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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.

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by RICK VEITCH
letters TODD KLEIN
editor DAVID REISMAN

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.

Photo © WNET.ORG/Icon Films

Ancient maps, legends, and fairy tales all tell of dragons in our world.  In nearly every culture, we are taught as children that dragons are big and fearsome, that they fly, breathe fire, are found in caves and live nearly forever.  Where did these stories come from?  Are they based on real animals?  And are there any dragons still to be found today?  Romulus Whitaker, renowned reptile expert and conservationist, puts a bit of history together with documented science and some compelling contemporary reports, and sets off to find out.  He encounters lizards large and small that can breathe life into medieval legends even today. Buy the DVD. This film premiered January 11, 2009.

The Pemón, a Carib Indian people, are thought to have come to the Gran Sabana roughly 600 years ago. Prehistoric stone tools, though, have been found that suggest humans lived in the Lost World as long as 9,000 years ago. Today, about 75 percent of the nation’s entire population of 20,000 people live within Venezuela’s Canaima National Park.

Though Mount Roraima was included on a map published in Paris in the mid-17th century, the Pemón had no known contact with the outside world until the 18th century when Capuchin missionaries arrived in the Gran Sabana to convert them to Catholicism. A series of five books by the 20th-century missionary Frey Cesaro de Armellado still provides the best source of information about the Pemóns’ traditional shamanistic beliefs.

Other Europeans soon followed. In the mid-19th century, German explorers Richard Shomburgk and Theodor Koch-Grünberg wrote widely about their travels in the Gran Sabana, sparking much interest in the region. Scaling Mount Roraima became the goal. Supported by the Royal Geographical Society of London, British explorers Everard Im Thurn and Harry Perkins in 1884 became the first to accomplish this feat. Lectures by Thurn about their adventures prompted Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, to pen the bestseller fantasy “The Lost World,” published in 1912.

Other explorers followed. One of them, American pilot Jimmie Angel, was on the hunt for a supposed “river of gold” to which he had earlier transported another explorer. Angel never found the gold, but in 1933, he did find a waterfall. Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world, tumbling some 3,212 feet from the top of Auyantepui. Seven years later, the Venezuelan Ministry of Development backed an ambitious exploration program of the so-called Lost World, largely bringing its isolation to an end.

According to Pemón legend, this animal represents the spirit that was instrumental in saving man’s fish supplies:

Water snake

Black frog

Giant otter

Lizard

Wonder about supper in the Lost World? Pemón cuisine relies on what’s immediately available. Like bugs. Termites and ants are ground up with chilis for spicy sauces to add a dash of flavor to meat. (Read more in Wildlife.) Given the Lost World’s abundance of rivers, fish are also popular — a spicy fish stew called “tuma” with manioc wafers is one common repast. Meat such as agouti (kin to the guinea pig) or deer can also make an appearance. Breakfasts feature dumplings — reportedly quite fatty — and coffee. Kachiri, a manioc root liqueur, is the preferred alcohol. Food remains an issue for the Pemón, who are resorting more to growing their own produce rather than harvesting wild food items. In the 1990s, reports circulated that electricity companies involved in the construction of a major power line through the Gran Sabana to Brazil offered free food to counter local opposition to their project.