07-21-2021, 12:04 PM
(07-21-2021, 03:17 AM)Ninurta Wrote: A page relating the Papuan "Ropen" to draagons, and dragons to pterodactyls, and so the Ropen to pterodactyls.I wonder if they are describing teratorns? They went extinct at a time when Native Americans would have been on the scene. The giant lizard might have been some sort of alligator.
I found this to be interesting:
Quote:The Dakota Sioux called these thunderbirds wakinyan, and pointed out collapsed river bluffs as places where the wakinyan swooped down on Unktehi, a monstrous water reptile (Pond, 1986).
The Cherokee also have legends of a similar interaction, although the thunderbird is, as I recall, called a "Tlanuwha", and the monstrous serpent the "Uktena". Unktehi and Uktena seem to be pretty similar to me. Cherokee is a Iroquoian language, rather than Siouan, so similarities that close would point to a time long ago before those languages separated one from another, I would think.
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