If dinosaurs and humans were created on the same day of creation (as the Bible teaches),
and once walked the Earth together, it’s logical to conclude that humans would have left behind
at least two different types of evidence. First, similar to how we take pictures of places we visit
and wildlife we see in modern times, those living hun-dreds or thousands of years ago
would likely have drawn or carved pictures of dino-saurs and dinosaur-like creatures,
as well as many other animals. (Indeed, as we’ve addressed in other videos,
as well as in articles and books, it seems that’s exactly what they did). Second,
just as we tell stories today of things that we’ve actually seen and heard, ancient people
would’ve also told stories about dinosaurs, IF they ever saw and encountered these creatures.
People often refer to stories of the distant past as legends. Although sometimes told in
a believable fashion, many legends no doubt are pure fantasy. They’re filled with imaginary people
and animals performing all sorts of unbelievable, magical, myth-ical deeds. Rip Van Winkle sleeping
for 20 years under a shade tree, or Paul Bunyan and his blue ox creating Minnesota’s lakes with
their giant footprints, can be catego-rized as legendary characters performing imaginary feats.
Other legends however are not so fanciful. Stories that are ubiquitous, included in reputable,
historical writings as factual, and supported by science cannot reasonably be disregarded as
“just unbelievable legends.” Take for example the legend of a worldwide flood. Stories have surfaced
in hundreds of cultures throughout the world that tell of a huge, catastrophic flood which
destroyed most of mankind and that was survived by only a few individuals and animals. Furthermore
there’s a lot of scientific evidence exists suggesting the occurrence of a universal flood
sometime in the past. Ancient worldwide stories of a worldwide flood are exactly what we’d expect to
find IF a worldwide deluge ever actually happened. But what about dinosaurs? Is there any evidence
from history that humans lived with these reptiles from the past? Are there stories of humans seeing
and possibly in-teracting with large reptilian creatures that possessed massive tails, fearsome
teeth, hefty legs, horned heads, and more? Indeed, a wide variety of stories of large
reptiles have been passed down through the ages from cultures all over the world. Many of these
creatures sound very much like dinosaurs, or dinosaur-like (marine or flying) reptiles.
However in the stories they’re never called dinosaurs because the term “dinosaur” (meaning
“fearfully great reptile”) was not coined until the early 1840s (when fossilized
dinosaur bones were first dis-covered and reconstructed in modern times). The name
previously attached to these “fearfully great reptiles” was “dragon” (from the Greek drakon).
Have some (perhaps many) dragon legends been embellished over time?
Abso-lutely. Just as people today tend to embellish the size of a fish they catch or
of a bear they see while hiking, people in the past said things about dragons that undoubtedly
were exaggerations. Such inaccuracies however do not negate the overriding truth that “fearfully
great reptiles” of many different shapes and sizes once lived with humans—anymore than the
differences in worldwide flood legends mean we must discount the idea of a universal flood.
Were legends of dinosaur-like reptiles only to appear in a handful of cultures around the world
late in history, one might well argue for their dismissal in legitimate historical discussions.
However, there’s actually a vast amount of testimony from all over the world for
these animals previously called “dragons.” Many of the same historians, scientists,
and authors who are adamant that drag-ons were PURELY mythical creatures often testify to
the ubiquity of dragon legends. The famed twentieth-century evolutionist Carl Sagan
admitted that “The implacable mutual hostility between man and dragon…is not
a Western anomaly. It is a worldwide phenomenon.” Evolutionist Ker Than acknowledged that “Dragons
are…found in the myths and legends of cultures all around the world.”
Although the 1996 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia claimed
that “Dragons did not really exist,” they admitted “every country had them in its mythology.”
Evolutionist Daniel Cohen confessed that “People all over the world have believed in dragons.”
Several years ago, Animal Planet aired a program about dragons that incorporated legend, alleged
scientific facts, and various theories (including, and especially, evolu-tion). It was a highly
publicized film that put a spotlight on dragons. Although it was far from a legitimate documentary,
several statements from the film reinforce the worldwide nature of dragon stories.
Within the first minute of this pro-evolutionary program, the viewer learns that:
There is one creature remembered in the legends of almost every human cul-ture that’s ever existed.
A creature depicted with remarkable similarity by the Chinese, the Aztecs, even the Inuit who live
in a frozen land where no reptiles are found—even they have stories of this animal: the dragon.
Cultures from different continents, people who had no contact with one another yet all of them have
stories describing the same mythical animal. Whether evolutionist or creationist,
skeptic or Christian, everyone seems to be in agreement that dragon legends are universal.
Second, regardless of one’s religious beliefs, virtually everyone also agrees that dragon
legends are characterized by their long-standing tradition. In his book, History Begins at Sumer,
Dr. Samuel Kramer observed how “the dragon-slaying theme was an important motif in the Sumerian
mythology of the third millennium B.C.” The dragon seems to have always been in the mind of man.
Animal Planet declared: “This is the animal about which humankind has throughout our history
been most compelled by.” Though we would highly disagree with Science Digest’s extended,
evolutionary time-table, the journal suggested that “the earliest dragonlike myths may have
originated as long as 100,000 years ago… Dragon legends have been with humanity since the dawn of
recorded history…” Dragon legends are not merely cute stories that our ances-tors began telling
in only the last few centuries. They’ve been told all over the world…for thousands of years.
Such antiquity and ubiquity deserves an adequate ex-planation.
WHY did ancient peoples all around the world tell stories of large reptilian crea-tures
with serpentine necks, elongated bodies, enormous tails, hard skin, stout legs,
spiked backs, knobby heads, fearsome teeth and claws, snake-like tongues,
horned or crested heads, and some with bat-like wings? Evolutionist Daniel Cohen admitted,
“No creature that ever lived looked more like dragons than dinosaurs.” The 1997 edition of The
New Encyclopedia Britannica referred to dinosaurs as “gigantic, prehistoric, drag-on-like reptiles.”
In 2003, a nearly complete dinosaur skull was excavated in South Dakota. The long, knobby, spiky
skull appeared so similar to ancient descriptions and paintings of certain dragons, the dinosaur
was named Dracorex, meaning “dragon king.” Evolution-ists contend it’s a “dinosaur” that’s
“66-million-years-old” and “looks like a dragon.” In 2011, fossils of a huge, extinct flying reptile
were excavated in Australia. The pterosaur had an estimated wingspan of 21 feet. When a study
of these fossils was fi-nally published ten years later (in 2021), one of the scientists working
on the project said, “It’s the closest thing we have to a real-life dragon.”
The fact is, the only reason to reject what appears so obvious and be “surprised” of the
similarities between dragons and dinosaurs, is if a person buys into the faulty,
as-sumption-based, evolutionary timeline. As evolutionist Daniel Cohen confessed:
“The problem is time. As far as we know, all the dinosaurs died out over 70 million years ago.
That long ago there were no people on the earth. So who could remember the dino-saurs?”
Renowned atheist Carl Sagan speculated that humans MAY very well “remember” dinosaurs.
He recognized the ubiquity of dragon legends and indicated that the “per-vasiveness” of
these stories “is probably no accident.” Dr. Sagan hypothesized that “dragons posed a
problem for our protohuman ancestors of a few million years ago.” He then specifically addressed
dinosaurs and dragons in a series of questions: Could there have been manlike creatures who
actually encountered Tyranno-saurus rex? Could there have been dinosaurs that escaped the
extinctions in the late Cretaceous Period? Could the pervasive dreams and common fear of “monsters”
which children develop shortly after they are able to talk, be evolu-tionary vestiges of quite
adaptive—baboonlike—responses to dragons and owls? Notice that even Dr. Carl Sagan, one of the
foremost evolutionists of the twentieth cen-tury, could not get around the fact that dragons sound
eerily similar to dinosaurs. Such speculations on the origin of dragons would be meaningless unless
one believed that dragons and dinosaurs appear (at least sometimes) to be one and the same.
Still, the best explanation that Dr. Sagan could conjure up, while still holding onto some
sem-blance of the faulty evolutionary geologic timetable, is that our very early “baboonlike”
ancestors encountered dinosaurs and passed their memories of them on down to modern man.
Another evolutionist by the name of Ker Than also attempted to explore “what may have
inspired the look of dragons.” surprisingly, Ker Than acknowledged: “Of all the creatures that ever
lived, pterosaurs probably most closely resemble the dragons of Eu-ropean legend. Reptilian and
featherless, pterosaurs flew on wings of hide that were supported by a single long and boney finger.
The smallest pterosaur was the size of a sparrow, while Quetzalcoatlus—named after the Aztec god—had
a wingspan of more than 40 feet, making it the largest flying creature ever.” Indeed, we agree
with Ker Than on this point—extinct dinosaur-like flying reptiles with large wingspans, claws,
slender tails, and toothed beaks more closely resemble many dragons, by a considerable mar-gin,
than any animal alive today. Incredibly, Ker Than’s number
one explanation for dragon legends centered around—not animals—but comets. He wrote:
To people living in ancient times, a comet streaking through the skies with an icy tail
millions of miles long would have closely resembled such a creature….
If comets were the inspiration for some dragons, it could help explain why dragons are ubiquitous
in the myths and legends of so many different cultures in all corners of the world.
Are the litany of ancient dragon legends around the world indebted to comets for their existence?
Such an idea is simply nonsensical. The explanations of dragon legends
from leading evolutionists over the past half century are bizarre and irrational.
If it were not for evolutionists’ commitment to their faulty billion-year timetable,
it would appear they would have few problems accepting what is so obvious—that
dinosaurs previously were called dragons, and humans once lived with them on Earth.
Though evolutionist Daniel Cohen admitted, “No creature that ever lived looked more like
dragons than dinosaurs,” he went on to say that since dinosaur fossils are supposedly millions
of years old, “We have to assume that dinosaurs died out long be-fore anyone could remember them….
We must assume (he wrote) that dinosaurs have nothing to do with dragons.” In truth,
the problem is not with dragon legends and dino-saurs, but with the assumption-based,
faulty geologic timeline of evolutionists. The reasonable view is the biblical creation view:
that humans and dinosaurs were created by God during the Creation week, and thus once
lived together. The stories of their interaction were passed down from generation to generation.
When you take time to really think about it, that’s exactly
what we would expect to find if humans once lived with dinosaurs: ancient stories of “dragons” from
all around the world. In reality, the bib-lical and historical evidence fits together perfectly.
If you’d like to learn more about dinosaurs, the Bible, and history,
as well as crea-tion and evolution, be sure to visit us at apologeticspress.org.