dinosaurs Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

How Medieval Are the Dragons in ‘House of the Dragon’ Really?

The new season of HBO’s epic fantasy series House of the Dragon is about to release its fourth episode. The show is set in the fantasy land of Westeros, which is loosely inspired by England in the High and Late Middle Ages. The story is based on the second half of George R. R. Martin’s 2018 fantasy novel Fire & Blood, which describes a fictional civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, which is, in turn, loosely inspired by the real medieval English civil war known as the Anarchy (lasted 1138 – 1153), in which Empress Matilda, King Henry I’s daughter and appointed heir, fought over the English throne with her cousin Stephen of Blois. House of the Dragon takes the general premise of this war and adds many fantastic elements; most notably, in this story, both sides have dragons that they deploy in battle against each other.

Because the series draws both aesthetic and narrative inspiration from medieval England, and dragons appear in medieval legends, many viewers may assume that the dragons they see on screen in House of the Dragon resemble what medieval people imagined when they told stories about dragons. This assumption, however, is incorrect. The dragons in Martin’s novels and the television shows based on them are awesome to read about and watch on screen, but they bear only a partial physical resemblance and essentially no behavioral resemblance to dragons in real medieval literature and art.

Does the Word ‘Dinosaur’ Really Mean “Terrible Lizard”?

When I was growing up, I always read and was taught in school that the word dinosaur comes from Greek roots that mean “terrible lizard.” This is how the current revision of the article “dinosaur” on Wikipedia translates the word also. This translation is not strictly incorrect, but it is not necessarily the most accurate translation either.

The English biologist and paleontologist Richard Owen coined the word dinosaur at a meeting for the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the year 1841 by combining the Greek adjective δεινός (deinós), which is usually translated as “terrible,” with the noun σαύρα (saúra), which means “lizard” or “reptile.”

The meaning of the word σαύρα is more-or-less straightforward, but the word δεινός is a bit more complicated than the simple translation of “terrible” might lead a person to believe. In some contexts, “terrible” is an adequate translation, but, unlike the English word terrible, which has exclusively negative meanings, δεινός can also have positive meanings. As such, “formidable” is probably a better translation of the word in general.

Were Mythical Creatures Inspired by Fossils?

It is popularly believed that stories about dragons and other mythical creatures must have arisen when ancient peoples discovered fossils of prehistoric animals, especially dinosaurs. As we shall see in a moment, there is definitely some evidence that ancient peoples did sometimes discover fossils of prehistoric creatures and interpret them as the remains of mythic beasts.

Fossils, however, seem to have only rarely been the source of belief in such mythic creatures to begin with; it seems to have been far more common for people to interpret fossils in light of mythic creatures they already believed in, rather than inventing entirely new mythic beasts to explain the fossils.

Furthermore, the vast majority of claims about specific mythical creatures being inspired by specific prehistoric creatures don’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny. There is almost no solid evidence to support the assumption that dragons, Cyclopes, or griffins were inspired by prehistoric fossils and there is actually quite substantial evidence against these assumptions.