The Chinese Zodiac - Evidence of late-surviving dinosaurs?

 

CLAIM: The Chinese Zodiac, likely created during the Zhao period in the 5th century BCE, depicts dragons as living creatures alongside other known animals like bulls, monkeys, and roosters. Why would there be a random mythical animal thrown in for no reason? (Hodge & Welch, 2011, p.5) (Thomas, 2013, p.18)

RESPONSE: Just because animals were depicted by ancient cultures does not mean these depictions were intended to depict biological organisms by default. For the ancient Chinese, dragons were real, but not because they were animals that could be found like a rat or an ox. They were quasi-spiritual entities associated with the divine: they were guardians of heaven and of the underworld, deities that controlled nature and presided over the operations of the world, they ruled over the seas, occasionally took on human forms, were companions of rulers, or even demons or workers of chaos. (Carr, 1990) They were associated with the world but not entirely a part of it, as can be seen in the symbolism of dragons as bringers of rain (i.e., life) while “swimming” the divide below the “eternal” sky and above the “mortal” earth. (Yang, et al. 2008, pp. 107-108) They might be compared in some sense to the “light, changeable bodies” of Robert Kirk’s nature spirits. (Kirk, 2007, pp. 5-6) No one, for example, would conclude that Christians believed angels were as physically present as lambs or lions just because artists depict them together despite the fact that Christians do believe that all three exist.

Dragons being “real” in this sense would not preclude them from being included in a grouping with other animals, since the figures of the zodiac were not chosen because they existed in nature, but for what they represented astrologically, psychologically, and mythologically - for what they implied as signs for those who were born in their year. (Ho, 2024) Those born under the year of the Rat, for example, are “cheerful, sociable, and tenacious…” and place a high value on security. (Song, 2023) Those born under the year of the Ox are “Taciturn, upright, patient, unpretentious, and persevering.” (Song, 2024b) Dragons as symbols, being heavenly creatures, represent energy, vitality, goal-orientation, idealism, visionary leadership, ambition, benevolence, and are often tied together with symbolism of the Emperor. (Song, 2024a) This belief endures even into the present day, with Chinese parents doing their best to arrange their marriages and conceptions to produce children in Dragon years, leading to more children being born in these years than any other year (and, shockingly, actually outperforming their peers born under other signs due to the influence of their parents’ beliefs). (Mocan & Yu, 2020) The dragon was included in the zodiac not because it was thought to be an organism on par with a goat or ox, but because it represented transcendent qualities better than any immediate animal could.

And, as we discussed in our essay on the idea that Marco Polo encountered living dinosaurs in medieval China, this claim doesn't address the clear artistic evolution of the dragon in Chinese art. The imperial lung dragon depicted on the traditional Chinese zodiac bears little resemblance to the earliest depictions of Chinese dragons, which were very simple chimeras of snakes and pigs. The fact that the zodiac emerged at the same time that dragon art was becoming more fantastical makes sense if the creature was included for what it represented among a backdrop of other animals, but not if it's assumed that it was only included because it was viewed as one animal among others.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Carr, M. (1990) Chinese Dragon Names. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 13(2), 87-90.

Edmonds, N. J. (2024, December 25) Did Marco Polo see dinosaurs in China? Paleodragonology.

Ho, F. (2024, January 8) Chinese Zodiac. Chinese New Year.

Kirk, R. (2007) The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies. New York Review Books.


Song, S. (2024, January 8) Year of the Dragon. Chinese New Year.

Song, S. (2024, January 8) Year of the Ox. Chinese New Year.

Song, S. (2023, August 18) Year of the Rat. Chinese New Year.

Yang, L., An, D., Turner, J. A. (2008) Handbook of Chinese Mythology. Oxford University Press.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did Marco Polo see dinosaurs in China?

Image
CLAIM:  Marco Polo documented dinosaurs in his travels throughout China between 1271 - 1288 CE. (Butt, 2010 ) (Clarey, 2015 , p.19) (Hodge & Welch, 2011 , p.6) (Hovind, 2003 , 34:24) (Thomas, 2013 , p.19) RESPONSE:  Despite popular opinion throughout young-Earth creationist literature, there is no good reason to believe that Marco Polo witnessed dinosaurs. Polo's own description favors his encounter with a much more likely creature, the extinct 20ft. long crocodile Hanyusuchus . WHAT DID MARCO POLO DESCRIBE? In the records of his travels, Marco Polo mentions giant serpents residing in the province of Karazan, which some young-Earth creationists have interpreted to mean that Polo witnessed living dinosaurs in 13th and 14th-century China. Polo described the creatures as follows (taken from Thomas Wright's 1854 revision of William Marsden's translation): "Here are seen huge serpents, ten paces in length, and ten spans in the girt of the body. At the fore-part, near th...
Read more

Did St. George kill a dinosaur?

Image
  CLAIM:  St. George killed a dinosaur near the end of the third century CE. (Ham, 2006 , p.161) (Ham, 2013 , p.35) (Hodge & Welch, 2011 , p.18) (Hovind, 2003 , 31:46) (Petersen, 2012 , p.165) (Thomas, 2013 , p.18) RESPONSE:  In his 2013 Dinosaurs and the Bible , young-Earth creationist Brian Thomas notes that he believed, as do many other creationists, that St. George's legendary encounter with a dragon is actually shaped around a historical encounter with a late-surviving dinosaur: "The few dinosaurs that remained (after the Flood) were often hunted, as many dragon legends portray. St. George was reputed to have slain a dragon in the Middle East in the late AD 200s, and another legend holds that the prophet Daniel killed a dragon near Babylon centuries earlier. These two examples represent scores of historical accounts from around the world." (Thomas, 2013, p.18) St. George was a historical figure, though he was not reputed to have actually killed a living, breathin...
Read more

Was Elasmotherium the Biblical unicorn?

Image
CLAIM:  The Biblical unicorn may have been an Elasmotherium . (Ham, 2010 , p.30) RESPONSE:  In Ken Ham's New Answers Book 3 , Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell floats the idea that the unicorn of the King James Bible may have been an Elasmotherium , an extinct rhino genus native to Asia. However, this interpretation has numerous theological and scientific problems. BIBLICAL ISSUES - Language and Depiction:  Other young-Earth creationist ministries like Creation Ministries International and Got Questions point out that the Hebrew word that the KJV translates as unicorn, re'em , likely refers to a type of bovine given that it is a plausible cognate of the Assyrian rimu  (wild bull/ass) and/or the Ugaritic rum  (auroch, wild buffalo). (Got Questions, n.d.; Wieland, 1992; Wiktionary, 2024) The most likely candidate for the re'em  was the auroch ( Bos primigenius ), a megafaunal bovine well known to those in the Ancient Near East as a symbol of strength and divinity that w...
Read more