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Article ID: CBB130124576

The dinosaur from 600 BCE! Interpreting the dragon of Babylon, from archaeological excavation into fringe science (2021)

Miller, Eva (Author)

Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Volume: 45
Issue: 4
Pages: 100798
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

URI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932721000533

DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2021.100798

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Pseudoscience Archaeology Animals, mythical Cryptozoology Popularization Popular culture 20th century Ley, Willy

In 1918, German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, excavator of Babylon, Iraq, observed that the depiction of the fantastical “dragon of Babylon” on the sixth century BCE Ishtar Gate must reference a real animal whose closest relatives would be dinosaurs like the iguanodon. Though ignored within archaeology, Koldewey’s comments were taken up in German-American popular science writer Willy Ley’s “romantic zoology” (1941), then by Bernard Heuvelmans (1955), founding figure in the fringe field of cryptozoology. Their interpretations would ultimately inspire expeditions by the International Society of Cryptozoologists in Central Africa to find the Mokele-Mbembe, a “living dinosaur,” and migrate into Young Earth Creationist and ancient aliens theories. An analysis of Koldewey’s marginal academic observation serves as a means of considering the process of knowledge formation and canonization and the unpredictable life of scholarly ideas.

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