The Fantasy World Im Building Is Part Of A Very Complex Star System Including A Black Hole, And Has Three

the fantasy world I’m building is part of a very complex star system including a black hole, and has three moons and a ring system. Ancient mythology there is very, very complicated and different from our own.

i’ve talked about this before but like literally the coolest thing to think about is how different our mythology would be if we had different cosmic conditions. binary star system? every single pantheon would have twin sun gods. if they differed or actively changed in apparent size that’d be factored in. multiple moons? you fucking bet astrology would put more of a basis on moon configuration than the stars. saturn-like rings? i’d bet several cultures would assume that was the afterlife or the path to it. how the fuck is this not fascinating

The Dragon myths actually came from dinosaur fossils that Europeans and Asians thought were fire-breathing beasts. So what dinosaurs do you think are the closest to resemble eastern and western Dragons?

There is actually more to that

Dinosaur bones have been interpreted as dragon bones in the past but they may not be the origin of dragon myths themselves

The 4th-century Chinese historian Chang Qu has written of dragon bones found in Wucheng over 2000 years ago

Wucheng is located in the province Sichuan which is famous for its fossils of Jurassic dinosaurs, mainly sauropods

This has simply reinforced “proof” in the existence of dragons for people of this time

In Europe however the likelihood of coming across dinosaur bones seems lower, while it is more likely to come across the bones of Pleistocene megafauna

People may come across the skull of a woolly rhinoceros and, not being familiar with these in modern European view exotic animals, interpret them as something monstrous

A fountain sculpture of the lindwurm of Klagenfurt has been inspired by one such skull

The rhinoceros skull which has been found in 1335 has been interpreted as the lindwurm which is slain in Klagenfurt’s founding tale and has served as base for the sculpture in 1583

Its true origin hasn’t been revealed until 1840

The true origin of dragons however may lie within human psychology

As anthropologist David E. Jones writes in his book “An Instinct for Dragons”, the belief in dragons is so widespread among cultures of ancient history that their origin may lie within our own evolution

An among monkeys deeply rooted common fear of animals such as snakes, big cats, elephants and birds of prey may be the origin of our image of dragons and in fact snakes especially seem to be the design base of dragons in most cultures

The instinctive fear of these animals which were regular threats in the daily life of our ancestors has morphed into the dragons of folklore

A powerful creature that may be feared or worshipped by mankind and to this day stays relevant in our culture from novels to games

All this may in the end explain why it’s actually rather difficult to pinpoint which dinosaurs resemble dragons the most

Popular picks are Pachycephalosaurus as the ontogenetical variant “Dracorex” or the scansoriopterygid Yi, although the status of its patagia is debatable

These however resemble more modern depictions of dragons which themselves have been inspired by modern depictions of dinosaurs as pointed out in this post by @suicunesrider: http://suicunesrider.tumblr.com/post/177332621980/i-appreciate-how-as-our-understanding-of-dinosaur

Dragons in classic depictions are usually blends of serpentine and mammalian features and thus barely resemble any dinosaur if at all

But as one group of animals which have blended into the dragon stew are birds of prey I may say the dinosaurs resembling dragons the most are the ones that aided in their creation

This is highly useful since I’ve had Sphaeran faeries pegged as trochilid sophonts for years now but could never find too much online about their palaeohistory.

Could fairies actually be a crafty species of Hummingbird that defends their nest using cleverness instead of aggression?

I have already done fairies

https://stolpergeist.tumblr.com/post/181978211964/a-fairy-is-an-omnivorous-shrew-whose-fingers-have

However they are such a waste basket group of magical beings you can go for multiple interpretations

Hummingbirds would however pose an issue as in this day and age they are native only to the Americas

Sometimes people may claim seeing hummingbirds in Europe but those sightings are usually hawk-moths of the species Macroglossum stellatarum

Hummingbirds do however have ancestral roots in Eurasia, splitting from the swift family tree during the Eocene, possibly evolving from a nocturnal ancestor after the split from Strisores, the order that also includes nightjars, frogmouths and the beloved potoos in case their nocturnal lifestyle didn’t evolve independently multiple times

Swifts and hummingbirds form the clade Apodiformes and are active at day unlike their relatives

Primitive hummingbirds diverged from a group called jungornithids by the end of the Eocene

One ancestral almost-hummingbird of this time is Parargornis messelensis with a size of around 5 cm

Parargornis has a swift-like beak, reduced humerus length, short and broad wings and long tail feathers

Along with Argornis it represents a very early stage of hummingbird evolution

These animals show us that a large part of hummingbird evolution took place in Eurasia

At the dawn of the Oligocene forms like Eurotrochilus emerged with elongated beaks to consume nectar

Eurotrochilus like its modern relatives is a relatively small bird, the skull having a length of 34 mm

While all extant hummingbird species are native the New World, the two species within the genus Eurotrochilus have been found in Germany, France and Poland which further suggests an Old World origin for hummingbirds

Why exactly hummingbirds went extinct in Europe afterwards is unknown

One possibility may be competition with specialized bees, another may be climate change making it more difficult to retain their body temperature due to their small size

Either way if fairies were to be interpreted as hummingbirds they would be prehistoric survivors with an origin that lies 30 million years ago

This has probably been said in the notes somewhere but, when I was doing research for my hard sci-fi universe, I found out that some African countries are starting to look more seriously into space exploration, particularly Nigeria. Apparently they’re quite interested in launching their own telecoms and science satellites, the former of which would support their infrastructure setup immensely with increased access to high-speed internet. With the pace at which Africa’s recovering from European colonialism, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an African Space Agency within the decade, which would be incredible!

the president of nigeria is about to fuck boko haram up and cut his own salary in half and criminalized female genital mutilation

the president of guinea built/is building infrastructure and school and wells all over the country and is decreasing youth unemployment exponentially

the president of cote d’ivoire made school mandatory of children ages 6-16 and banned plastic bags while also building ultra modern trasportation infrastructure

the future is for real in africa