Tricia verver, archeoplogist, tells the story of the Hazaras, Shia Muslims who have myths about dragons (and a very peculiar lake in their valley) Precarious Life: the fate of the Hazara people in Afghanistan.

A couple of weeks ago much riting on Afghanistan, a few explainer of the ethnic composition. In one I found this

“some Pashtun Afghans officers who told me a story of a militant fighter they had captured right after the 2001 invasion who came from an isolated valley along the Pak-Afghan border.  This man, along with his tribe, believed the sun is a jewel vomited by a dragon each morning and then swallowed by that same dragon again on the other side of the world each night after the dragon has rushed under the (presumably flat) earth all day to catch it“

Among Afghans: jewel of the dragon by Razib Kahn, reccomended

Dragons are sumerian, I understand. religions with pre-Islam myths still survive in the middle east, Dragons be one of those myths. You know the Mando and Mandalorians? Be aware that in the delta of the tigri and euphrtae there is a people called Mandeans with a peculiar iniziatic religion. There’s a book to tell their story, plus some other surviving Babilonian religions in the area.

A book: Heirs to the Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russel – Goodreads

Another book, this time on Dragons and generally the depiction of monstrous creatures in history, or better, The fortune of dragons from the bronze age on 🙂

The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction by David Wengrow