The 17,000 Year Old European Dragon Ritual, and its ancient mythological origins

Are there any old rituals you would like to know more about?

My favourite "dragon ritual" is stepping into my local pub, 'The George and Dragon', walking up to the humourless, sourfaced lady behind the bar, and asking "is George in?".

In Poland we have a legend about the dragon living in a cave under the royal castle in Kraków, former Polish capital. The oldest written version is from the 12th century and tells about a dragon terrorizing the population of Kraków, forcing them to sacrifice cattle to him. The king's sons were unable to defeat the dragon in battle, so they fed him a cattle skin stuffed with smoldering sulfur, causing his fiery death. After that younger son killed his brother in order to be able to inherit the throne and told his father that he had died fighting the dragon. The dragon cave under the castle can be visited to this day by tourists and in front of it there is a fire-breathing statue of a dragon.

I can imagine people in the tribe being told this stories deep in the cave by an elder, lighted by torches, with the sound of running water around. It would have felt overwhelming and otherworldly. This series about dragons keeps getting better and better. thank you so much

In romanian folklore there are many stories about this young and handsome man (Făt-Frumos) who fights a dragon-like creature ('zmeu' or 'balaur') because he kidnapped one or three princesses and made them his wifes. With the great help of his wise and magic horse and sometimes of other animals or mythological beings, the hero reaches the Other Realm (Tărămul Celălalt), chops the dragon's head or heads, marry the girls and they live happily ever after. 'Zmeu' is a scale-covered humanoid with one or three heads or even nine in some stories, and has a snake tale, legs, arms, the ability to create and use artifacts such as weapons, and to ride a horse, and has the desire to marry young girls. Sometimes he appears in the sky altough he has no wings, and spits fire, or has the ability to change form. 'Balaur' is a more serpent-shaped creature, with three, seven or nine heads. In some stories it has wings. It kidnapps young princesses, and sometimes lives in a well or a lake. It can be summoned by a wizard (Solomonar), who then rides and use the Balaur to controll the weather. Also when two Balauri meet and fight in the air, there ensues various meteorological damages. Both Zmeu and Balaur die only by getting all their heads chopped off.p I can now link that stories to your neolithic dragon mith as there are many similarilies.

I always enjoy how this channel holistically covers mythology/folklore and archeology.

Dude, I wish I knew this when I was teaching Beowulf. So much of what the hero does mirrors Indo-European myth.

I’m surprised how detailed and realistic the clay bison are. And in such good shape 😍

Interesting. The mention of 'The Tain' pronounced "Toyne" is steeped in ancient Celtic mythology and is translated to 'The Cattle Raid of Cooley' from a time when wealth was measured in herds. If my memory is correct all the hero's battles take place at fords or river crossings. It is part of the Annals of Ulster and only survives today thanks to the early literate Christian monks who wrote them down. Their origins are unknown but considered to be ancient folklore by the time the Celts arrived in Ireland.

A quick thought, the serpent has connections with the constellation Hyades. Often with the dragons head, Hyades, being wounded while attacking the foot or heel of a the hero, the constellation Orion. The constellation Eridanus (Jordan) the celestial river is located below and between Orion and The Hyades (and wider Taurus). This has relationships to the story of Adam, Moses and the Serpent staff as well as inability to cross the Jordan, Ra and the Serpent shaped as a dart, Thor and Hrungnir on the boat, among others. The Hyades are the “rainy” or watery constellation.

Fascinating work as always. I always go back to Persian mythology and find interesting similarities between what you say and what has been recorded in Shahname. Besides the story of Zahhak/Azhidahak which is clearly a dragon figure usurping the throne, I remembered a curious case of Rostam and his superhero horse Rakhsh (meaning light) fighting and slaying a dragon on his seven-phase epic journey to set the captured shah free and it is Rakhsh who kills the dragon 🐉

Interesting that one man, Melanthios, cut his hair to triumph, but another man, Samson, lost his strength when his hair was cut. I was always interested in the two dragons who fought in the Merlin tales. I assumed they were thought to cause earthquakes and toppled the castles built above. Of course I only read of this story as written by Mary Stewart. I understand that even today, some Asian countries still construct dragon holes in tall buildings so that the wind dragon will not topple them. Which I consider to be at least partly ritual behavior.

Crecganford has become a staple of my weekend viewings. Cannot thank you enough for the wonderful content, Jon!

Incredible how much we can reconstruct from this ritual using other myths. I love this channel!

I have casually noticed a lot of "dragon guards a magical item usually involving knowledge" usually associated with some sort of knowledge tree. It's curious to see other dragon motifs.

The appearance of similar motifs in South American and Australian Aboriginal cultures suggests that some of our mythologies are a great deal older than is generally suspected, perhaps even originating in Africa more than a hundred thousand years ago. I'm particularly interested in any insight you may have regarding fire rituals and parables, such as those we find in the stories of Prometheus & Pandora and in some Siberian and Native American raven legends. Just about every culture has/had some kind of fire god, usually associated with cautionary tales about the reckless pursuit of power ("a dangerous servant and frightful master"), and the common threads running through them seem to indicate that we've been sharing these fables for as long as we've been human enough to gather around a hearth.

What's incredibly interesting is in Welsh myth, the dragon is a representation if the people, who's home is located in the Eyri. The dragon essentially is a protector, and a being that holds all our strength. It's why the red dragon is on our flag, with the story coming from at least the middle ages.

While you were explaining, i remembered another such myth from the puranas/upanishads(which comes after vedas)... This isnt about Indra killing Vrtra, but its about Krishna(Vishnu) harming Kalinga. This myth is waaay younger and newer compared to the Vrtra slaying myth. I think the people adopted this myth when gods like shiva, vishnu and brahma were taking over the main head pantheon which consisted of indra before.. (Although Indra, Agni, Varuna and other gods are still there, they are only prayed during religious ceremonies... A local man(nowadays) does not pray to these gods, they mainly pray to the Trinity{shiva, vishnu, and sometimes brahma}), but we do know that long time ago, atleast according to the rig vedas, the ancient gods like Indra, Agni, etc were prayed to more In this myth we see that a snake has taken control over this huge river, and anyone who drank from it died due to the snake's poison. The snake is depicted as having many heads. Krishna had enough of this snake, and went to slay it... He dove into the waters and came up to the surface while dancing on the many heads of the snake. The snake begged for krishna to stop dancing, and thats when krishna struck a deal with the snake to never enter the waters again, and therefore freeing the river!

I'm rewriting these into my own stories as a way to try to keep them alive. Keep up the good work, my friend! And thank you!

I hope all the research you are doing for this series is something you will be collating into a popular book on history and dispersal of dragon mythology.