The term comes from cartography. Whenever a mapmaker got to an area that hadn't been charted yet, instead of taking the route that most high schoolers would and just make shit up, they drew a picture of a dragon and claimed 'that's where the dragons live'.
This practice originally started with the Roman's, where they would mark maps with the much less fantastic but somewhat plausible "This is where Elephants are born". Being the wonderfully frightened species we are, this deviated into lions, serpents, and other terrifying monsters such as walruses. "Walruses?" you say, with little faith. Yes, walruses. You should be scared of walruses.
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| They like to wear bow ties and eat Christians. |
Eventually, we wound up with maps that had all sorts of freaky monsters on the borders and dragons worked their way into becoming the standard. This says a lot about our species. I can imagine the cartographers discussing it:
"Do we know what's here?"
"Nope"
"Why not?"
"Probably because monsters killed everyone who ever tried. Why else wouldn't we have explored it?"
"Good call. Wanna go with cannibals or squids?"
"Ugh, squids are way too mainstream now. No one will take us seriously if we put squids on our map"
The vast majority of the world has been explored now and there's no more dragons left on our maps. It's a bit sad. Those dragons still do exist though - just in a smaller more personalized form. Your own personal dragon. Maybe your dragon is the same as in the old maps. A dragon protecting the unknown, keeping it hidden from you until you travel there. Sure, it's easy to say that somewhere like Bolivia exists. It's even possible to read up on it, to learn as many things about it as possible. You could be an expert on Bolivia but that dragon will still be on your map. Not until you've gone there will it ever go away.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got dragons to chase.
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| Where to start? |
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