Look up and read the article "Pterosaur Windsurfed Across Surface of Prehistoric Seas" in the blogs section of www.discovery.com.
Remember, this species made it through about 150 or more million years of existence, and humans have not really made it through 10,000 years of "civilization." That's not my point in referring the article (I'm just a dino fan like many others) but it never hurts to keep things in perspective how well "dumb" animals have thrived through the eons.
Showing posts with label Dinosaurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dinosaurs. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Dragons, dinosaurs, science, faith and fiction
I've been meaning to post this quick piece of information for a while. Who would have thought that so much of my efforts to promote better understanding of God would involve having to teach so much about basic logic and science? I don't mind, but I mind how the schools and lack of genuine education (both secular and faith based) has let these past generations down.
Young people, I know many of you are fascinated by dragons. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I know that many of you must wonder why dragons are mentioned in many of the world's cultures, if they never existed. Then again, you must be confused why the dragon is an emblem of "good" in Chinese culture, while an emblem of "bad" in the Bible during the Apocalypse. The answer is really very simple and used to be taught in schools. I don't know what is taught in schools anymore instead of simple facts and explanations of human development.
People all around the world believed in dragons because that is what they thought the dinosaur bones that they found were the remains of: it really is as simple as that.
For tens of thousands of years humans, who are perfectly intelligent hunters, who captured and killed even large animals such as mammoths, and who had to fight off attacks in turn by large animals such as the saber toothed tiger and large bears, know very well what sized bones these large animals had when they were killed and skinned.
Thus when they found tremendously huge bones, including what look like wing bones, they had a realistic idea of what size and shape those animals must have been. Thus when they found dinosaur bones they pieced together in their mind what they must have looked like, and came up with images that are dragons. This is why dragons pop up in many cultures, especially those where many dinosaur bones were easily found since they were plentiful. And yes, is not China one of the best spots for finding dinosaur fossils? Imagine how plentiful dinosaur bones were, easily seen on the ground, back before humans just plowed them under, or ignored them.
Far from being ignorant, prehistoric and early humans "lived off the land" and thus had a really good idea of what animals lived around them, how they were constructed (as they butchered a carcass for food and clothing). So dragons were not just the imaginings of dumb primitive people. Nor were they some *insert here appropriate spacey music* some alien or magical beings. Duh! Every generation of ancient people found, in the course of their settlements, dinosaur bones, and marveled at their size and bizarre shapes. Thus they imagined mythical beasts, such as dragons.
This used to be taught in science class. *Sigh*
So the point is to understand that the simple, logical and sane answer is almost always the correct one, especially in an open and well ordered physical universe where it is so easy to observe how life "works" and how humans piece together the facts based on their experiences.
Dragons, therefore, are in a way an amalgamation of whatever the culture observed about dinosaur bones and passed on to their descendants, plus working the dragons into both myths and cultural symbolism. The Israelites, having a personal relationship with God, did not go for excessive animal symbolism, since they did not need to "imagine" the mystical: they were in tough with it. Therefore the dragon (remember, seen by them too only by the "remains" of demised ones, which were dinosaurs) came to be understood as symbolizing the defeated forces of Satan. When God spoke in symbolic terms to his prophets and people, he used the common animals of the time so they could understand the parables: lions, eagles, sheep, goats.
However, compare this to the Chinese. They had a keen interest in ancestors, and venerate the spirits of their ancestors. Thus when they found tremendous numbers of "dragon" remains (dinosaur bones), they worked the idea that these were very ancient and great flying animals into their own lineage. They logically concluded that the emperors and other royalty were descended, at least spiritually, from "dragons." This is also, of course, the origin for the belief in the phoenix. The Chinese observed various types of "dragon" or "phoenix" "remains" (different types of dinosaurs) and quite logically developed theories about what they were like and how they lived.
For example, they might have thought that dinosaur bones found near volcanoes indicated that they were born in flames (the phoenix), while other dinosaur bones that appeared to have wing structures were, of course, the remains of dragons.
It is important to remember that people who live off the land are very intelligent, observant, knowledgeable, and diligent about passing on their discoveries to the next generation. Humans all around the world, including prehistoric humans, do the best they can within a sane and factual world, which is what they lived in.
It is only later humans who delude themselves and cannot understand the difference between thought based on reality and totally crazy fantasies. This is because people are so separate now from reality that they think that "anything can happen" and "anything could have happened." Um, no, not exactly. There have been two billion years of life on this planet (starting with microbes) that have not been "anything goes" and "anything could have happened," but follow real, genuine, factual, not imaginary, prosaic, plodding life rules that really never change. For two billion years animals need: respiration (air exchange), fluids, food, shelter. I mean, duh. They all then reproduce and expire with their species related life spans. Some rot and some leave remains. They can be held, examined and measured, but only in recent years have people had the chemistry and tools to carbon date and otherwise determine history. Ancient people had to use their great powers of observation, their familiarity with predator and prey, and their ability to imagine what an entire animal might have looked like and how it lived, and what it's "purpose" might have been.
Israelites handled "purpose" quite well: all animals are created by God, but some are "clean" for humans and some are "unclean." That is why God's dialogue with humans focuses on the clean animals and how they symbolize, through their traits, parables that humans can understand, such as the loyal sheep contrasted to the stubborn goat.
If the Israelites were Amazonians, for example, perhaps goats and their stubbornness would not have been a useful analogy and God would have instead have compared unbelievers to monkeys, or crocodiles, (but of course they would be unclean, so perhaps God could have used clean but stubborn native animals for the comparison). You get my point, though.
Even scripture (by this I mean monotheistic Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is hugely practical and reality based. God does not invent mythical animals to explain things to humans; God uses what humans already observe through facts and what they believe based on those facts (such as dragons). Scripture was given to humans who were eminently practical: farmers, hunters and fishermen. Scripture was not given to humans who sit around the campfire making up stuff to tell spooky stories to each other. So people must stop thinking that scripture is "made up" if it seems to have "elements of mythology." Um, no, it is not "mythology." It is based on the real world as humans during that time knew it to be true and deduced as best as they could what they did not know.
For example, scripture recorders had no idea what stars really were (glowing balls of high temperature and pressure gas like the sun), yet stars are mentioned in the Bible in realistic, not mythological, ways and the context is always quite correct. Nothing in scripture is "mythological" or use of "made up" symbolism. Angels are real beings, not symbolic. Goats are real beings, used for milk, food, and fiber, and having certain personality traits they make a useful analogy and parable in scripture, but that is based on their factual and real existence, not modifying their "purpose" or "meaning" on earth.
So it is "OK" to "like dragons." I like them too. But I understand where they "come from," which is ancient humans' attempts to visualize the animals that "left behind" what we know to be dinosaur and other prehistoric animal bones. It's "OK" and even sane and appropriate to enjoy the Chinese symbolism of the dragon, and also to understand to what use the image of the dragon is used in the Bible. There is no conflict, no problem, no "hidden meaning," no "secret alien history," and no "loyalty test" involved in appreciating the intersection of facts and cultural or faith based perspectives that utilize those facts.
Young people, I know many of you are fascinated by dragons. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I know that many of you must wonder why dragons are mentioned in many of the world's cultures, if they never existed. Then again, you must be confused why the dragon is an emblem of "good" in Chinese culture, while an emblem of "bad" in the Bible during the Apocalypse. The answer is really very simple and used to be taught in schools. I don't know what is taught in schools anymore instead of simple facts and explanations of human development.
People all around the world believed in dragons because that is what they thought the dinosaur bones that they found were the remains of: it really is as simple as that.
For tens of thousands of years humans, who are perfectly intelligent hunters, who captured and killed even large animals such as mammoths, and who had to fight off attacks in turn by large animals such as the saber toothed tiger and large bears, know very well what sized bones these large animals had when they were killed and skinned.
Thus when they found tremendously huge bones, including what look like wing bones, they had a realistic idea of what size and shape those animals must have been. Thus when they found dinosaur bones they pieced together in their mind what they must have looked like, and came up with images that are dragons. This is why dragons pop up in many cultures, especially those where many dinosaur bones were easily found since they were plentiful. And yes, is not China one of the best spots for finding dinosaur fossils? Imagine how plentiful dinosaur bones were, easily seen on the ground, back before humans just plowed them under, or ignored them.
Far from being ignorant, prehistoric and early humans "lived off the land" and thus had a really good idea of what animals lived around them, how they were constructed (as they butchered a carcass for food and clothing). So dragons were not just the imaginings of dumb primitive people. Nor were they some *insert here appropriate spacey music* some alien or magical beings. Duh! Every generation of ancient people found, in the course of their settlements, dinosaur bones, and marveled at their size and bizarre shapes. Thus they imagined mythical beasts, such as dragons.
This used to be taught in science class. *Sigh*
So the point is to understand that the simple, logical and sane answer is almost always the correct one, especially in an open and well ordered physical universe where it is so easy to observe how life "works" and how humans piece together the facts based on their experiences.
Dragons, therefore, are in a way an amalgamation of whatever the culture observed about dinosaur bones and passed on to their descendants, plus working the dragons into both myths and cultural symbolism. The Israelites, having a personal relationship with God, did not go for excessive animal symbolism, since they did not need to "imagine" the mystical: they were in tough with it. Therefore the dragon (remember, seen by them too only by the "remains" of demised ones, which were dinosaurs) came to be understood as symbolizing the defeated forces of Satan. When God spoke in symbolic terms to his prophets and people, he used the common animals of the time so they could understand the parables: lions, eagles, sheep, goats.
However, compare this to the Chinese. They had a keen interest in ancestors, and venerate the spirits of their ancestors. Thus when they found tremendous numbers of "dragon" remains (dinosaur bones), they worked the idea that these were very ancient and great flying animals into their own lineage. They logically concluded that the emperors and other royalty were descended, at least spiritually, from "dragons." This is also, of course, the origin for the belief in the phoenix. The Chinese observed various types of "dragon" or "phoenix" "remains" (different types of dinosaurs) and quite logically developed theories about what they were like and how they lived.
For example, they might have thought that dinosaur bones found near volcanoes indicated that they were born in flames (the phoenix), while other dinosaur bones that appeared to have wing structures were, of course, the remains of dragons.
It is important to remember that people who live off the land are very intelligent, observant, knowledgeable, and diligent about passing on their discoveries to the next generation. Humans all around the world, including prehistoric humans, do the best they can within a sane and factual world, which is what they lived in.
It is only later humans who delude themselves and cannot understand the difference between thought based on reality and totally crazy fantasies. This is because people are so separate now from reality that they think that "anything can happen" and "anything could have happened." Um, no, not exactly. There have been two billion years of life on this planet (starting with microbes) that have not been "anything goes" and "anything could have happened," but follow real, genuine, factual, not imaginary, prosaic, plodding life rules that really never change. For two billion years animals need: respiration (air exchange), fluids, food, shelter. I mean, duh. They all then reproduce and expire with their species related life spans. Some rot and some leave remains. They can be held, examined and measured, but only in recent years have people had the chemistry and tools to carbon date and otherwise determine history. Ancient people had to use their great powers of observation, their familiarity with predator and prey, and their ability to imagine what an entire animal might have looked like and how it lived, and what it's "purpose" might have been.
Israelites handled "purpose" quite well: all animals are created by God, but some are "clean" for humans and some are "unclean." That is why God's dialogue with humans focuses on the clean animals and how they symbolize, through their traits, parables that humans can understand, such as the loyal sheep contrasted to the stubborn goat.
If the Israelites were Amazonians, for example, perhaps goats and their stubbornness would not have been a useful analogy and God would have instead have compared unbelievers to monkeys, or crocodiles, (but of course they would be unclean, so perhaps God could have used clean but stubborn native animals for the comparison). You get my point, though.
Even scripture (by this I mean monotheistic Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is hugely practical and reality based. God does not invent mythical animals to explain things to humans; God uses what humans already observe through facts and what they believe based on those facts (such as dragons). Scripture was given to humans who were eminently practical: farmers, hunters and fishermen. Scripture was not given to humans who sit around the campfire making up stuff to tell spooky stories to each other. So people must stop thinking that scripture is "made up" if it seems to have "elements of mythology." Um, no, it is not "mythology." It is based on the real world as humans during that time knew it to be true and deduced as best as they could what they did not know.
For example, scripture recorders had no idea what stars really were (glowing balls of high temperature and pressure gas like the sun), yet stars are mentioned in the Bible in realistic, not mythological, ways and the context is always quite correct. Nothing in scripture is "mythological" or use of "made up" symbolism. Angels are real beings, not symbolic. Goats are real beings, used for milk, food, and fiber, and having certain personality traits they make a useful analogy and parable in scripture, but that is based on their factual and real existence, not modifying their "purpose" or "meaning" on earth.
So it is "OK" to "like dragons." I like them too. But I understand where they "come from," which is ancient humans' attempts to visualize the animals that "left behind" what we know to be dinosaur and other prehistoric animal bones. It's "OK" and even sane and appropriate to enjoy the Chinese symbolism of the dragon, and also to understand to what use the image of the dragon is used in the Bible. There is no conflict, no problem, no "hidden meaning," no "secret alien history," and no "loyalty test" involved in appreciating the intersection of facts and cultural or faith based perspectives that utilize those facts.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Therizinosaurus
This is another of my favorite dinosaurs. Fossils have been found in China and Mongolia, and indicate that this dinosaur stood on two feet reaching about 16 feet in height. It's one of the so called "Ostrich dinosaurs" because like the ostrich that exists today, these dinosaurs ran very fast on their slender legs, and had long necks with small heads. What I like about Therizinosaurus is that it has these crazy long claws that measure more than 27 inches long each! While that sounds vicious and weird it's not, because the dinosaur was a vegetarian who used these claws to comb the leaves of high standing trees in order to gather food to eat. You can tell it was vegetarian because it had only a toothless beak. So this amazing looking dinosaur was like a gardener, working the trees to scoop up leaves in almost basket like hands.
How much more cheerful than the depressive depraved movie "Edward Scissorhands" back in 1990! Gosh, it's amazing how Hollywood "art" has been so depressive and bizarre for decades now, while dinosaurs who look wicked are actually gentle and eat leaves. Why write movies that are so artificially contrived to be full of despair? And then wonder why everyone is messed up. It's become a very strange and sad world recently.
When I look at a picture of Therizinosaurus I see an animal that lived without giving anyone any trouble for tens of millions of years, gently raised young, and combed the tops of trees to gather leaves. How much more peaceful and optimistic an image can there be?
How much more cheerful than the depressive depraved movie "Edward Scissorhands" back in 1990! Gosh, it's amazing how Hollywood "art" has been so depressive and bizarre for decades now, while dinosaurs who look wicked are actually gentle and eat leaves. Why write movies that are so artificially contrived to be full of despair? And then wonder why everyone is messed up. It's become a very strange and sad world recently.
When I look at a picture of Therizinosaurus I see an animal that lived without giving anyone any trouble for tens of millions of years, gently raised young, and combed the tops of trees to gather leaves. How much more peaceful and optimistic an image can there be?
Monday, July 16, 2007
Massospondylus
One of my favorite dinosaurs is the Massopondylus. It was a plant eater, and stones have been found inside some skeletons, as they swallowed stones to help digest some of the tougher plants that they ate. They stood about 13 feet tall and walked on two feet, but when they were born they first walked on all fours. Like human babies, in a way, they started crawling and then learned to walk upright. They had hands with five fingers. They were around as early as 190 million years ago and were around for a good 40 million years or so. 40 million years and they never caused any trouble.... I thought they were rather cute actually.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Birds, dinosaurs, China, Arabic calligraphy musings
Here are snips from the NY Times article about a discovery reported in the journal Nature, of a dinosaur that looks like a huge ostrich. The drawing in the article shows a human would stand approximately up to the "knee caps" of the bird, wow!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/science/14dino.html?hp
snip
Scientists have uncovered a huge surprise in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China: the fossil skeleton of an unusually robust birdlike dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago. The animal appeared to be a young adult 25 feet long and weighing 3,000 pounds and, if it had lived longer, would probably have grown even larger.
snip
The Chinese scientists who made the discovery, being reported today in the journal Nature, said the skeleton belonged to a dinosaur family that included the beaked, birdlike oviraptor. This family was not closely related to the dromaeosaurid dinosaurs generally thought to be ancestors of modern birds. Still, the scientists concluded that the new skeleton “is an exception to some general patterns” during the evolution of related dinosaurs, including the “trend of size decrease” that is associated with the origin of birds. They said it was significant that the large specimen “shows many birdlike features absent” in smaller relatives.
Impressed by the size and puzzling character of their find, the team led by Xing Xu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, classified the animal as a new genus and species. It was given the name Gigantoraptor erlianensis, the specific name recognizing the Erlian basin of Inner Mongolia, where the skeleton was excavated.
snip
********
This news brings together so many of my interests. When I was a teenager my best friend's grandparents had a camp on a lake. Behind it was woods with a waterfall, where we would find innumerable fossils. Nothing spectacular like dinosaurs, but a lot of horn coral, which was easy to pull out even with bare hands. So I always enjoyed dinosaurs and fossils, and those were before the days of Barney that purple cartoon dinosaur. The Chinese have done some fantastic work in excavating fossils these past years, and I congratulate them. I think they were the ones to find the fossils of the earliest flowering plant, Archaefructus sinensis? Anyway, I always read about their finds with great interest.
I've had a lifelong interest in Chinese culture and people. It started when as a teen I bought calligraphy paint brushes, though in my small village in the 1960's there were not many paint resources. It would be as an adult that I learned to write and paint Chinese characters. I was taught how to read and write Chinese characters by a Chinese American guy who worked for me, who had taught Chinese in schools, and spent some lunch hours getting me started, which was great. He taught me to watch for the originating pictures that underlie the development of the character. For example, the character for water evolved from three lines that wriggled like a stream of water. I can still write characters, even pretty complicated ones, in their proper order, though I never got as far as actually speaking Mandarin, though I learned the tonalities.
I had a bamboo calendar at that time, the early 1980's, which remains my favorite. It show a red parrot and the Chinese characters spoken by the parrot, which translates to: "I'm sitting here looking out of the window and learning a new language." It was a parrot, not a 70 foot tall birdlike dinosaur ha, but what an interesting connection as I think about it today. At that time I was also taking shao lin kung fu and tai chi lessons. I'm not a competitive type of person, so I never got into working for various belts and so forth. But I loved how like dance it was. Some time later, after I had to stop with lessons due to long hours at my work job, I taught myself crane style and that remains my favorite. Like a stork (though one with a pot belly ha) I like to stand on one leg in crane stance to relax, sometimes as long as five minutes per leg. When I lived up north I used to stand on a log by a lake and do it. Down south here if I tried that I'd probably be bitten in the rear by an alligator, ha.
Back to the calligraphy. While I still enjoy reading and writing Chinese characters I've become interested also in learning Arabic script. I have a book called "Arabic Script" by Gabriel Mandel Khan, Abbeville Press Publishers, NY, 2001. While it's not a how-to-do book, I can figure out how to draw the script based on my knowledge of calligraphy in general (I also learned mechanical drawing and lettering in high school, and spent several years earning a living drawing maps.) I use as my book mark a print out of a picture and article of a chicken that layed an egg with the script "Allah" inscribed on its shell, in Kazakhstan last year. The mosque confirmed its authenticity for the farmer whose chicken laid the egg. It's beautiful. Anyway, this book has amazing examples of compositions in many different styles. I love the boat shaped compositions in Diwani style, for example. There are many wonderful compositions in the shape of birds, for example, Basmala in the form of a stork. I get a real smile from one page that shows individual letters in the very non-traditional "peacock" style. Letters are peacocks curved and aligned to form each letter. Page 107 if any of you have the book.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/science/14dino.html?hp
snip
Scientists have uncovered a huge surprise in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China: the fossil skeleton of an unusually robust birdlike dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago. The animal appeared to be a young adult 25 feet long and weighing 3,000 pounds and, if it had lived longer, would probably have grown even larger.
snip
The Chinese scientists who made the discovery, being reported today in the journal Nature, said the skeleton belonged to a dinosaur family that included the beaked, birdlike oviraptor. This family was not closely related to the dromaeosaurid dinosaurs generally thought to be ancestors of modern birds. Still, the scientists concluded that the new skeleton “is an exception to some general patterns” during the evolution of related dinosaurs, including the “trend of size decrease” that is associated with the origin of birds. They said it was significant that the large specimen “shows many birdlike features absent” in smaller relatives.
Impressed by the size and puzzling character of their find, the team led by Xing Xu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, classified the animal as a new genus and species. It was given the name Gigantoraptor erlianensis, the specific name recognizing the Erlian basin of Inner Mongolia, where the skeleton was excavated.
snip
********
This news brings together so many of my interests. When I was a teenager my best friend's grandparents had a camp on a lake. Behind it was woods with a waterfall, where we would find innumerable fossils. Nothing spectacular like dinosaurs, but a lot of horn coral, which was easy to pull out even with bare hands. So I always enjoyed dinosaurs and fossils, and those were before the days of Barney that purple cartoon dinosaur. The Chinese have done some fantastic work in excavating fossils these past years, and I congratulate them. I think they were the ones to find the fossils of the earliest flowering plant, Archaefructus sinensis? Anyway, I always read about their finds with great interest.
I've had a lifelong interest in Chinese culture and people. It started when as a teen I bought calligraphy paint brushes, though in my small village in the 1960's there were not many paint resources. It would be as an adult that I learned to write and paint Chinese characters. I was taught how to read and write Chinese characters by a Chinese American guy who worked for me, who had taught Chinese in schools, and spent some lunch hours getting me started, which was great. He taught me to watch for the originating pictures that underlie the development of the character. For example, the character for water evolved from three lines that wriggled like a stream of water. I can still write characters, even pretty complicated ones, in their proper order, though I never got as far as actually speaking Mandarin, though I learned the tonalities.
I had a bamboo calendar at that time, the early 1980's, which remains my favorite. It show a red parrot and the Chinese characters spoken by the parrot, which translates to: "I'm sitting here looking out of the window and learning a new language." It was a parrot, not a 70 foot tall birdlike dinosaur ha, but what an interesting connection as I think about it today. At that time I was also taking shao lin kung fu and tai chi lessons. I'm not a competitive type of person, so I never got into working for various belts and so forth. But I loved how like dance it was. Some time later, after I had to stop with lessons due to long hours at my work job, I taught myself crane style and that remains my favorite. Like a stork (though one with a pot belly ha) I like to stand on one leg in crane stance to relax, sometimes as long as five minutes per leg. When I lived up north I used to stand on a log by a lake and do it. Down south here if I tried that I'd probably be bitten in the rear by an alligator, ha.
Back to the calligraphy. While I still enjoy reading and writing Chinese characters I've become interested also in learning Arabic script. I have a book called "Arabic Script" by Gabriel Mandel Khan, Abbeville Press Publishers, NY, 2001. While it's not a how-to-do book, I can figure out how to draw the script based on my knowledge of calligraphy in general (I also learned mechanical drawing and lettering in high school, and spent several years earning a living drawing maps.) I use as my book mark a print out of a picture and article of a chicken that layed an egg with the script "Allah" inscribed on its shell, in Kazakhstan last year. The mosque confirmed its authenticity for the farmer whose chicken laid the egg. It's beautiful. Anyway, this book has amazing examples of compositions in many different styles. I love the boat shaped compositions in Diwani style, for example. There are many wonderful compositions in the shape of birds, for example, Basmala in the form of a stork. I get a real smile from one page that shows individual letters in the very non-traditional "peacock" style. Letters are peacocks curved and aligned to form each letter. Page 107 if any of you have the book.
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