Dragon Tales 03: First Contact

First Contact

For millions of years, dragons were the only sentient species on the earth. I'm not saying that other species don't think, but there was nothing out there that had even approached our level of conscious thought, introspection and development - yep, we were millions of years ahead of everyone.

As we had seemingly forever, we watched and studied the world around us. We were in awe at the changes, the evolution we saw occurring.

Mammals became the dominant land animals. Among the mammals, there were a few archaic egg-layers like the ancestors of the platypus and echidna. There were larger numbers of pouched opossum-like mammals (marsupials). The few placental mammals that existed at that time mainly consisted of insectivore, ancestors of primates. Most of the mammal species were small, ranging from about the size of a mouse up to a medium size domesticated dog. The large grass-eating placental mammals, such as cattle and wildebeest, were absent as there were no vast grasslands. Rodents and seed-eating birds were also absent. The great proliferation of flowering plants had not taken place yet. However, forests of broad-leafed trees were developing over much of the earth.

Over several million years, global conditions continued to change. The tectonic plates continued to move - stretching areas (as an example, creating the Great Rift Valley system in Africa) and compressing in others (creating the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau in Asia). The climate also changed, with drops in the sea level and the appearance of continental shelves which allowed for animal migration.

The most dramatic changes began to occur as large grasslands developed, followed by the emergence of grazing and browsing mammals with tough hoofs, grinding teeth, and digestive tracts specialized for the processing of grass, leaves, and other fibrous plant materials. The evolution of these herbivorous mammals provided the opportunity for the evolution of the carnivorous mammals specialized to eat them (lions and tigers and bears, oh my). And most of these animals were placental, rather than egg-layers or marsupials.

As mammals grew, expanded and evolved, dragons thrived. It was a paradise - plenty of food and basically no competition. We kept spreading out - across the landscape and through time. Our ability to access and manipulate the power of the ley lines kept growing (some large massive skills and some amazingly fine skills) - some of us wondered if there were even limits. We found that we used less and less technology, depending upon our physical and mental abilities to survive. (And we enjoyed being at the top of the food chain.)

One of the things many of us did was to continue to push our abilities to change our own bodies. There continued to be fanciful changes to our appearance such as brightly colored feathers or long dangly ganglia on our chins. We developed our abilities to heal ourselves - healing cuts or broken bones, pushing out poisons or biological parasites or viruses. And many of us were fascinated with mimicking the developing creatures around us - usually the predators (who wanted to be a deer or antelope?).

I personally enjoyed changing into a large cat (think tiger, leopard or jaguar). And when we changed, we endeavored to make the changes completely down to our DNA matching those around us. (And of course, there were those of us who took it even further and tried mating with these around us.)

What can I say - as dragons, we had it all. There were unlimited areas to live through time, there was unlimited food, and the ley lines seemingly provided unlimited energy for our mental and physical manipulations. There were few if any restraints upon our use of the energy and what we did with it. As a species, we explored anything and everything we could think to explore - hedonism, science and evolution around us, the cosmos - these were all interests.

Living as we did, observing the world around us, we were drawn more and more to some small critters that we now think of as primates. The evolution among these guys was fascinating. There was an amazing diversity among them (different species) and they were everywhere. Most were tree-dwelling and they developed grasping hands and feet. They would often stand partially upright to see farther, and many of the species started evolving to have shorter snouts and skeletal adaptions to allow more and more bi-pedal stances. (If you're truly interested in this kind of stuff, you can find all sorts of articles explaining the changes in position of the foramen magnum in the skull, etc., allowing for an upright stance versus a four-legged stance.)

As the conditions kept changing, monkeys and then apes appeared - and then, the most interesting development, the development of hominids (the many and various pre-cursors to mankind) in what we now think of as Africa.

Just like apes and monkeys, there were numerous species that evolved. Over a few million years they became bipedal (walked on 2 legs), their brains grew and evolved, and they began to use tools and became capable of language.

Now with all of the species that we had seen before, we dragons had not gotten really too involved (I mean we changed ourselves to be like them to interact, even to the case of sexual intercourse, but did not interfere with their evolution).

However, as these hominids began to evolve, many of us found ourselves more and more intrigued. I think that it had to do with the fact that we subconsciously found their growing cognitive abilities (the idea that there might be another truly sentient species developing) just too much of a pull to leave alone - we had to be more closely involved.

As many of us would observe the hominids' evolution, we noticed that some of our brothers and sisters were taking the shape of these beings and trying to interact. In some cases it worked, in some it did not. You can't just walk up to a small being in the woods, jungle, savannah, etc. and say, "Hi, I'm Mike, who are you." It's a jungle out there. If you were not from their little family, you were viewed with quite a bit of suspicion and trepidation - they didn't know you from Adam, and did not know if you were there to bludgeon them and take the females or just to kill and eat them all.

While not approved by all of those of us watching, a few of our fellow dragons did just that - they approached a group, challenged the lead male (and made short work of him) and took over the group. The group usually seemed to benefit by having a more intelligent, experienced male leading them to better food and shelter. But personally, I think the dragons who did this primarily liked the adoration and the sexual favors they received from the other members of their new little family.

What seemed to be a better approach was that of a few female dragons who metamorphosed themselves into female hominids and then placed themselves somewhere in the path of the wandering family group to be "discovered" by the family. Acting as if they were terrified of the group, they would usually be surrounded and then taken into the group (and usually claimed by the alpha male). In this subservient position, they were assimilated into the group and eventually accepted as full members.

In this role, the females were often able to influence decisions made by the alpha male and even by other females (who would see that the dragon's food procuring abilities were quite good and would mimic her actions, etc.). The groups with a female dragon all prospered.

In my looking around at my dragon friends and family, it seemed that eventually almost everyone had a pet project involving adopting a hominid family group. We were leading them about in all sorts of different paths trying to get them to do what we wanted them to do. It was actually somewhat alarming to see so many dragons acting as little gods (we did not even have the term up until this point).

The dragon council of elders decided to formally discuss the growing situation - it only took a few hundred years of dragon interference with the hominids to bring about this discussion (well, maybe a few thousand if you looked across time).

As is the way with our discussions (yes, dragons do like to hear themselves talk) they dragged on and on with various individuals bringing up what they considered the pros and cons of our interference, how we could better the hominids situation or how we might be harming them. I have to say, that while we all gained a better understanding of what we might or might not be doing to or with them, I don't think that we really came up with any concrete solutions to guide our interactions. It seemed that we were just going to continue willy-nilly to do as each of us individually (or occasionally in a small group) determined what they wanted to do.

Looking back, I'm not sure that what we did influenced hominid development and evolution or not. Certainly, some individual groups were healthier (if not happier) for a while (millennium) and developed more than others. But most of the adopted groups eventually died out (as their dragon sponsor lost interest and moved on to other projects).

We eventually saw the dispersal of a few hominid populations out of Africa into Asia, Europe and even the Americas. Neanderthals were one of the stronger strains, but were eventually absorbed into the growing population of what we now call homo sapiens.