Simon Peter Sutherland

Dolwyddelan Church © 2013 Simon Peter Sutherland

In Wales recently, at the tiny and beautiful village of Dolwyddelan, Gwynedd, I, my wife and sons had been travelling through the Welsh mountains and stopped at the ancient village. This village is stunningly located in those glorious Welsh mountains and even has its own Welsh Calvinistic-Methodist Chapel and also a delightful 500 or so year old Church.While visiting this ancient building known as St Gwyddelan’s Church, I picked up an old legend about a Dragon. I love those old legends.The story goes that a Dragon came up out of the sea and made its way up the river arriving at the village of Dolwyddelan. Apparently the Dragon was so powerful that as it swooped through the valley, diving into the waters it caused a number of floods in the village.The locals knew they needed to do something about the creature but did not want to harm it and decided to lure the beast into the mountains so it could live its days out there. It did so and no harm came to the village again.

Obviously not all legends are true, but we have similar examples of stories like this where people lured Dragons into caves, even amongst the ancient writings of Marco Polo.

Strange isnt it how so many ancient stories can be found throughout the world about people coming up against Dragons and large flying creatures. Yet today, particularly amongst modern evolutionary scientists, many people appear to be under the impression that the discoveries of Dinosaurs are a modern thing, yet the writings of the ancients clearly suggest otherwise.

Calvinistic Methodist Chapel at Dolwyddelan © 2013 Simon Peter Sutherland

The obvious and clear problem when reviewing these ancient legends is that they never use the word ‘Dinosaur’. The answer to this is of course that the word ‘Dinosaur’ had not been invented at the time of the event and the compositions. The word ‘Dinosaur’ or “Dinosauria” was not used to describe the creatures until 1842 when the Lancaster born Sir Richard Owen formally named them. People prior to this time referred to ‘Dinosaurs’ as Dragons, Winged Serpents, Reptiles and so forth. Which is all the word Dinosauria means, terrible reptile or lizzard.We find clear examples of Dinosaurs (Dragons) in ancient writings ranging from the likes of Josephus, the Romans, the Apostle John, Marco Polo and even the likes of ancient myths such as ‘George and the Dragon’.

There is even an ancient tomb in Carlisle Cathedral with the image of a Dinosaur (Dragon) on there.

Strange is it not that so many people today think that the discoveries of Dinosaurs is a modern thing, as though modern evolutionary scientists own ‘Dinosaurs’.

Clearly the ancients would not agree, but would ask them, ‘what took you so long, we knew about these creatures thousands of years ago’.