Customer Reviews

An Instinct for Dragons

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In the human condition we have blended the three predators that preyed on us. With the compression of memory the leopard, matial eagle and serpent were blended into the dragon.This idea occured to him when he was preparing a lecture on the alarm calls of vervet monkeys. As Dr. Jones points out in this thoroughly researched book- every culture has dragons myths. This book is a combination of myth, anthropology and sociology. Dr. Jones as a professor of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida has done an excellent job of explaining the phenonomen of the dragon. This book is very engaging. I have been a student of folklore for many years and found that Dr. Jones told me of new dragons I had never found in other sources.

Overall, I thought this was quite an interesting idea, and I suspect that Jones is correct, though I'd wager that the snake played a disproportionate role (though not the only one, as the other reviewers suggest) and that during the time in which we were savannah apes we also included the crocodile.

However, the support for this hypothesis is rather spotty. In several cases, he neglects compelling evidence (such as the total lack of dinosaur fossils on Hawaii due to their recent volcanic origins) or makes errors which should have been caught (such as suggesting snakes' eyes face their prey as they strike, when in fact the mouth opens so wide that vision is totally obstructed). In some cases, he reaches too far (attempting to justify every minor embellishment of the dragon as originating from one or all of the three original predators), in other cases not far enough (a surprisingly cursory view of the reactions of basal primates to snakes, particularly lemurs, which have been isolated from venomous snakes for ~90 million years). His sections of evolution were generally good, but were too adaptationist and failed to seriously examine factors such as genetic drift and founder effect which could have led to individuals with altered perception of the "dragon threat" being disproportionately represented in the genepool.

More importantly, Jones clearly has done his utmost of expand the idea to fill the minimum book length, which is clearly evidenced by the full-page figures and entire last chapter. This has resulted in long lists of evidence and myths scattered throughout the book which distract from and bury the main point. The addition of the section on The Tree of Life as a universal symbol was similarly distracting.

It's a good idea with some strong potential, but the way in which it was written was enough to bump it down a whole star in rating. In my opinion, it should be re-issued as part of a larger whole exploring the biological basis of other universal symbols such as the tree, with much of the evidence and myth relegated to an appendix and with a herpetologist or at least an evolutionary biologist reviewing it prior to printing.

I have an interest in answers to the three big questions :-
1.Where did I come from?
2.Why am I here?
3.To where do I go when I am gone?
I've made considerable progress in finding answers to these questions but hit a brick wall when I realised that 'Instinct' plays a far more important role in our psyche than that for which it is given credit and/or is researched.
"An Instinct for Dragons" provides a 'missing link' in the chain of my comprehension.
It deserves massive attention.

The author's thesis is important, and probably has truth to it, but it's so poorly thought-out, so lacking in relevant research, so sophomoric and painful to read.

First, I have to give Jones credit for the imagination behind his premise. It's a very interesting one, with (on the surface) a lot of potential. But -- and you knew there had to be a "but", since I gave the book a mere two stars --

The book is dry, dull, and finally unconvincing. It reads like a doctoral dissertation rather roughly adapted for the general interest audience. And while Jones might be onto something *within one or two very specific cultural contexts* (e.g., China and Africa), in the main, I think he's very wrong to suggest this anthropological patchwork, where dragons are an amalgam of the eagle, leopard, and snake. No, I have to agree with B. Boesenberg that dragons (at least, the European variety) are really just snakes "with wild imaginings attached".

Mr Jones tries very hard to prove that dragons are combinations of the eagle, the leopard and the snake. Unfortunately for Mr Jones he needn't have bothered. Dragons aren't composit creatures. They're snakes with wild imaginings attached. Mr Jones goes to great lengths to "chimerize" the dragons and demystify the myths. But this isn't necessary! Snakes had the power to resurrect themselves from the dead when they shed their skin, (supposedly). Snakes were the unblinking, killers of men with one bite, (supposedly). Snakes were the models for the "python priestesses" and the raw materials that created the dreaded envenomed weapons. It is still the snake today that crawls through many a nightmare. This is the true dragon of old, enemy of George, the Leviathon that God can't kill, the moon powered antithesis of all sun/thunder god peoples! Go back and read Joseph Campbell!!