I have found myself struggling with the dragon myth (what a surprise)it found its inspiration while examining a completely different subject, that being somewhat more ecological in nature and why some of the most vibrant myths came from places where reptiles had not been for a very very long time, and the large and fearsome beasts had taken different mythological (but similar to other cultures) places. The dragon was truly a wandering hybrid, and in many ways it nature split deep in the past at that cross roads in the middle east, along with certain fundamental views of the world and humans place in it and their relationship with nature. Now among the problems of sorting all this out, I found myself running into internal barriers like how you explore this without sounding like I'm culture bashing, or seeing all this only through 21st century eyes alone. How can I carry the context of all these various times and people in my head (the pre-Christian celt, roman both pre and post Christian, and the cultures that emerged after the fall of the empire through to medieval times, in the west and the blizzard of cultures in the east many of which had under laying unifying themes)and how do you distill this down. It a long walk from a small section in a book about wildlife and the state of bears in central Europe to examining the mythic and cultural payload of dragons in western culture, and with no one to bounce ideas off of a lonely task, its not like you can walk up to just anyone in south west Missouri and start talking about this (not to be unkind to Missouri this is not a topic you just start taking about with just about anyone any where, I dare you to try it) so I'm on a quest it would seem, not to slay a dragon but to understand him. Well they are a break from the myths surrounding the Northwest passage, but thats a story for another time.

In trying to sort out the dragons of east and west I got lost along the way. I was looking at the use of the dragon as a symbolic barrier and started looking at other barrier figures and came across the "King of the Wood" now the short form of the story is this king/knight is a guardian of a sacred grove and at some point he is replaced when a challenger captures the Golden Bough in the most sacred tree in the grove. Now its been said of dragon that the are a symbol of greed with a taste for gold and virginal maidens. Now its commonly thought the a dragon has little practical use for either one, the wise guy in me would say that when you look like a dragon having gold might be helpful when dealing with maidens of any sort, but lets leave that aside, and get back to this guy wandering around in this sacred grove.

The "King of the Wood" seems to get little out of being king except being the guardian of this special branch of a special tree and in the end getting killed by some lucky challenger in single combat. So I thought well here you have two figures willing to die to protect something special but of little apparent use to them. So trying to remember that we are looking at multiple levels of symbolism the king of the wood story is related to the Goddess Diana (the origin location of the story is her sacred grove)and the Green Man. After following the typical soap opera that fills greek and roman myths, I boiled it down to nature, spring, fertility and a hero challenge. The common dragon stories of the west also carry some of these elements often in a more abstract form.

So I thought I would follow the Green Man around for a while to see where he would lead and wouldn't know he ended up heading east toward the holy land and in some from in India as part of the great wheel of life. So where does that leave our dragon friends, well here is where dragons become protectors and symbols of good fortune, fertility, success, and higher spiritual awareness. Well there is much more but thats the half baked ideas I have been working on tonight.

I got inspired to write a little thing on dragons after I came across a section in a book on large predatory animals, when it slid into some of the mythology surrounding them. Not to give to much of my story away I found the symbolism of the dragon a very rich vein of thought and started digging and so far the story has taken me right round the world. With side trips to the goddess Diana, and the various incarnations of the Green Man in some mythic form from the United Kingdom (a short hand of all those countries contained with in that label, you know who you are) to India and how he pops up in the holy books that have their origins in the middle east (guess which two.

I have also had to wander around in the psychological world for a bit but right now I'm trying to get back to the dragon of Europe and the west, and dammed it politics doesn't find its way into the story. It's become a bit like trying to collect glitter out of a thick rug there is always more.

Well thats whats up any ideas about dragons are always welcome, I always knew that an ideas was going drive me crazy who would have thought that a dragon would be at the wheel.

Well This showed up in the old e-mail: every heard if this site I had not; The enigmatic Gungywamp monuments

Gungywamp is a 100-acre area in Groton (Connecticut, USA) that archaeologists consider a treasure. Its exact origins remain a mystery, but its unusual stonework and artifacts span centuries. Among Gungywamp's features are stone chambers that researchers believe were Colonial-era root cellars or animal birthing shelters erected by English-Scottish immigrants. Of these, two are intact. One contains a solar calendar: during the spring and autumn equinox, the sun shines through an opening in the west wall and lights the opposite wall, which reflects some light into a smaller, interior, beehive-shaped chamber. Solar timetables helped farmers decide when to plant and harvest crops or avoid crop freeze in the winter and crop rot in the summer. Archaeologists have found no evidence to support the popular theory that medieval Celtic monks built the chambers. Still, the lack of artifacts in the chambers leaves room for speculation.

North of the chambers are two sets of double concentric circles comprising 21 large quarried stones laid end to end. The circles, about 11 feet in diameter, were most likely part of tanning mills. Gungywamp's southeastern area contains two disjointed rows of standing stones set in sockets of smaller stones. A bird is carved into one of the stones. Some researchers believe the stones are the remains of a stone wall, but others won't commit to any theory. And no one knows who may have carved the bird, or why.

Near the disjointed structure are stone bridges and various rounded stones atop boulders. This may have been a drainage system for water runoff, or Native Americans could have used them to entrap animals. Some stones also contain carved letters that may have been surveyor or boundary marks. Archaeologists have unearthed pottery shards and crude stone flakes used to make arrowheads dating from 2000 BCE to 700 BCE. Some say ancient Native Americans used the area and built the structures for religious ceremonies prior to the Colonial era.

Gungywamp is all on private property. Researchers include members of the Gungywamp Society, an education and research group dedicated to preserving Gungywamp and other archaeological sites in Connecticut. Information also is available at

www.gungywamp.com and at www.stonestructures.org/html/gungywamp.h....
Source: Courant.com (6 February 2008)

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I found this in the inbox today and thought it might be interesting to blog about this; first is one on Solutrean hypothesis, which in an idea that early man may have migrated to the "New World" from Europe as proposed by Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian. Now the idea itself is controversial but the e-mail talks about a conference he was giving a presentation at and the other speakers. For clarity I will do the copy and past thing here as I don't want to be accused of taking something out of context or have someone think these are my words or ideas ( to the admin if this is the wrong thing to do let me know):

Hi,
(sorry about my earlier meail)
Although I think Stanford is wrong about his Solutrean hypothesis, what in the world is he doing speaking at a conference with Edo Nyland (billed as a world renowned Linguistic Archaeologist, a rather fancy way of saying
kook) and Gunnar Thompson, Hugh Montgomery, etc??

http://www.atlanticconference.org/

Hugh Montgomery, to quote from I think one of his books, holds a Ph.D. in Audiology, a Diploma in Contract Law and the professional qualification of Inginiero Comercial (Chile). He is the author of a number of technical and historical papers and books including; ‘The Montgomery Millennium’ and ‘The God-Kings of Europe’. He was a businessman and then became President of Megatrend University in Belgrade. His book The God-Kings of Europe (published by Book Tree who publish ET, Atlantis, etc stuff and the Protocols of Zion) purports to trace the
lineage of Jesus from the 'Odinic' dyansty of Babylonic Kings whose name
was Ouoin (or rather part of the name of Babylonian kings from the Kassite dynasty on. To quote Montgomery, "Uouin means "Lord" in Aryan or "The One", and is the same as the Hebrew "Adonai" or, in Kassite, Iddina or Agum. "

I can't find this name as part of any names in the two kinglists I found, maybe it does exist but../..

The name, he says, became Odin, and he traces Jesus's lineage through these Bablyonian kings to David, to Jesus, then on to the Knights Templar, then on to the Angevin Dynasty, etc. His book The God-Kings of England claims of course that the Angevin Dynasty descends from Jesus.

Unusally for such nonsense, I can't find any discussion of his books using Google, just sites trying to sell them. Part of God-Kings of Europe is on
Google: http://tinyurl.com/2kx2kv

Evan Jones is controversial but not a kook. Gunnar Thompson we have probably discussed here before, and is similar to Gavin Menzies with whom he works. Olshin -- well, here is an email of his to MapHist:

Dear "MapHist-ers":
I find myself writing yet again to get fellow historians, et al. to come forward (as Geoff Wade has) and put a firm "no" on the ideas and methodologies being put forward on this whole Menzies / 1421 debate, which has now come to include the "Map with Ship".

Thompson has issued another e-mail posting (see below) about the "Map with Ship", but I must repeat that he has not seen any of the other maps in the Rossi collection, Marcian F. Rossi being the original owner of the "Map with Ship". The maps have NOT been tested paleographically, nor have the inks nor parchments been tested with modern methods. Nothing can be said about them other than conjectures about their depictions and representations. Only I have seen the other maps, and I have just drafted a very cautious initial study of the collection, including the "Map with Ship".

It is absurd, therefore, to conclude that Marco Polo was off venturing in the Canadian Artic. There is no real evidence to support this. Nothing in "Il Milione" would lead to such a conclusion, and the maps in the Rossi collection while interesting, have not been validated. Moreover, if Thompson were to look at all the maps, including the "Map with Ship", he would notice how little connection, in fact, there is between Polo's narrative ("Il Milione") and these cartographic works.

Thompson goes so far as to state in his e-mail posting that "Marco Polo's map of the Canadian Arctic may have led Mercator to place the 'Mare Dulce' in the Canadian Northwest. This geographical feature that is seen on the 1418 Ming Map is most likely an early portrayal of Mackenzie Bay, Mackenzie River, and Great Bear Lake." This is absurd on a number of levels. First, THERE IS NO MARCO POLO MAP OF THE CANADIAN ARCTIC. That is simply a fabrication; none of the maps in the Rossi collection suggest anything like the Canadian Arctic. Moreover, since there was no such map, Mercator could not have looked at it. The "1418 Ming" map has been addressed elsewhere in the MapHist discussion, so need I say more here?

Historian of cartography can only really work with two kinds of evidence: maps and geographic/navigational texts. Marco Polo left us no maps -- the Rossi maps may be related to his explorations, but as of this writing, we are not in any way sure. As for geographic/navigational texts, Marco Polo's narrative, in all the manuscript forms that are extant, contains no maps, nor directions for a map, nor barely a suggestion of a map.

The Menzies-Thompson technique (like those of Graham Hancock and his "Fingerprints of the Gods") is to "connect the unconnectable" through a series of unsubstantiated conjectures. This makes great story-telling, but it is not history of cartography, and should not be considered as such.

Finally, in another e-mail posting, Thompson says that "if a Chinese Admiral sailed seven times between China and Africa, had ships 400-500 feet long, fleets of hundreds of vessels, thousands of mariners, and the commercial and scientific support of countries from India to Egypt--then this is someone who could have sailed to America and around the world." Look, Thor Heyerdahl also showed us that navigators from the South Pacific (and from Egypt) COULD have sailed great, trans-oceanic distances -- but this does not prove that they DID.

The accusation is always leveled that scholars like myself are simply "Eurocentric historians" (another Thompson term). I have great respect for Chinese technological achievements, as I am sure Geoff Wade does. I have taught in a Chinese university (in Taiwan), and Wade teaches in one now. I am even married to a Chinese person, and speak the language. But facts are facts, and there is NO cartographic evidence as of this writing that the Chinese (or Marco Polo on behalf of the Chinese) came to America prior to Columbus.

Thompson writes: "The public is holding us accountable; and we are failing." If the public is indeed holding us accountable to anything, it is to be the bearers of the proper investigation of history. Both university-trained and amateur historians are welcome, by the way -- we just need to all practice the same methods.

-Benjamin B. Olshin

Garth Norman - a Mormon archaeologist with some reputation but whose Ancient America Foundation exists to prove the Mormon case. He can't believe Native Americans could have hair on their faces and twists the evidence to prove they fit in with his religion.

Gerard Ludic -- retired biologist who then found Ogam in North America, cairns, etc. but if this anti-semites site says: "Gerard has stated that he believes that there was a race of "White Aboriginals" in addition to the better known "Red Indians" of North America. These people were, Gerard thinks, possibly related to the Caucasian genetic stock represented by "Kinnewick Man" whose bones have caused much recent controversy (see the "American Neanderthal" news item on my Site Index). Gerard speculates that these "White Aboriginals" may have come originally from Atlantis about 10,000 years ago." http://www.michaelbradley.info/grail/mem...

Steven Sora - secret societies, Templars, etc.

--
Doug Weller Moderator, sci.archaeology.moderated
Director and Moderator The Hall of Ma'at http://www.thehallofmaat.com Doug and Helen's Dogs: http://www.dougandhelen.com Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk

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Now this e-mail covers a lot of ground that DG readers care about and wondered how do you folks feel about this, I have my own ideas about some of what has been present in the above but wanted your thoughts. So from the snowy Mid-west later.

I looking at early maps of the mound the flippers a dissapeared and reappeared many times and in some descriptions looked more like eggs. The loss of these mounds are accelerating and the old feeling of despair sets in (kind of forgotten how fragile the past is). I'm trying to write this up as a news story so its e-mail time, as always more soon.

I'm a bit under the weather tonight so if I make less sense than usual thats my excuse. To follow up on the destruction of archaeological sites through burial I wrote an essay on the subject in the late 90's and how it destroyed the Kennewick man's site (I've posted it on my Blogger site http://argosfalcon-thetraveler.blogspot.... ).

I may have told this story before about my experience running into the wall of (we really don't want to hear that) science. It goes like this; I was working on a site in the early 90's just out side Santa Barbara along the coast, the site consisted of a number of burials and those remains were physically of the type one would expect of the pre-7000 B.P. populations. So when the radio-carbon dates came in at 11,500 B.P. the roof came in on us, the no thats not possibles and the questions on sample materials, on how and where we took the samples filled the air so to speak. So we retook some samples got dates around 7500 B.P. and all was right with the world, we never published the findings and the site was forgotten.

With mound sites, they have a very different history one that revolves around some of the earliest ideas about the origins of native Americans and others that may have come before Columbus. The thing that has colored the whole topic steams from the earliest writings about Native people (they are to primitive to have built these monuments) and the need to fit things into world view shaped by certain religions, popular folk histories, and prevailing social theory's. I would also add that in the 18th century there was a thriving fiction market in which the old world met the new in terms closer to the book of Mormon than the Sagas of the Vikings (in fact there was a law suite by one Albert Spalding, against J. Smith over stealing the body of a book that was to be published by someone Smith was working for).

I can on about this but this flu is getting the better of me, and I know I'm missing some of the points commenter's have written. So more soon, as I get my scanner up I'll post some material of a visual nature for you guys to ponder over.

Well back again, I have had a hard time writing anything these last few weeks and while casting about for time wasting things to do (not hard for me) I went out and bought some mag.s and some used books. After pretending to look for a measurement term (what is a half are when building a ship, just the term itself brings endless ideas and turns out to mean 18") where I ended up in Japan and thats a story in it self, I had to turn off the computer and read something. So I came across a story about the Serpent mound here in the mid-west, funny thing its really a type of sea serpent or dragon and as been damaged in the last few years by a well meaning attempt to stabilize the site by dumping soil on it erasing its flippers. So I'm now trying to chase down images (maps drawing,etc) of it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So I have gone from hiding for one set of research problems, into a whole new set. Looking dirt sea serpents in the mid-west their myths and meanings more soon.

So heres the deal to night, I wanted to say thank you for your ideas on the dream stuff. Would have loved to have written more but another damn medical inconvenience got in the way. So what can I say, but thanks and my time is short {but after 50 who's isn't) through all the stuff (pick an unpleasant word, for an unpleasant situation)you all were there and I can not pass the new year transition with out saying so. Your ideas have been sound and useful, and the endless rabbit holes of thought you discover never fail to entertain. Now back to a late night frozen world.

I have been back from the hospital a few days now, and this morning had a dream that left me a little disturbed, and wonder what you folks thought of it. Its starts with me walking down a side walk in a strange city (not just unknown to me, but new in style, for most of my life these cityscapes have been along the coast with the buildings of wood or adobe) here I was surrounded by stone and brick buildings and felt so very inland. As I walked along I was greeted by several large dogs. The first a black one you was mildly happy to see me, the second a golden on you met me like an old friend, and the third a gray one who took my hand in his mouth and lead me up a flight of stone stairs to a courtyard between two stone churches both had there doors open with blackness beyond. In the courtyard was an old woman who turned to me and said "he must really like you" the dog released my hand and I walked down the stairs to the side walk. As I walked along a young child came up along side of me and slipped her hand in mine as we walked, now I have no children but I felt as if I was her father. Then I woke up with an almost haunted feeling, the image of the city its sounds the whole thing so clear along with sensations and emotions that went with the dream were saying something but what?

I have had this idea before but never written it down, but its struck me today in several ways so I just had to put this out here. Since the 90's I have been follow sites that have some edge to them, mostly UFO and Cryptozoology type sites, a kind of X- Files moment that sort of lead me to the alt. news sites I'm sure you know some of the larger ones. Well being a news hound in my way (in the 70's for a brief moment I got to work as an un-payed volunteer at an independent radio station), so I got a taste of the reported wire story and what was later reported. So where I'm going with this is that in the run up to 2000, some of us may remember Y2K and everything that didn't happen. There was a theme that that ran underneight (sp.) all the web reporting at lest in the US and I at the time I said; yes well that makes good political fiction but highly unlikely to happen. Well slowly some of it did, or at lest seems to have but not in the way it was predicted in the 90's, no computers crashing, no wild eyed panic in the streets.

So here I sit surfing the web watching sites report the restriction of so much, the wars and rumors of wars or worse, but not from the far edge of things, but more mainstream from the people that still scoff and UFOs or strange beasties. I just had to wonder what was it that signaled to some a big change was afoot , were these ideas always out there in some form, with history and human nature some how expressing these themes? Sorry it may be too much politics in the air, The last eight years of curious George. I really don't know, but I can't shake the bad feeling thats similar to the one I felt in the wonderful year of 1999. But maybe its just the meal not settling right, taken my neighbor to the emergency room tonight.

I guess I just have to focus more on non-politic pursuits again, sometime next week I will get some stuff on the Spanish exploration of the Pacific coast of north America (but see here politics is a player) and next month I have a little adventure to research the Mound Builders, a series of advanced cultures that rose and faded for unclear reasons (environment and political collapse), but those ceremonies must have looked like looking up at the temple at the summit of the mound and surrounding that temple tall poles wrapped in copper, the invocation during a thunderstorm and lightening striking all around the temple. Must have been a sight to see I know I would have been impressed by the sight.

Well just had to wonder it any one else had thinking about the political stuff, not many people would care about a long ship sailing along an unknown coastline, and how that almost brought two empires into conflict. Or the mystery of the mound builders and why did north America have this florescence of complex culture along a similar timeline, but more of that later.

Early this month I just had the urge to explore, so I thought lets see whats down this road and found the birth place of George Washing Carver. A man I dimly remember for high school history classes and various peanut references over the years, so I just had to stop and find out what the story was and quite a story was told. Now if you look up the story some where like wikipedia you'll get a clearer picture of the bare facts but standing in the little square patch of ground where the cabin he was born in I started to get an emotional sense of the man, small and sickly born a slave, yet his world was not what I would have imagined. think to start life with just a first name, over time he falls in love with the natural world, learning and art. Here walking in the world of his early youth I could see how it happened, and given my own love of nature I could feel a kindred spirit. It was here that his spirituality also took root (I may not share his brand of belief I do share his sense wonder) given the time the late 1860's and early 1870's his options were limited in ways to express them one was plants (they called him the plant doctor as a boy) and art. His last name was given to him by the family that took him in after his mother and he were kidnapped and only he was found. At or around 12 his thirst for knowledge was so great he left the Carver's for a small near by town and started his life's adventure, he wanted to learn for learnings sake, and again I too knew that impulse.

Now the area is in many ways much as he would have remember it, I could look at his world from treeline to treeline and across fallow fields, getting a sense of time and place clearly. There was a peace there that I needed and a lesson. At the end of the walking trail was his a small bust of his likeness which played a small speech he made just before he died, it was called "Basic Equipment" if I remember right Its content was that all of us are given the same basic tools, eyes to see, hands to shape the world, legs to explore that world, and a mind to create meaning in that world. It's how we use those tools that make us who we are and shape the world around us.

For a Sunday drive I got a wonderful gift. Its strange a few days later I found myself at a small patch of land that belonged to the Civil War, a battle of local importance and thought of those basic tools, heres a place of great sorrow and violence and a few miles down the road was the place where a man grew up who suffer the effects of this conflict and its after affects yet carried no bitterness about it and found the strength to follow his dreams.

I guess I have been feeling a bit small now about my own troubles, and as fall turns to winter here I will return to George's places and see if I can't a bigger spirit within myself.

Well having made the decision to start poking around archaeologically fate took a hand and I had to have one more surgery and a funny thing happened, after a few days it was like a reset button had been pressed in my brain. And my memory had returned the lucid dreams have given way to real sleep, and my creativity has returned which makes leaning more about this new archaeological landscape so much easier. So I have to wonder just what happened to me and the less logical side of me wants to take this as a sign that I may be on the right path. So thats about it for now, the nuts and bolts of the archeology around here are so different the rise and fall of mound and pyramid builders, trade perhaps with meso-America and so much more.

Over the last few months I have been having dreams of doing archeology again, and never one to let me limitations stand in the way of doing some how ever dumb. I have made contact with some folks out here and I'm thinking about trying to go back to work in some form. So as a friend of mine is quiting after almost 30 years to hunt for gold in the California desert. I'm thinking about going back to work in a land were they did make pyramids of sort and the pre-history may go back 40,000 thousand years. Well we shall see, but it seems more fun to try a live ones dreams than sit and wish you had.

I have always been more than a little skeptical about the hype over the Mayan date 2012, but I heard something today that caused me to back up my position on this. The latest Planet TV show (which is produced by someone I trust on things science) brought together and collection of prehistoric mysteries and some ideas that I have aways felt were fun to think about but had a low probability of being real. So it all starts with the sun and known and unknown solar cycles, and what were happen if a series of massive solar flares erupted and struck the earth, ties this into a known weak point in the atmosphere. And the Tova super volcano and the genetic bottleneck in human history, along with the evolutionary repercussions of the above the above. Mixed in with this the Great pyramid having a type of pored cement blocks within it. The Maya/Olmec mathematics question, along within the total number of pyramids in the region and forgotten civilizations. From anyone else eyebrows would be raised and I would be full of questions about the data used but knowing this guy many of these questions need not raised.

So knowing this is a bit more than fiction (it is was partly produced for a book, but listen for yourself he gives a better explanation) I now have to think what if he is right even in part. What would we do if a series of CME (coronal mass ejection) had happened, well his description seems right on. The implications about past civilizations and the mythic stories about their advanced technology are more plausible it becomes so I would urge you have a listen and let me know what you think.