Is it possible that some mystical creatures actually excisted?

Is it possible that some mythological creatures actually exsisted? i was thinking that if most cultures have creatures in them like dragons or unicorns is it possible that they actually did exsist at one point in time. do you think that cultures on opposite sides of the earth would come up with almost identical creatures to put in their stories and legends if such creatures actually never exsisted. well i was just curious. thanx

My guess, is that Dragons existed at one point or another. Mainly because most old civilizations had pictures of Dragons and they all looked similar. i dont know about things like sea serpents, maybe another form of dragons??

Behind every legend is a truth. Each legend has a beginning. For example, I believe that I have discovered the origin of the pixies (from the Scythians to the Picts to a mix of Picts/pagan nature spirit). Obviously there is a beginning for each legend - we just need to find it.

It jsut depends on how mythical you want to be:

Some early depictions of dragons or descriptive stories look a lot more like some dinos we say were extinct at the time of the writhing/drawing.

Also, when Majellan was in the asiatic area, he reported that the emperor he met had dragons pulling his chariot--usually the ONLY part of his notes that aren't accepted as being truthful...I wonder why?

They probably did exist in some form. The artists and writers and such way back then most likely exagerated a few things, like many do now.

It is a popular theory that the cyclops legens was in fact based on the discovery of extinct pygmy elephant skulls.

Of course they exist, I have a water spright in a jar on my desk.

Dragon legends are most likely based on dinosaurs. I've always believed in the possibility of a few dinosaurs surviving long enough to be witnessed by humans who recorded their activities. Even the Bible mentions dragons...

There is a fact, everything we can imagine must past from our senses to our memory, then once there we can abstract it whit other memories.

Yes, I toughly think much of those creatures existed, for example, Julius Caesar describes an unicorn in his book �De Bello Galico�, he says that in Germans territory existed a mule like beast whit just one horn in the middle of his face, more likely to the deer ones than straight, that was easy to hunt cause always slept leaning in marked threes, so hunters weakened the three roots and once they lean they felled, they couldn�t wake up again so they beheaded them easily whit knifes, so easy to hunt that they killed all of them for food.

Most myths are based on some type of truth. If you look back on indian legend here in North America, things like bigfoot and lake monsters have been treated as fact not fiction for hundreds of years before white settlers got to the new world.They lived and respected these things as real entities and have made pictographs on caves and rock ledges that are thousands of years old.
Its new news to us but old news to them.
Parker

I think there was a lot more intercommunication between different civilisations than people seem to think. While I don't disagree that most myths are based in fact, I think the fact that they tend to be common among cultures is in the ability for a story to propagate between them.

Maybe Dragons were old dinasours, i meen we look at fossils and stuff and can only say what the bone strucure was like and not how they atually lived that was just a guess

Actually, we can tell a lot about how dinosaurs lived from the fossils. For instance the type of teeth in the fossil tells us about the food it ate, if it was a carnivore or a herbivore. It can even indicate those animals that specialized in eating fish.

There are also a number of other things that we have found besides bones, footprints, nests, eggs, and even fossil poop.


The closest thing to a dragon that survived into relatively modern times is the giant ripper lizard, megalania of Australia.

Originally posted by jlc163
It jsut depends on how mythical you want to be:

Some early depictions of dragons or descriptive stories look a lot more like some dinos we say were extinct at the time of the writhing/drawing.

Also, when Majellan was in the asiatic area, he reported that the emperor he met had dragons pulling his chariot--usually the ONLY part of his notes that aren't accepted as being truthful...I wonder why?

You know, thats my theory too on dragons, I think maybe they had found the bones of a t rex or some other dino and I very much believe that is how legends of dragons came about. It dawned on me one day when I was looking an The Art of Dragonlance, an awesome book with great artwork in it. In one of the photos, there is a painting of raistland sitting at his desk in his tower, and above him is the skull of a dragon hanging from the cieling, and I thought...man...that looks like a t rex skull. And just kinda went hmmmmm....maybe thats where the myth of dragons came from?
just my 2 cents.

i think dragons existed at one point or another and their remains are still in our soil. i just believe we havent dug that deep or havent dug in the right regions.

I also believe that dragons do exist, real live dragons. But they are not on this plane of existance, more like a 4d creature. I once had a dream where I was contacted by a group of dragons and was shown around the area they were living. They even had a head dragon, and all the dragons under it were in control of certain aspects of spiritual abilities...now is that odd or what? LOL At some point I might post that dream in the paranormal section because it had a lot to do with some other things I experienced shortly after...but as far as I am concerned...DRAGONS DO exist, just not on this earth plane.

very well could be in the 1800 majoir long traveled into the land of the louisiana purchase and described unicorns and gorgons in the wastelands

Originally posted by Lizado
Maybe Dragons were old dinasours, i meen we look at fossils and stuff and can only say what the bone strucure was like and not how they atually lived that was just a guess

Hey, I'm a Dragon.... well at least my zodiac, anyways, seems logical people discovered fossils of dinasours, but couldn't tell they died thousands of years ago and not just years ago. Thus assuming they were still around.

Ancient people were very ignorant and VERY superstitious, also probably prone to exaggeration. Anything they did not understand was magical. Darkness was a time of fear. Animals that ate people or at the very least could kill them, were still plentiful. It was a brutal, harsh life and no doubt filled with monsters but, of the more mundane type.

Right at about the time man appeared many "monsters" disappeared. The Pleistocene Epoch ended about 11 thousand years ago, up to that point there were many huge creatures that are lost today. No doubt some of these survived in pockets, until man found them and hunted them, past the end of the Pleistocene.

Variable

I believe ancient creatures did existed but they where misunderstod by the people that saw them, most of the time they called them monsters, I remember when my son then 3 years old, the first time he saw a chicken at my parents back yard he came running screaming that a monster was in the backyard so I imagine if you come across with a creature you have never seen you will probably call it a monster. May be this creatures were just remaines of now extint animals.