I know that the dragon is based on snakes cuz people were fearful of it and lots of countries have mythology about snakes (eg: Quetzalcoatl), but why Phoenix? Why firebird?
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Asia and Europe is the same thing, really. For instance, when you’re studying Slavic languages, lots of words sound suspiciously similar to something out of Sanskrit.
Humans mythologise animals. Some time some place in Asia someone looked at high-altitude clouds (of the kind that, of an evening, have a decent correlation with a coming atmospheric front, so a weather change, so a storm) and said “fuck me, this looks like a giant red bird, doesn’t it”? And the legend began.
Birds also migrate and do other things like that, again, easily connected with themes of cycles, renewals and rebirths.
So we have great birds like Peng or the Phoenix in the sky, sea monsters in the… well, sea; and dragons underground (totally unrelated, I’m sure, to people digging for flint, clay, and eventually ore, and finding huge-ass fossil skulls with teeth the size of knives).
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