inquiry aren’t going to stagnate. However, make no mistake, it is the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’, not the ‘Unique Earth Hypothesis’, so religious fundamentalists who have taken this hypothesis to their hearts; who still need Planet Earth, and human beings, as some sort of religious special creation, should really not take comfort from these ideas.  The Copernicus Revolution is still alive and well.

Further reading:

Brownlee, Donald & Ward, Peter D.; Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe; Copernicus Books, New York; 2000:

Burger, William C.; Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We? Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2003:

Morris, Simon Conway; Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans In A Lonely Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2003:

Monster Birds of the Americas: Part Two

There are myths and legends that tell of human beings abducted as a food source by flying beasties. Confining ourselves to the Americas, especially the indigenous natives of North America, the question is, is there anything verified by science that’s birdlike or that flies that could snack on a fully grown human? If not, something’s screwy somewhere and other explanations are required.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Real Monster ‘Birds’ of the Americas

Pterosaurs and Pterodactyls: These beasties weren’t really birds-of-a-feather, rather just winged and flying (or gliding) reptiles that belonged way back in fact to ‘The Age of Reptiles’ – the Mesozoic Era. The largest of these discovered (to date) was Quetzalcoatlus, named obviously after that Mesoamerican feathered serpent deity. Quetza-baby had a 36 to 40 foot wingspan, and just might have been able to snack on a human. However, pterosaurs and pterodactyls all went kaput by the end of the Mesozoic – Q-baby made it in fact through to the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 millions of years ago. Alas, that was at least 64 million years before anything resembling humans walked the planet as a food source. While Native Americans were probably aware of the fossils of these flying reptiles, they had nothing to fear from them in terms of being snack-food. 

Terror Birds: Well, these terrors really existed in the Americas and for a while were thought to be contemporary with the earliest humans in the Americas. Though they survived and thrived in mainly South America, some made it across the Isthmus of Panama land bridge into Central and North America about 3 million years ago. The most recent of them is now thought to have gone extinct about 1.8 million years ago, well before humans arrived on the scene.

But even assuming humans and terror birds were contemporary, why the terror? Well, these crows-on-steroids were up to ten feet tall and could gallop after you at velocities up to some 37 miles per hour. Relatives of these monsters with equally large beaks and talons have been found in Texas and Florida, and presumable bridged the geographical gap in-between. So, should the natives have been afraid; very afraid? Well, in this case the top apex predators probably succumbed to being ultimately human prey since the terror birds, along with the rest of the North, Central and South American mega-fauna went extinct in pretty quick-smart fashion after humans appeared on the scene. Now humans, if contemporary, probably didn’t engage in hand-to-wing combat with these ungodly raptors, but rather found their eggs as a handy-dandy breakfast food supplement to their gatherer nuts-and-berries fare. Alas, no baby terror birds hatchlings; ultimately no terror birds. In any event, terror birds were flightless, like the emus, cassowaries, the ostrich and kiwis, not to mention their extinct cousins the moa and dodos. Thus, terror birds don’t fit our description of birds that fly and pluck humans off the ground and feel us to their young.

Giant Condors & Related:  The Andean condor at 11 to 15 kg (24 – 33 pounds) is currently the Guinness Book of Records holder for being the America’s largest flying feathered member of the avian clan, at least with respect to a roughly 10 to 12 foot wingspan. The California condor at 7 to 14 kg (15 to 31 pounds) comes a very close second with wingspans around ten feet. Then too there was the Pleistocene [Ice Age] teratorns weighing in at 15 kg to 23 kg (33 to 50 pounds), huge raptors resembling eagles with wingspans 12 to 17 feet across.

Overall the wandering albatross is on a par with the Andean condor for title of ‘king of the wingspan’ (up to 11 feet for the great albatrosses), but it isn’t a common sight in North America – then or now. There are several North Pacific varieties which reach the western coast of North America, but because these are sea birds, feeding on seafood although scavenging carrion when on land (remote islands) for breeding purposes. The odds that Native American Indians would have noted the albatross as a regular part of their environment wouldn’t have been common for other than those living right on the Pacific Ocean.

Now the sixty-four cent question is, can any one or more of the above account for eyewitness accounts of monster birds abducting their comrades in arms? Well any sane person would eliminate dragons and Thunderbirds – they are mythological and therefore don’t exist. One cannot witness non-existence. Pterosaurs and pterodactyls were extinct long before humans were thought up in anyone’s philosophy. Terror birds couldn’t fly and probably weren’t actually contemporary with humans in any event. Condors, while big, aren’t big enough. I mean an average human should be large enough to punch a condor’s lights right out, and certainly humans are too large to be carried across the condor’s threshold.

Condors (Andean or Californian) are actually vultures and thus scavengers, feeding primarily on carrion, even though preferring large carcases like those of cattle. It has to feed while on the ground, and often stuffs itself silly when it does come across a suitable meal that it can’t, for a while, lift itself off the ground. This is hardly a bird likely to be the source of American Indian human-abducting mythology, although the bird certainly features in Native American mythology. However, as the condor is an endangered species, the bird had and has way more reason to fear the natives than the other way around.

The extinct teratorns however were contemporary with humans (Amerindians), but while large enough to cause more than sufficient trouble for a human infant, there’s evidence to suggest that overall, the humans were probably more the hunters than the hunted when crunch came crunch.

However, even at a weight of fifty pounds and a wingspan of 17 feet, could a teratorn have actually picked up and carried away an adult human, with a weight say at least twice or thrice that of the raptor? Fossil evidence suggests that small mammals, even fish, and carrion were its usual means of sustenance. Since the Native Americans say it’s so – at least according to their mythology – you have to ask yourself whether or not a 50 pound bird, who could obviously carry its own weight and probably a bit more through the air, could actually fly with a 100 to 150 pound payload? That’s 150 to 200 pounds all up the bird is carrying. Now that’s a pretty big ask.

Has anyone seen an owl or an eagle or other flying raptor carry off prey two to three times its own weight?  Now it might be one thing for a very large bird to pick you up (especially if you’re dead and not struggling) and carry you off while in contact with the ground, like the terror birds, at least for a short way since after all you’re still very heavy compared to the bird. But it’s quite other kettle of fish for a bird to pick you up and actually fly away with you without any leg and ground support at all. Flying (flapping wings) is very energy intensive at the best of times (we’ve all seen birds in gliding mode in order to conserve energy), far less trying to lift up and flap wings with twice or thrice its normal body weight to struggle with.

Now we’ve all seen wildlife documentaries showing a large carnivorous bird swooping low over the water and then grabbing an unsuspecting fish out of the water with its talons. Now that fish may even be as large and heavy as the bird itself, but the prey can’t be that much larger and certainly not twice as large and heavy as the predator. The bird, so close to the water, can not afford to be dragged down by extra unmanageable weight into the water – then it’s bye-bye birdie. 

Moving back to the land, raptor birds can and do attack prey much larger than themselves. The bones of these large prey animals have been found in the raptor’s nests or lairs. An eagle might attack a deer or fawn. The deer can’t really defend itself very well out in the open. But that’s not to say that the eagle can actually carry off the deer carcass whole, rather it’s going to tear out chunks at a time and carry them take-away style back to the nest. If not feeding young, it just might dine in on the spot, only flapping away if threatened by the appearance of larger scavengers.

In human terms, a normal average fit human may be able to life twice its body weight but can’t hardly be expected to run an obstacle course carrying it. Half a human’s body weight maybe, but not twice far less thrice.

Now in more ‘modern’ times, there have been a few sightings of giant and other unknown birds – critters that fall within the realm of study called cryptozoology. Having looked over the ‘modern’ (1850 to date) cryptozoological literature, most sightings prove to be ordinary birds though perhaps viewed out of their normal territory and thus somewhat unfamiliar to the viewer. Most unexplained avian species remain unverified and usually too small to be the sort of critter we’ve been looking for. Sightings of monster birds, while they exist, have never yielded up the sort of data that would have confirmed their reality. No dung, no feathers, no carcass, no bones. Unknown monster birds, if they do still exist, are running out of habitat to hide in; in fact they probably have run out of viable environmental living space. If they haven’t been confirmed by now they probably won’t ever be. Besides, any unknown North American birds, monster or otherwise, would have long since been shot out of the sky by trigger-happy Americans.  

Conclusions: No flying bird that is or was contemporary with humans (like the America Indian) was capable of lifting up and carrying off anything other than perhaps a small infant; certainly not adults. Flying birds are lightweights – they have to be in order to lift themselves up into the air. The largest of the predatory flightless birds (terror birds) were probably capable of running down, capturing, and lifting up human adults, but that’s not what the legends describe. But to a technologically unsophisticated Native American, living hundreds to thousands of years ago, a UFO abduction event might only have made natural sense to them in a Thunderbird related scenario. 

Further Readings about Monster Birds

Allan, Tony; “Beasts of the air” (in); The Mythic Bestiary: The Illustrated Guide to the World’s Most Fantastical Creatures; Duncan Baird Publishers, London; 2008; pages 14-53.

Bord, Colin & Bord, Janet; “Giant birds and birdmen” (in); Alien Animals: A Worldwide Investigation; Panther Books, London; Revised Edition 1985; pages 109-135. 

Clark, Jerome & Coleman, Loren; “Things with wings” (in); Creatures of the Outer Edge; Warner Books, New York; 1978; pages 165-194.

Mackal, Roy P.; “’Alice in Wonderland’ birds” (in); Searching for Hidden Animals: An Inquiry Into Zoological Mysteries; Doubleday & Company, New York; 1980; pages 99-128.

Mayor, Adrienne; Fossil Legends of the First Americans; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey; 2005.

Germs from Space

In the original “War of the Worlds” novel, our Martian invaders where thwarted not by us high and mighty humans, but by humble terrestrial bacteria who just ate them up! The question therefore is would extraterrestrial ‘bacteria’ find us (terrestrial life) a nice snack? The answers could be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

The War of the Worlds Scenario:

No, I don’t mean by this that there is any analogy between the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) and alien invasion, a typical example being the “War of the Worlds” (be it the original novel, the movies, the TV series, the musical, etc.). I refer here to the ultimate resolution of that alien war scenario – that ultimately what defeated the Martians were terrestrial microbes – bacteria to which the alien invaders had no resistance. That was a really excellent plot device – it was also lousy science! If there is one truism in biology, it is that cross-species infection is rare. There are of course a few exceptions to the cross-species infection rule, but they remain by far a minor, minor, minority. Micro-organisms tend to be species specific in terms of their nastiness. Thus, if I sneeze, my cats aren’t in any danger of catching my cold – and vice versa. I’m not about to infect any of my garden plants by touching them with my dirty soiled hands – I’m not likely to become infected with a deadly disease from a maple tree. If a wild bird has beak and feather disease and my cats should happen to catch and eat it – well, the bird was doomed anyway, and I’m not going to have to rush the feline predator off to the vet for shots! So, if it is relatively unlikely for one terrestrial species to be a contagion towards another terrestrial species (unless they are very closely related – evolutionary speaking), then what odds a terrestrial species will be deadly to an extraterrestrial species – and vice versa.

What’s the point of all this? Well, if UFOs can be explained by the ETH, then it is unlikely in the extreme that the ETH exists in a species vacuum. That is, ‘ufonauts’ (for lack of a better term), more commonly known as ‘the greys’, will be associated with their extraterrestrial micro-organisms (maybe ever their extraterrestrial equivalents of head lice, mites, bedbugs, cockroaches and rats depending on how hygienic they are). We do not exist in a bacteria free environment, nor could we even if we wanted to. ‘Ufonaut’ bodies and their UFOs will be as ‘bacteria-ridden’ as our bodies, our homes, automobiles, and in fact any and all other bits and pieces of our environment. We haven’t endured or experienced any pandemic or epidemic due to micro-organisms associated with ‘ufonauts’, and presumably ‘ufonauts’ haven’t caught cold or smallpox or the measles from microbes associated with us, our cats, birds, or any other terrestrial life forms.

So, UFO sceptics can’t invoke the “War of the Worlds” resolution as an argument that the UFO ETH is an invalid one. So, by all means, shake hands with an extraterrestrial (ET - if you meet him/her/it) and don’t worry about any resulting medical bill – it ain’t gonna happen.

However, this does open up an interesting research area – one I’ve never, ever, seen mentioned in the UFO literature. That is, extraterrestrial microbiology. If UFOs are piloted by alien beings, biological beings that must be associated with extraterrestrial micro-organisms, then presumably said ET microbes have entered into our terrestrial biosphere. Presumably, said ET microbes would be so biochemically distinct or unique that any microbiologist examining same would immediately note that something was afoot! Of course, if you’re not looking out for it, you’re unlikely to find it or get that ‘eureka’ moment even if you do find it. Perhaps UFO abductees or UFO landing sites should be examined for the presence of extraterrestrial microbes.

So what then to make of the late Sir Fred Hoyle’s et al. claims or ideas that some of our terrestrial disease outbreaks originated from outer space? It’s a variation on the panspermia idea – life on Earth originated from extraterrestrial microbiological life forms seeding our planet.

The Fred Hoyle Scenario:

It’s well established that interstellar space is full of gas and dust. What came as a surprise was the unexpected discovery that many of those interstellar regions are also rich in organic molecules. Organic means that the compounds contain carbon, one of the elemental building blocks central to biology – along with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, also well represented in interstellar gas and dust clouds. Many dozens of organic compounds have now been verified in the reaches of outer space, more than a few highly complex organic molecules, many associated in one way or another with life and biological processes.

Also verified has been the discovery that actual life forms, albeit simple microbial ones like bacteria, can, if not thrive, at least survive the rigors of outer space with minor shielding (say dust particles) to protect again harmful radiation. Terrestrial bacteria have survived three years on the Moon as demonstrated when the Apollo 12 astronauts brought back from the Moon pieces of the Surveyor III Lunar Lander, which had landed on the lunar surface three years prior. Experiments in Earth orbit have confirmed that some terrestrial microbes can boldly go in the cold and vacuum of space. 

Not so verified, but highly plausible, is the idea that simple life forms can be transported throughout the galaxy, hitching rides on dust particles, even larger objects like small hunks of rock that were ejected from their home planet. Recall the Martian meteorite (ALH84001) found in Antarctica which showed various lines of evidence that it was home to ancient fossilized Martian microbes. The controversy over that still hasn’t been resolved to the satisfaction of all.

Comets are known to be rich in organics, ditto some asteroids, and some have claimed that debris, say chips of an asteroid that have impacted and landed on Earth as a meteorite have ‘organised elements’ inside them suggestive of unicellular life forms. The possibility of course exists that those ‘organised elements’ were terrestrial contamination, since it can often be a long time between the fall of a meteor, and the discovery and analysis of the meteorite it became.   

The late Sir Fred Hoyle, along with several colleagues, most notable of which was Chandra Wickramasinghe, went a few steps further. Not only were there simple life forms in the depths of outer space, not only could they have seeded suitable planets with life – like Earth – but they to this very day rain down upon us. Further, they provide a far more logical explanation for various epidemics, maybe pandemics, experienced here on Earth. Why should some of these extraterrestrial bacteria be potentially infectious to us?  Well, if these microbes are the same sorts of microbes as seeded Earth ‘in the beginning’, that is were responsible for kick-starting life on Earth; providing the origin or life on Earth, then we share a common ancestry with them. We evolved from them over all those billions of years. Looking at it another way, we, in fact all life on Earth, really isn’t terrestrial life, but extraterrestrial life. We are the aliens!

Anyway, how does it happen? Specifically that is, or at least one mechanism, Earth’s orbit intersects now and again a stream of bacteria-laden cometary dust and debris – germs from outer space – that impact Earth’s atmosphere and ultimately filter down (perhaps incorporated in rain drops) to ground level and do their infectious thing.

However, to be fair, to state that their ideas are controversial is very definitely an understatement. For their side of the story, you’ll need to examine the evidence they present in there books (see further readings).

So, is there a conflict with extraterrestrial bacteria escaping out of a UFO and having no impact on the terrestrial biosphere and extraterrestrial bacteria arriving from interstellar gas and dust clouds, or cometary and/or asteroid debris? Well, there’s no conflict IMHO. The two sources of alien microbes are just that – two independent extraterrestrial sources that have no connection with each other. Of course relatively few experts in infectious diseases give any credibility to Hoyle’s theory so that might eliminate that. Then too many scientists don’t give any credibility to the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), hence to alien microbes originating from that source. However, whether none, one or both ideas have or lack credibility doesn’t result in any ultimate contradictions.

Further readings:

Hoyle, Fred; Evolution from Space: The Omni Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution, London on 12 January 1982; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1982:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Cosmic Life-Force; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1988:  

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Diseases from Space; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1979:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Evolution from Space; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1981:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; From Grains to Bacteria; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1984:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Life on Mars? The Case for A Cosmic Heritage; Clinical Press Limited, Bristol; 1997: [Note: This title is very misleading. It has nearly bugger-all to do with Mars but everything to do with panspermia.]

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1978:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Living Comets; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1985:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Our Place in the Cosmos: The Unfinished Revolution; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1993:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Proofs That Life Is Cosmic; Memoirs of the Institute of Fundamental Studies, Sri Lanka; December 1982:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Space Travellers: The Bringers of Life; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1981:

Hoyle, Fred, Wickramasinghe, Chandra & Watkins, John; Viruses from Space; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1986:

Ponnamperuma, Cyril (Editor); Comets and the Origin of Life; D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland; 1981:

Seargent, David A.J.; Genesis Stone? The Murchison Meteorite and the Beginnings of Life; Karagi Publications, The Entrance, NSW: 1991:

Doomsday: The End of the World: Part Three

The end of the world has been a popular theme in the arts (film, literature, etc.) as we’re no doubt aware. It’s also been a popular theme in science, in mythology, in religion, in prophecy, and so on. The fascination with the end of the world theme is that while unlikely (in your lifetime), it’s plausible as the dinosaurs found out 65 million years ago. So, in the short term, in your lifetime, is it likely, and if so, what’s the means of delivery?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The End of the World in Prophecy: Now most of the end of the world prophecies tends to have religious overtones, as in Armageddon and the Biblical Book of Revelation. I’ve noted on the Internet one 54 year old Californian religious loony who is absolutely convinced he would be part of the rapture on the 21^st of May, 2011. That’s it – that’s the judgement day, the second coming of Christ, the end of the world as we know it. I predict that he was very disappointed when he woke up in his California abode on the 22^nd of May 2011 in a totally un-raptured state. I really shouldn’t single him out, it wasn’t he who came up with that date, yet still he got sucked into the frenzy. Over the millennium he’s but one of millions of loonies who got sucked into the end of the world frenzy!

It’s a pity that so many peoples’ lives are so miserable that they literally look forward to someone else (God or Jesus Christ) ending their mundane existence of everyday mortality and transporting them into another one of peaceful eternity, although who really knows, maybe it’s a case of going from the frying pan into the fire! 

However, there’s a dark side to the forces behind prophecy. The central focus, as always, is me, myself, and I. If you’re reading the astrology horoscope, what it predicts for your next door neighbour is probably of no consequence to you. However, if someone predicts that the world is about to go down the gurgler; that the end is neigh, well, you’re part of the world, so you’re heading down the gurgler too! Now that may, or may not, upset you. For religious reasons, many look forward to the world going down the gurgler, because that means that they, while going down the gurgler too, get deposited at the other end of the tube into an eternal paradise. Or so they believe. 

Unfortunately people who are suckered into believing that on such-and-such a date they, along with everybody else, are going to meet their maker, well that can have serious consequences. There are more than a handful of case studies which have shown that ordinary people, caught up in the end-of-the-world hype, lacking the qualities of logical and critical thinking, have sold off all their worldly goods, left their homes and families, to await the end – which never came. Some have banded together to form end-of-the-world doomsday cults which have required suicidal philosophies as the alleged end drew near. Human delusion can have tragic consequences.

There are several downsides to end of the world prophecy. It’s not the same sort of harmless fun as consulting your daily horoscope in the paper. Firstly, there’s the letdown, trauma, disappointment, humiliation, etc. suffered by the true believers when their idiocy is revealed for the entire world to see. There’s the often bizarre behaviour of true believers before-the-fact – the break-up of family units, giving away all worldly goods and possessions, joining doomsday cults, sometimes to the tune of ritual suicides.

Then there’s the lack of moral, ethical, law and order constraints – I mean if you really wanted for once in your life to live the good life, the best foods, the best wines, the most expensive resorts, the best women money can buy, all the fantasy dreams of the great unwashed, and you truly believed you only had a week to go before The End, well there’s this bank down the road just begging to be robbed and a certain snooty little teller who’s been asking for an extra hole in her head right between the eyes – how dare she turn you down for a date – well, why not? You’re dead in a week anyway, so nothing much to lose is there?

Now extrapolate that up to a true believer who does hold some high position of real power. What if you could manipulate foreign policy in such a way as to ensure or bring forward Armageddon? Or, if the world’s going to end tomorrow anyway and you believe that with all your heart and soul that’s going to be the case, well you may as well press the nuclear button now. The leader of your most hated foreign power is laughing at your stupidity, so you’re going to want to make sure it’s doomsday for them too! 

There have been thousands of end of the word prophecies from the religious Armageddon as given in the Biblical Book of Revelation to predictions of alien invasions to nuclear suicide as per the “On the Beach” scenario or maybe some ‘the-sky-is-falling’ alarmist who’s convinced there’s an undetected and undetectable asteroid that’s heading our way – ground zero; target Earth.  It ain’t happened – the asteroid anyway – to us, but T-Rex would tell a different tale methinks. T-Rex aside, anyone who places any sort of faith that the next prophetic quack has got it right is in serious delusion. The odds favour the exact opposite. Mother Earth will go on her merry way for a long time yet. If you’re anxiously awaiting the rapture – well, be prepared to wait a lot longer.

The next predicted doomsday biggie is the 21^st of December 2012 for a whole potful of various reasons that’s relatively easy to find out about given hundreds of books, articles, Internet sites and blogs, DVDs, etc. all devoted to the subject. So, hands up please for all of you who have total conviction that the next end of the world prediction will bear fruit, 21 December 2012. Thought so!  Well, I’ll go on the record now as prophesizing that it’s going to be quite safe for you to plan your 2012 Christmas and post-Christmas activities and holidays and welcome in 2013 with the usual New Year antics we’ve all come to love and participate in. How so?

There’s one really main problem with end of the world prophecy, and it doesn’t matter a hoot what you’re ultimate source is that you base, or believe, the prophecy on – to date, 100% of all end of the world predictions have failed (that’s bloody obvious isn’t it? I mean we’re still here; we’re still standing)! If I’d received a fiver for each failed doomsday prediction, I, my bank manager and the tax man would all be happy little campers. A 100% failure record - that’s a pretty piss-poor track record, 100% opposite to science predicting a solar eclipse three decades down the track. Now if there have been just a handful of these the-end-is-neigh predictions, and I mean down to the exact day of the year, well that could easily be dismissed. However, when the absolute number of them, over the millennia, have been such that if you’d collected a fiver for every one, and that collection of fivers would make you one of the wealthiest persons on the planet, well you’ve have to conclude that there’s an awful lot of deluded people. A 100% track record of failure inspires bugger-all confidence that the next quack or gaggle of quacks that comes along with an ‘end-is-neigh’ sign can be taken seriously, such as the 21^st of May 2011 or the 21^st of December 2012.

Further reading: The end of the world in prophecy. 

Guyatt, Nicholas; Have A Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World; Ebury Press, UK; 2007:

Kirsch, Jonathan; A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization; Harper-Collins, New York; 2006:

Price, Robert M.; The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind; Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2007:

Willis, Barbara & Willis, Jim; Armageddon Now: The End of the World A to Z; Visible Ink Press, Detroit, Michigan; 2006:

The End of the World: John’s Best Guess Scenario: Okay, here’s my best guess prophecy for our demise. Firstly, it’s going to be at the hands of our fellow nutters. Now you’d have to admit there are all sorts of evil genus types out there. Fortunately, most lack the actual guts and finances to do any actual dirt on us. However, there are a number of highly motivated, highly educated, well financed ‘mad scientist’ terrorist types out there. As noted above, there’s not much they can accomplish with bombs, even nuclear bombs, or explosives or chemicals at least in terms of eliminating humans from the face of the Earth. But, there’s the ultimate in terrorist weaponry - the humble bacteria or virus that’s been genetically or bio-engineered to cause a global pandemic can be a nasty threat indeed. It’s not a Manhattan Project sized operation to bioengineer viruses and bacteria. A well equipped sophisticated lab, perhaps the size of a normal house would do. Several people well acquainted with genetic engineering techniques of micro-organisms, coupled with such information already readily available in the scientific literature, easily available via the Internet who have some sort of super-ultra hatred for humanity and who don’t care a fig about themselves (as per suicide bombers) might be tempted to induce a global pandemic, wiping humanity once and for all from existence. I mean their motto might be: “Kill them all; God will sort out the mess”. If people are willing to die in order to kill a relatively few others, like say the plane hijackers of 9/11 or your run-of-the-mill suicide bombers, then I can easily imagine some people would be willing to along for the doomsday ride if it meant taking the rest of the world with them – what a legacy, even if there’s nobody left to read the obituary. Now a variation would be to destroy via an agricultural plague all food crops, but it’s really easier to target just one species (i.e. – humans) than many dozens.

The possible perpetrators of such a scenario might not even be religious or political terrorists so much as devoted and determined eco-terrorists who figure the best way to save the whales, etc. is to kill off the humans – all of them.

An ideal bio-weapon might be some bacteria or virus that had an incubation period of say 60 hours which gives it plenty of time in this age of jet travel to spread around the globe before anyone’s the wiser that there’s trouble brewing; The microbe would have an easy transmission means from human to human, probably airborne so actual human-to-human contact wouldn’t be necessary; and most important it would be as close to 100% lethal as could be conceived. I imagine that no matter what a few will always have some sort of natural immunity, so wishing for total annihilation might be a stretch. Maybe, maybe not. 

The End of the World for Absolute Certain: Now, to end on a downbeat note, let’s return to scientific prophecy. Our world will end! That’s 100% certain! At the very least it will end when the lifespan of our parent star, the Sun, ends. Just like your car has a limited supply of fuel in its gas tank, so too our Sun has a limited supply of fuel that keeps it burning forever. When the Sun exhausts its fuel, well you can kiss life on Planet Earth goodbye. However, least I scare you into losing a good night’s sleep, that’s still some roughly five billion years in the future, or so modern astronomical prophecy dictates. Even if that’s off by 10%, well that still gives you plenty of time to enjoy the good life, including a good night’s sleep. 

Here Be Dragons: Why?

For something that doesn’t exist, and never has existed, dragons and dragon-lore has quite the remarkable hold throughout nearly all societies, from novels to films to video games; they also appear on coats-of-arms, on calendars, in art works, sculptures, depicted on the prows of Viking longboats, incorporated into ancient jewellery, and as toys. Dragons appear as corporate logos and as part of the names of companies, not to mention sports teams. Then too in the Chinese calendar (zodiac) there is ‘The Year of the Dragon’. Just like the mythological gods might have been really closet ET’s, well maybe dragons were ET’s pets; real flesh-and-blood creatures! Yet long after most of the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ have been totally forgotten about, dragons still rule. Maybe their ‘pets’ have truly eclipsed them!

Is there anybody from the age of four onwards on the face of the Earth who isn’t aware of the mythological creature popularly known as the dragon? The exceptions would be so relatively rare that I would have to conclude that of nearly all things make-believe, dragons are probably in the top ten recognition list. So, is that the be-all-and-end-all of things? Behind most myths, folklore or fairy tales often there is a tiny kernel of fact behind the apparent fiction. What about that kernel at the core of dragon-lore?

I note for starters that dragons are apparent from the get-go. Images of dragons are frequently found on cylinder seals from the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia and surrounding regions – the cradle of civilization. 

Now mythology-themed texts are excellent at relating various dragon tales and their associated dragon-slaying humans like Saint George, Sigurd (Siegfried), and Beowulf*; what purposes dragons served like guarding treasure and the abodes or palaces of the gods, as well as go-betweens the gods and humanity (sort of like carrier pigeons) and their having some control over the weather and the waters; and what they symbolize like evil, sin, power, military might, and pagan ways in the West and the Emperor and Empress, wisdom, immortality and other positive things like good fortune in the East. Dragons were even known do be among those beasties that pulled the aerial ‘chariots’ of the ‘gods’. 

I find it interesting that in the Chinese calendar, there are years for the rat; ox; tiger; rabbit; snake; horse; goat; monkey; rooster; dog; pig and dragon. Of all the twelve, only the dragon is considered by modern society mythical. I find it odd that the Chinese would employ eleven real beasties and one mythical one. Perhaps all dozen were real!  

However, mythology texts hardly ever explain why dragons are universally past and beloved in the present in nearly all societies in the first place. It’s one thing to just say dragons are mythological beings; it’s quite something else to explain how that is in light of such detail that surrounds dragon-lore and their universality.

Let’s look at what a typical dragon looks like. The classic dragon of Western tradition was a four-legged winged serpent with scaly skin and sharp claws (or varying number). Chinese dragons were generally horned and bearded, with a pair of long whiskers protruding from the upper lip. Dragons were very large, averaging about 80 feet (25 metres) in length. They had the ability to fly through the air as well as move on the ground. Many dragons breathed fire although others killed with their venomous breath.

Actually, the fire-breathing bit was probably an embellishment – maybe more a reflection on bad breath or water vapour visible upon exhaling. Just like most of mythology is 5% truth and 95% fisherman’s embellishment – the story gets better with each reincarnation! However, in general there’s nothing vague about what dragons looked like and what they did which is odd seeing as how they never existed. Or did they – never exist that is?

As to that explanation:

The traditional mainstream explanation for the reason for mythological dragons does not usually rely on human nature to invent out of whole cloth life forms that don’t exist, but rather on an assumption that fossil remains of dinosaurs, etc. gave rise to speculations that, in this case, the life form we call the dragon, well those fossils kick-started those dragon mythologies all over the world. As expressed in a recent book on mythological creatures:

“The ubiquity of dragon legends around the world remains striking; few legendary creatures have a wider distribution. Some scholars have linked the stories with discoveries of dinosaur bones and it may be that in early times tales of dragons served to explain the existence of long-dead creatures of huge size. Yet no single reason can ever hope to cover all the many strands of draconian lore. More likely, gigantic winged serpents fill some archetypal need in the human imagination, crossing cultures in their power to excite awe and fear.” (Tony Allen; The Mythic Bestiary: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Most Fantastical Creatures; Duncan Baird Publishers, London; 2008: Page 169)

Oh what a load of crap! Actually, loads of crap. Firstly, no large dinosaur bones come equipped with wings, etc. Have you ever seen a fossil or replica T-Rex that had wings and could fly?  Maybe they mean pterosaurs and/or pterodactyls, although they aren’t dinosaurs but a class of flying reptiles. However, fossils of flying reptiles aren’t very common and are in fact quite fragile.

Secondly, fossils aren’t going to tell you anything about colouration, scaly vs. smooth skin, beards and whiskers, fire-breathing abilities and venomous or otherwise bad breath, etc. Those sorts of details aren’t preserved in the fossil record, though very, very, very rarely dinosaur skin impressions are found but there are just about enough examples on hand that you can count them off on the fingers of one hand. .

Thirdly, the non-avian dinosaurs and flying reptiles died out 65 millions of years before humans and dragon mythology so there can be no contemporary firsthand knowledge of those previous long-dead dinosaur life forms to draw on. And the avian dinosaurs, which did survive – we now call them birds – hardly approach the sorts of sizes and other characteristics that could remotely be related to dragons.

Lastly, 99.9% of large fossils don’t just lie on the ground fully exposed in all their glory for the entire world to see. Most bits are usually buried and mainly in a somewhat jumbled state due to the various geological, hydrological and meteorological forces acting on the bones at the time of the animal’s death and the millions of years thereafter. It takes experts to piece things back together again as two of more animal fossils might be intermixed.

Further, why would the uneducated great unwashed living back before those golden years when mythological dragons ruled the skies go to all the trouble of the backbreaking sort of work it takes to fully expose a large fossil in the first place, and thus invent the mythological dragon? I mean it wouldn’t put any food on the table!

So when all else fails, put our invention of mythological and universal dragons down to some variation of nebulous Freudian psychology mumbo-jumbo. Give me a break! No, the answer is that dragons were really real and humans actually observed them. There is a single reason after all.

Now just consider, how many extinct animals did we mythologically invent prior to the discovery of their fossils? Dinosaurs weren’t all the rage before their fossil bones were uncovered and realised for what they were. Why didn’t we mentally create them before the fact? Why didn’t we have mythological trilobites in our legends 7000 years ago? We just didn’t have dinosaurs, trilobites, mythological or otherwise, before their fossils were discovered.

Why didn’t we have in our various mythologies any one of thousands of strange, now extinct, organisms? Maybe the answer is because we are NOT prone to invent fictional beasties. If strange beasts are part and parcel of our mythology, maybe it’s because those strange beasts really existed at some point in time that coincided with human existence.

On the other hand, you might wonder why there are no profound mythologies about now extinct mammoths or sabre-toothed cats, even though they coexisted for a short time with ‘modern’ man. Why not? They were pretty big and fearsome; maybe not quite in the big leagues of dragons, but big enough. Perhaps that might be because these beasties had no connection with the ‘gods’ – they weren’t alien beasties.

Now the bigger mystery here is why the cultural difference between East and West in the popular perception of dragons, although that’s not as clear cut as some texts make it out to be. For example, China too had bad dragons – evil black dragons that were credited with inciting storms and floods – and a dragon slayer (Lu Dongbin). Japan had an evil dragon too called Yamata-no-Orochi, slain* by the often troublesome Japanese trickster god Susanowo. There’s a somewhat parallel tale in ancient Babylon and Assyria between the god Marduk and the ‘dragon’ Tiamat. That a god might slay a dragon, well, I guess if you can have wild dos and feral cats, you can have rogue dragons! Maybe only ‘gods’ are allowed, or have the ability, to slay dragons.

Exceptions to the rule aside, I suggest that the relative differences in the portrayals of dragons reflect back on the nature of their masters – the gods.

The Eastern gods appear to me to be a lot less dysfunctional and all around nicer deities than the Western gods. The Greeks and Norse people may have worshiped Zeus et al. and Odin et al. but you really wouldn’t want them to serve as role models for your kids. 

There is however another, and perhaps even more logical explanation for the differences between Western and Eastern dragons. Dragons are bad in the (Christian) west because the Christian churches decrees it so. Dragons represent the old ways, the old gods, maybe even the devil incarnate. In the non-Christian (Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) east, dragons have no such baggage or stigma attached.

The extraterrestrials ‘gods’ and their dragon pets share something in common. The dragons, much like their masters, the ‘gods’ are as close to immortal as makes no odds. I think it’s safe to say ‘immortal’ in this context isn’t really forever and ever, amen, but rather a damn long time, which, as far as primitive humans were concerned translated as, for all practical purposes, ‘immortal’.  

The bottom line in all this is that the gods are really extraterrestrials; their pets, the dragons are also aliens; part of the god’s bestiary. When the gods left the building (Planet Earth), they took their dragons with them as well as the rest of their so-called ‘mythological’ menagerie. 

*As an aside, the actual slaying of dragons is problematically against such events. If as described (see above) you’d no more go up against a dragon armed only with a sword as you would a T-Rex. You’d want at least an army tank under or at your command or an army of swordsmen at the least (and expect lots of casualties too). Then too, the gods might not permit the slaying of their pets. Of course the Christian church would encourage tall tales of dragon slaying since the dragon was pagan and may even be symbolic of Satan. b

Telling tales of slaying dragons is akin, IMHO, to a fisherman’s tall tales – the six inch fish that got away, after a few drinks at the pub, turns out to be a six foot monster fish! But if dragons were really slain, where are all the mounted and stuffed dragon head trophies that should be on display in all manner of ways and places? Lack of such stuffed trophies doesn’t prove dragons didn’t exist (there are no taxidermic head trophies of sabre-toothed cats either on display), rather that mortals didn’t dare go up against them!

Further reading:

Hargreaves, Joyce; A Little History of Dragons; Walker & Company, New York; 2009:

Shuker, Karl; Dragons: A Natural History; Evergreen, Koln, the Netherlands; 2006: