This episode premiered Sunday, January 11, 2009.

Rom’s snake park and crocodile bank in India, where he works to conserve and breed reptiles in the wild, were the first of their kind when he created them. Now he travels the world in search of modern day dragons. In the caves of Slovenia, he encounters the peculiar creature known as the olm, a cave-dwelling blind salamander once believed to be a baby dragon.  In the rainforests of India’s Western Ghats, Whitaker handles flying lizards, belonging to the species called Draco. When threatened or courting, the males extend the bright yellow flaps on their necks. Whitaker captures one and gently stretches out its amazing wings. Finally, Rom’s quest leads him to Indonesia’s Komodo Island, where he sees a wild Komodo dragon for the first time.

The Dragon Chronicles follows Rom as he journeys around the world, reimagining the lines between fact and fantasy, in search of the fabled beasts’ contemporary counterparts.

The Dragon Chronicles premieres Sunday, January 11 on PBS (check local listings).

To order a copy of The Dragon Chronicles, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Photo © WNET.ORG/Icon Films

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by RICK VEITCH
letters TODD KLEIN
editor DAVID REISMAN

Click to view the full map.

In medieval times, the idea that flying, fire-spitting dragons existed was considered entirely plausible.   The world was immense and unknown.  Many people believed that a sea of darkness encircled the chartered lands.  Dragons leapt across the page in the Bible, Beowulf, and Chaucer.  And medieval cartographers occasionally illustrated blank spaces with winged serpents and dragons.  On the Hereford Mappa Mundi (World Map) in England, several dragon-like creatures appear within its borders.

Rom Whitaker, on his quest to find today’s real-life dragons, uses the Hereford Mappa Mundi, the largest medieval map in existence, as a starting point for his journey.  He travels to the 1,000-year-old Hereford Cathedral, where the antique vellum the map now hangs.  About five feet long and four and a half feet wide, it is encased under thick, security-wired glass — and for good reason: the Hereford Mappa Mundi is one of the most valuable maps in the world.  Historians estimate it was drawn around 1290 A.D. with a mineral-based black ink, as well as paints made from vegetable dye, which have now dulled to a warm sepia hue.

Overall, the map is covered in some 500 drawings of the history of humankind and marvels of the natural world: 420 cities and towns; 15 biblical events; 33 plants, animals, birds, and strange creatures; 32 images of the peoples of the world; and 8 pictures from classical mythology.

In the book Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World Map, by P.D.A. Harvey, a glossary is given for the map’s varied creatures and mythical beasts.  It writes that dragons were found in India, where they defended the golden mountains.  The description continues: “Mythical fire-breathing creature with wings, scales and claws; malevolent in west, benevolent in east.”

Other weird creatures the Mappa Mundi portrays include the bonnacon in Asia, which is drawn moving toward the left but looking back over its shoulder at its own explosion of diarrhea, which, according to the adjacent legend, sprayed a distance of three acres and scalded anything it hit.  In Egypt, there is a crocodile and a red salamander with wings, and in Asia, there is a griffin, which resembles a winged Welsh dragon.

Christopher de Hamel, a leading authority on medieval manuscripts, has said the Mappa Mundi “is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, the most remarkable illustrated English manuscript of any kind, and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript.”

The creator of the Hereford Mappa Mundi did not work to create an accurate geographical representation, as the creators of maps do today, but rather to glorify the Christian view of the world.  As Peter Barber writes in The Map Book, “The Hereford World Map proclaims the insignificance of man and his achievements in face of the divine and the eternal.”  He later continues,

At the top one sees the Last Judgment, with the saved to the left and the damned to the right, and a bare-breasted Virgin pleading for mankind.  At the bottom right a mounted huntsman looks wistfully back at the earthly world but his pace urges him to move on.  The map of the world, like a colossal wheel of fortune, is held down by four thongs containing letters which together spell our ‘MORS’, or death.  The map itself has Jerusalem, surmounted by a depiction of the crucifixion, at the center.

Among map historians, the Hereford map is known as a “T and O map,” called such because it looked like a T incised with an O.  The T is the Mediterranean, dividing the three continents Asia, Europe, and Africa.  The O is the encircling ocean, or ‘Sea of Darkness,’ beyond which lay an uncharted realm that people could only imagine.

Dragons on maps were one of the most significant symbols of what might exist in unknown, far-away lands.  The phrase, “Here be dragons,” comes from its use on the Lenox Globe, made in 1500, where it is written in Latin—“HC SVNT DRACONES”—off the east coast of Asia, and denotes what was thought to be a dangerous or unexplored territory.

Whitaker journeys from the Hereford Mappa Mundi to many places that very few medieval Europeans ever went.  Rather, they could only see these places on a map (if they were even that privileged), along with a drawing of a dragon, and contemplate them with wonder, and perhaps, fear.

Public domain photograph

Komodo Dragons

Scientific American: “The Komodo Dragon”
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-komodo-dragon

Scientific American: “Komodo Dragons’ Skillful Skulls” (Audio)
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=57A67227-95ED-7B15-C3880050A6F02814&sc=rss

Nature [the journal]: “Parthenogenesis in Komodo Dragons”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/full/4441021a.html

Conservation, Research, and Organizations

Amphibians and Reptiles and Climate Change
http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/topics/amphibians-reptiles.shtml
Get more information about the effects of climate change on amphibian and reptile populations in this article by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Climate Change Resource Center.

Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
http://www.ssarherps.org/
SSAR is the world’s largest international herpetological society, founded in 1958.

Crocodile Specialist Bank
http://iucncsg.org/
The Crocodile Specialist Bank is a worldwide network of people actively involved in the conservation of the world’s 23 living species of alligators, crocodiles, caimans, and gharials in the wild.

Gharial Conservation Alliance
http://www.gharialconservation.org/
The Gharial Conservation Alliance is an international organization committed to conserving gharials.

Miami Serpentarium Laboratories
http://www.miamiserpentarium.com/
Check out the site for Bill Haast’s famous first venom research center, where Rom Whitaker got his start.

Reptile and Amphibian Ecology International
http://www.reptilesandamphibians.org/
Reptile and Amphibian Ecology International is a conservation and research organization striving to discover, document, and preserve the rich diversity of living reptiles and amphibians.

Romulus Whitaker

Madras Crocodile Bank
http://www.madrascrocodilebank.org/
This is the official site of Romulus Whitaker’s crocodile bank in India.

“Mystery of Crocs’ Massive Die-Off”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7755393.stm
This BBC article features Rom Whitaker and his work with gharials.

Hereford Mappa Mundi

Hereford Cathedral: Mappa Mundi
http://www.herefordcathedral.org/mappa_mappa.asp
Check out Hereford Cathedral’s Web site for more information about the Mappa Mundi that appears in The Dragon Chronicles.

Society for the History of Discoveries: “Making a Mappa Mundi: The Hereford Map”
http://www.sochistdisc.org/2002_articles/westrem.htm

IN PRINT

Bebler, John L. and King, F. Wayne (1979). The Audubon Society Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of North America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Freiberg, Dr. Marcos and Jerry Walls (1984). The World of Venomous Animals. New Jersey: TFH Publications.

Guggisberg, C.A.W. (1972). Crocodiles: Their Natural History, Folklore, and Conservation. Newton Abbot, David & Charles.

Neill, Wilfred (1971). The Last of the Ruling Reptiles: Alligators, Crocodiles, and Their Kin. Columbia University Press.

Ross, Charles (1989).  Crocodiles and Alligators.  Facts on File, Inc.

Whitaker, Romulus & Ashok Captain (2004). Snakes of India: The Field Guide. Draco Books.