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The Dragon and the Rainbow
Man’s Oldest Story
Series: - Ancient Languages and Civilizations, Volume: 5
Author:
Modernization and conversion to world religions are threatening the survival of traditional belief systems, leaving behind only mysterious traces of their existence. This book, based upon extensive research conducted over a period of nearly four decades, brings scientific rigor to one of the questions that have always attracted human curiosity: that of the origin of the dragon.
The author demonstrates that both dragons and rainbows are cultural universals, that many of the traits that are attributed to dragons in widely separated parts of the planet are also attributed to rainbows, and that the number and antiquity of such shared traits cannot be attributed to chance or common inheritance, but rather to common cognitive pathways by which human psychology has responded to the natural environment in a wide array of cultures around the world.
The author demonstrates that both dragons and rainbows are cultural universals, that many of the traits that are attributed to dragons in widely separated parts of the planet are also attributed to rainbows, and that the number and antiquity of such shared traits cannot be attributed to chance or common inheritance, but rather to common cognitive pathways by which human psychology has responded to the natural environment in a wide array of cultures around the world.
Robert Blust (1940-2022) was a Professor of Linguistics at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He was, and continues to be, the preeminent scholar of Austronesian comparative linguistics. An enormously prolific scholar, Blust had nearly 300 publications. In addition to being a world-famous linguist, he was also an avid writer of poetry.
Foreword
Preface
Preface by the Author
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Introduction
Prologue: Two Steps from Nature to Culture
1 From Rainbow to Rainbow Serpent
2 From Rainbow Serpent to Dragon
1 What, If Anything, Is a Dragon?
2 Why Dragons? Theories from A to Z
1 Naturalistic Theories of the Dragon: Cryptozoology
2 Symbolic Theories of the Dragon
3 Neo-Lamarckian Theories: The Dragon as Archetype
4 Diffusionist Theories
5 Other Theories
3 Dragons and Waterfalls
1 North America
2 The Caribbean and South America
3 Insular Southeast Asia
4 The Pacific
5 Africa
4 Dragons and Thunder/Lightning
5 The Ethnology of the Dragon
1 Central and East Asia
2 North America and Mexico
3 The Data
6 What, If Anything, Is a Rainbow?
1 Rainbows: Familiar and Fantastic
2 Portrayals of the Rainbow
3 Distributional Summary
7 The Ethnology of the Rainbow
1 How the Dragon Was Born
2 Mysteries of the Rainbow
3 Sunshowers
4 The Rainbow Taboo
8 A Glimpse of the Glory
1 Europe
2 Ancient Near East
9 Connecting the Dots
10 Conclusions
Appendix: Ethnic Groups Cited
References
Index
Preface
Preface by the Author
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Introduction
Prologue: Two Steps from Nature to Culture
1 From Rainbow to Rainbow Serpent
2 From Rainbow Serpent to Dragon
Part 1 Dragons
1 What, If Anything, Is a Dragon?
2 Why Dragons? Theories from A to Z
1 Naturalistic Theories of the Dragon: Cryptozoology
2 Symbolic Theories of the Dragon
3 Neo-Lamarckian Theories: The Dragon as Archetype
4 Diffusionist Theories
5 Other Theories
3 Dragons and Waterfalls
1 North America
2 The Caribbean and South America
3 Insular Southeast Asia
4 The Pacific
5 Africa
4 Dragons and Thunder/Lightning
5 The Ethnology of the Dragon
1 Central and East Asia
2 North America and Mexico
3 The Data
Part 2 Rainbows
6 What, If Anything, Is a Rainbow?
1 Rainbows: Familiar and Fantastic
2 Portrayals of the Rainbow
3 Distributional Summary
7 The Ethnology of the Rainbow
1 How the Dragon Was Born
2 Mysteries of the Rainbow
3 Sunshowers
4 The Rainbow Taboo
8 A Glimpse of the Glory
1 Europe
2 Ancient Near East
Part 3 Summing Up
9 Connecting the Dots
10 Conclusions
Appendix: Ethnic Groups Cited
References
Index
Blust’s treatment of the ethnology of the rainbow and the demonstration of its relationship to the dragon idea has a global reach and will appeal to a broad audience. Moreover, it is written in prose that makes it accessible to the general reader. It will surely be of great interest to folklorists, mythologists and cultural anthropologists open to addressing culture universals, and likely to generate considerable interest to cognitive scientists, evolutionary psychologists, evolutionary biologists, or anyone interested in the evolution of human cognition.