Planet power, plus dinosaurs and dragons: myth and reality of heaven and earth
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Given that we've been discussing astronomy / astrology and their relationship to the alphabet so intensely in recent weeks, I'm pleased to announce this important conference that is about to be convened: “The Power of the Planets: The Social History of Astral Sciences Between East and West”, May 20–21, 2024, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali – Università di Bologna (Ravenna, Italy).
I warmly recommend that you take a close look at the header images of two objects in The Cleveland Museum of Art: Mirror with a Coiling Dragon, China, Tang Dynasty 618-907 (https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1995.367), Drachma – Sasanian, Iran, reign of Hormizd II, 4th century (https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1966.738).
The quality of the photographs is extraordinarily fine and detailed. Using the zoom and expand functions, you can see things not clearly visible to the naked eye. Especially noteworthy is the jagged dorsal fin / frill / spine that runs along the back of the dragon on the Tang mirror and is a conspicuous counterpart of many species of dinosaurs.
Organizing committee: Prof. Antonio Panaino, Prof. Paolo Ognibene, Dr. Jeffrey Kotyk
Registration: jeffrey.kotyk@unibo.it
Cultures in East and West Asia both embraced astrology during Late Antiquity and further developed it during the medieval period. Even prior to this, we must consider the Egyptian and Mesopotamian precedents. This conference will look at how various societies specifically integrated or reacted to astrology as a science and method for prognostication. This will highlight connections as well as transfers of knowledge and technology between different cultures. We will explore the multicultural interactions in history that stemmed from interest in astral sciences. The social roles and political significance of astrologers will also be explored.The conference runs from May 20th to 21st, 2024 (schedule TBA).
Speakers
Mathieu Ossendrijver
Michelle McCoy
Garima Garg
Stamatina Mastorakou
Sooyeun Yang
Martin Gansten
Inês Bénard da Costa
Daniel Patrick Morgan
Luis Ribeiro
Levente László
Attendance is open, but please register: jeffrey.kotyk@unibo.it
Schedule
Monday, May 20
8:45-9:00 – Antonio Panaino: Opening Remarks
9:00-9:30 – Mathieu Ossendrijver
9:30-10:00 – Michelle McCoy
10:00-11:00 – Coffee Break
11:00-11:30 – Garima Garg
11:30-12:00 – Stamatina Mastorakou
12:00-14:30 – Lunch Break
14:30-15:00 – Levente László
15:00-15:30 – Martin Gansten
Tuesday, May 21
9:00-9:30 – Inês Bénard da Costa
9:30-10:00 – Daniel Patrick Morgan
10:00-11:00 – Coffee Break
11:00-11:30 – Luis Ribeiro
11:30-12:00 – Sooyeun Yang
12:00-12:30 – Jeffrey Kotyk
Closing Remarks
"Sino-Iranica: Investigating Relations Between Medieval China and Sasanian Iran." Hosted at the ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali (DBC), Ravenna, Italy. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101018750.
- "From Chariot to Carriage" (5/5/24)
- "Winged lions through time and space" (5/4/24)
- "Roman dodecahedra between Southeast Asia and England" (4/30/24)
- "Sino-Iranica and Sino-Arabica" (3/20/24
[Thanks to Geoff Wade]
Violet ZHU said,
May 7, 2024 @ 1:38 pm
Thanks！
Lasius said,
May 8, 2024 @ 3:15 am
No dinosaurs I know are commonly reconstructed with a jagged frill like that.
You may be thinking of the dorsal sails of some spinosaurids or Ouaranosaurus, but these would have looked very different in life.
Victor Mair said,
May 8, 2024 @ 5:49 am
@Lasius
Of course, the ancients were not schooled paleontologists, and their interpretations of whatever remains they found would not be the sort of professional, anatomically accurate / precise reconstructions whereof you speak, but artistic representations.
Here I defer to colleagues like Adrienne Mayor who have studied these matters for years.
Lasius said,
May 8, 2024 @ 6:03 am
No dinosaurs unearthed in Eastern Asia would have had anything resembling these frills. And the few sail-backed Dinosaurs we know from North Africa only have extremely fragmentary remains, which people back then would not have been able to associate with "reptiles", let alone assemble and get anything resembling accurate reconstructions.
The frills on this dragon rather resemble the dorsal fins we find in many fish species, and this is in my opinion the most simple explanation. Similarly I see no reason why alligators and waterspouts shouldn't suffice as inspirations for East Asian dragons.
I do not think dinosaur remains inspired any mythological creatures, when subfossil mammalian remains were so much more common and complete and easier to interpret.
Again I recommend this blogpost by Mark Witton.
http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2016/04/why-protoceratops-almost-certainly.html
I thin this point in particular can be applied to basically any mythological creature for which fossil inspirations are porposed:
Victor Mair said,
May 8, 2024 @ 6:18 am
The debate begins.
Adrienne Mayor said,
May 13, 2024 @ 9:47 am
Dragons worldwide are typically composite creatures, chimeras combining the features of many living creatures and in some cases fossils of extinct creatures. The distinctive antlers of the Chinese Dragon have been identified by paleontologist Kenneth Oakley as those of an extinct deer known from its fossil remains (Decorative and Symbolic Uses of Fossils (Oxford, 1985). The crest along the back might be imaginary. I don't think it corresponds to any dinosaur skeletal remains. A crest might have been suggested by the "crest" of a rarely seen giant oarfish, whose bodies sometimes wash up on beaches. Ancient Greek dragons have similar crests. Other influential creatures for Chinese dragons could be reptiles or birds, noting the 3 (sometimes 5) toes of Chinese dragons; therapod and sauropod footprints in China are identified as tracks of fabulous mythic creatures by Chinese farmers. The discovery of a very long fossil backbone of an unknown, extinct mammal or dinosaur might appear to confirm the existence of dragons. Even large fossilized Permain trees with scale-like patterns have been identified as "dragons" in China, most recently in 2016. Also note that for millennia Chinese have referred to large fossil bones, of both mammals and dinosaurs, "dragon bones," so they themselves associate strange petrified remains with dragons. Paleontologists in China have used this longstanding popular association of fossils with dragons to discover new dinosaur deposits and even some new dinosaur species.
Consider the example of the legendary Klagenfurt Dragon of Austria: the dragon was first a medieval folk story, then centuries later, local quarrymen who knew the story and came across a huge, unknown fossil mammal skull identified it as the dragon from the old tradition. The skull (of an extinct rhinoceros) then became the model for the head of the statue of the legendary dragon. Dragons can be imaginary, but when fossils come to light, they may seem to be physical proof for those who knew the story.
David Marjanović said,
May 14, 2024 @ 4:07 pm
Rather, it ended six years ago, and I shamefully missed that. (I've met Mark Witton and read others of his blog posts – and peer-reviewed publications –, just not this one.)
Yes; and I agree that any Scythians trundling (for some reason) through the desert (not the steppe, the desert!) and coming across Protoceratops would very likely have interpreted it as a griffin. What we lack is any evidence that this actually happened – for example griffin depictions/descriptions in the Middle East or Greece or even in Scythian art becoming more Protoceratops-like at some point.
Adrienne Mayor said,
May 15, 2024 @ 3:07 pm
Scythian nomads and many others "trundled" across the deserts of Asia for millennia, carrying out trade and prospecting for gold, for which they left the main caravan trails for years at a time, to sift the sands for placer gold and gold dust in the deserts.
The information that first filtered back to the Greek world from travelers across Asia began with vague reports of strange quadrupeds with beaks in the deserts (7th-6th c BC).
As travel and trade increased, so did details about the creatures. Over the centuries (5th-4th-3rd c BC), more details about the griffin animals emerged, describing eggs in nests on the ground. With this new information, Greek vase painters began to depict griffins tending their eggs in nests on the ground. Speculations on the appearance and behavior of griffins also arose, with some emphasizing avian-like behavior and picturing the animal with feathers, while others wondering if they had scales like reptiles. Later writers speculated that griffins did not have wings for flight, that they could make short hops, and so on.
So details accrued over time that are suggestive of observations of some sort of physical evidence in the territory of griffins, that is Central Asia. I think that evidence could have been dinosaur fossils and nests. Of course there is no way to prove or disprove this scenario; what survives of ancient writings and artworks is a only tiny portion of what once existed. The idea that observations of fossil dinosaur remains in the desert played a role in the belief and imagery of griffins is a plausible explanation for interrelated Greco-Roman griffin literature and art of the 7th century BC to AD 300.
The imaginary hybrid creatures that combine bird and mammal features in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean art, for which no written explanations are attested, are irrelevant to this hypothesis.
David Marjanović said,
May 18, 2024 @ 2:49 pm
Again, the gold is not in the desert, it's northwest of it and pretty far away. I'll link directly to the map this time.
Gold prospection is going on right now in Mongolia – not in the desert, but in the steppe.
We don't have any Greek texts from that time, do we? (Except for inscriptions on stone like the law code of Gortyn.)
Scales are not preserved in the Gobi, so the only explanation I can see for this is the snake component of ordinary dragons.
I'm perfectly fine with a parsimony argument; I just think you haven't actually succeeded in putting one together.
Why, given the fact that they provide the most parsimonious explanation for all depictions, and descriptions of the shape, of griffins?
Adrienne Mayor said,
May 19, 2024 @ 6:52 am
"gold is not in the desert"
you are assuming that the prospectors for gold sands the caravan trails all traveled East. Many traveled West, passing thru the Gobi and other deserts toward the Junggar and Turfan basins and Altai region, where they transmitted oral accounts of their journey to Greeks and others. Ancient historians and geologists do not know all the locations of gold deposits sifted in antiquity.
"Greek texts 7th-6th century BC"
The first written use of the word "gryps" for Griffin that is attested appeared in the epic poem by Aristeas in about 650 BC, the first known Greek to travel East as far as the Altai region. His work is now lost but Herodotus read it in about 470 BC and quoted from it, as did Aeschylus and others.
"Scales not preserved in the Gobi"
I believe that ankylosaurs and other armored dinosaurs are preserved it the Gobi and in the Junggar Basin. Ancient observers could have seen such fossils or the scutes and recognized scales. But the point of the ancient speculations about feathers or scales on the Griffin cryptid is that they, much like modern paleontologists, attempted to visualize the appearance of an unknown creature only known by oral descriptions and/or fossil remains that suggest avian, reptilian, and mammalian features.
"Imaginary composite creatures" abound in ancient art, mammals with bird heads, mammals with human heads, mammals with fish heads, bulls with human heads, humans with bulls heads, horses with wings, birds with human heads, humans with reptile heads, and so on. The griffin-like creatures in prehistorical art of the Near East and Mediterranean region are catalogued by art historians in this genre of imaginary composites iconography. No writings are attested to give any information about these images. We don't know whether beaked quadrupeds depicted in early art even had a name or whether they were believed to exist anywhere–unlike the Griffins described as real creatures of Central Asia in art and literature 600 BC-AD 300. One can guess that Greeks who were familiar with the more ancient decorative and symbolic bird-headed quadrupeds may have associated them with the later images of the paleocryptid called the Griffin, but otherwise the coincidence is not meaningful to the lore that coalesced around the gryps creature of Asia.