Michael Morris said:And earlier today there was a special on dragons during which it was postulated that those creatures of fantasy may have had their roots in our ancestral genetic fears of our three primoridal predators - snake, big cats and birds of prey (apparently eagles have attacked and killed children as old as 6 before - did not know that).
I just realized that these big three (raptors, snakes, bigcats) don't very well describe the predators a prehistoric human would face (we kinda outgrew the first two a while back), they do describe the predators a typical monkey has to contend with. So if there is something primal about people being afraid of dragons, it goes way, way, way back. (The other predator that eats lots o' monkeys is apes/humans, but we had by definition evolved away from monkeys by the time that one came up).
Ace: D'oh, I forgot Steve Jackson wrote TFT. I've met him before, the piltdown/orc thing was definitely a joke/fantasy element.
In parting, I would like to say that I thought those bear-neandrathal guys from 13th warrior were quite scary, until I realized that they were not called the windoo as I had misheard but the wendel. Don't know why I felt compelled to share that, but there it is.