The Evolution of the Dragon

by Grafton Elliot Smith

An adequate account of the development of the dragon-legend would represent the history of the expression of mankind's aspirations and fears during the past fifty centuries and more. For the dragon was evolved along with civilization itself. The search for the elixir of life, to turn back the years from old age and confer the boon of immortality, has been the great driving force that compelled men to build up the material and the intellectual fabric of civilization. The dragon-legend is the history of that search which has been preserved by popular tradition: it has grown up and kept pace with the constant struggle to grasp the unattainable goal of men's desires; and the story has been constantly growing in complexity, as new incidents were drawn within its scope and confused with old incidents whose real meaning was forgotten or distorted. It has passed through all the phases with which the study of the spreading of rumours or the development of dreams has familiarized students of psychology. The simple original stories, which become blended and confused, their meaning distorted and reinterpreted by the rationalizing of incoherent incidents, are given the dramatic form with which the human mind invests all stories that make a strong appeal to its emotions, and then secondarily elaborated with a wealth of circumstantial detail. This is the history of popular legends and the development of rumours. But these phenomena are displayed in their most emphatic form in dreams.

Genres: Mythology, History, Dragons, Folklore, Anthropology

371 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 14, 2003

About the author

Sir Grafton Elliot Smith FRS FRSE FRCP was an Australian-British anatomist, Egyptologist and a proponent of the hyperdiffusionist view of prehistory. He believed in the idea that cultural innovations occur only once and that they spread geographically. Based on this, he traced the origins of many cultural and traditional practices across the world, including the New World, to ideas that he believed came from Egypt and in some instances from Asia. An expert on brain anatomy, he was one of the first to study Egyptian mummies using radiological techniques. He took an interest in extinct humanoids and was embroiled in controversy over the authenticity of the Piltdown Man.

Reviews

[Mert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Puanım 3/5 (%56/100)

Genel olarak hoşuma gitse de çok beklentilerimi karşılamadı. Kitap yapısal olarak Güneş Mitleri'ne benziyor yani daha çok araştırma kitabı gibi, mitolojik hikayeler serisi gibi değil. Smith kitabı 3 ana bölüme ayırmış ve bunlar aslında konferansta sunduğu şeylermiş. Kitabın ilk bölümü Mısır mitolojisi, tarihi ve kültürüne odaklanıyor. Mumyacılık, ruhun önemi ve başta mumyacılık olmak üzere bu ritüelin genel olarak kültürü nasıl etkilediğini anlatıyor. Sadece bölümün sonlarına doğru bunu Ejderha konusuna bağlıyor. 2. bölüm Ejderha mitleri ve tarihine odaklanmış. Ejderha yokken yılan ve başka tür hayvanların olması ve bunları farklı farklı kültürden farklı hikayelerle öğrenmek güzeldi. 3. bölüm ise Afrodit ve başka hayvan motiflerine odaklanmış. Bölümün başında Smith'in kendisi de Afrodit'in ejderha ile ne alakası var diye düşenebilirsiniz gibi bir şey diyor ve o kadar sayfalarca anlatmasına rağmen ben biraz fazla zorlama buldum aralarındaki bağlantıyı. O yüzden ilk bölümü de biraz garip buldum. Kitap sadece 2. bölümün biraz daha uzun halinden oluşsaydı daha güzel olurdu. 1 ve 3. bölümlerde de bir şeyler öğrendim ama Ejderha konusuna sadece çok uzaktan bağlı. Kısaca, bu seriyi takip ediyorsanız ve genel olarak ejderha sembolü, mitleri vs. nereden geldi öğrenmek istiyorsanız (ek olarak başka mitler ve tarihi bilgiler de var tabi ki) göz atabilirsiniz.

[Beth]

This book is free at the Gutenberg Project website gutenberg.org. I haven't read it yet, but the description about the book on this website was completely useless and I thought a better description of the book would be helpful. From the Amazon description:

"This is a set of three connected essays on the symbolism and development of the concept of the dragon in world mythology. The author, Grafton Elliot Smith (b. 1871, d. 1937), was Australian by birth, and an anatomist by profession. Smith wrote this while a Professor of Anatomy in Manchester, doing ground-breaking work on the evolution of the primate brain. He also treated veterans of WWI and did some of the earliest work on 'shell-shock,' today known as post-traumatic stress disorder.

His views on the origin of culture have not fared as well. Smith was a diffusionist, a school of thought popular in the late 19th and early 20th century which attempted to trace diverse cultural phenomena to unitary geographic points of origin. One example of this is Donnelly's Atlantis, which Donnelly proposed was the mother of all cultures. Smith, a bit more mainstream, traced the development of megalithic culture to Egypt, radiating out to distant lands, including America. Today, we know that megalithic culture preceded ancient Egyptian civilization, in some places by millennia, and developed independently in widely spaced geographic locations.

In this book, a compilation of three lecture series which he delivered shortly after WWI, Smith proposed a theory of how the dragon originated as a representation of the Mother Goddess, a symbol of the power and mystery of nature, and later evolved into a symbol of evil, turning into the prototype for the Christian devil. He uses linguistic, ethnographic, and biological data to bolster his theory. While in some respects a difficult book, depending on one's attention span, it is also a browser's delight. We learn about the origin of clothing, the water of immortality which Gilgamesh sought, and the symbolism, folklore and biology of the octopus, mandrake, pearls, cowry shells, etc. In particular, students of comparative mythology will enjoy this book, even if they reject Smith's hyperdiffusionist views." --J.B. Hare

[Sue Bridgwater · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is at once fascinating and infuriating, for several reasons. Making due allowance for its age - it was originally published in 1919 - you can't reasonably expect it to mention Smaug, but it won't tell you much about Fafnir either.

One difficulty is that the 'chapters' were originally lectures, and this has led to a fair bit of repetition as they seem not to have been edited down for their new role.

Also Smith seems to have so much knowledge in his head that it bursts out and spills all over the page - he frequently laments that there is no space to cover this or that topic more fully. Among these are some of the most interesting bits! It's worth reading, but it's not a smooth ride. And it's also important to bear in mind that he was not just a diffusionist, but a hyper-diffusionst, which to me distorts some of his conclusions. Here's some input from Wikipedia, with thanks:

Hyperdiffusionists deny that parallel evolution or independent invention took place to any great extent throughout history; they claim that all major inventions and all cultures can be traced back to a single culture.
Early theories of hyperdiffusionism can be traced to ideas about South America being the origin of mankind. Antonio de León Pinelo, a Spaniard who settled in Bolivia, claimed in his book Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo that the Garden of Eden and the creation of man had occurred in present-day Bolivia and that the rest of the world was populated by migrations from there.
[.........]
The work of Grafton Elliot Smith fomented a revival of hyperdiffusionism in 1911; he asserted that copper–producing knowledge spread from Egypt to the rest of the world along with megalithic culture. Smith claimed that all major inventions had been made by the ancient Egyptians and were carried to the rest of the world by migrants and voyagers. His views became known as "Egyptocentric-Hyperdiffusionism".

[Noura Tailory · Rating 2 out of 5]

ya ok kitabın konusu bu her seyi detaylıca anlatmıs da o kaddar sıkıcıydı ki okurken öldüm şahsen.. ıdk cok zordu okumak o kadar da ilgi çekici değildi yanı beklediğimin aksine ay bilmiom su an bitirdim ve kitabı fırlatsım var, zamanında parayı kıyıp almıştım ama en yalın zamanda sahafa goturup kurtulmak istiomm hadi bb