Story 1 of Paul Taylor's Dragon Claims
From EvoWiki
Claim: One "dragon" story from the ancient land of Sumer in Babylon tells of the hero Gilgamesh. He decided to make a name for himself by traveling to a distant land to cut great cedar trees needed for his city. He reached the forest with fifty volunteers and discovered a huge reptile-like animal which ate trees and reeds. The story simply says that Gilgamesh killed it and cut off its head for a trophy.
Rebuttal: According to the illustration found on page 37 as well as on this page, we see Gilgamesh battling a Brachiosaurus like dinosaur. But the illustration here is not right and the story here is nothing more than a fabricated myth. The dinosaur here is not drawn right because of two things: splayed toes and Apatosaurus-like body. These features are what Brachiosaurus never had and the story itself never said anything about a demon eating trees and reeds. In fact, what Gilgamesh actually slew was a humanoid demon, not dinosaur. With a help of his friend whose name was Eniki (or Enkidu), he killed the horrible demon-guardian of the forest, named Humbaba, by chopping off his head after deceiving it, and fighting a prolonged struggle. Humbaba begs for mercy, but, Enkidu convinces Gilgamesh to slay the demon, given as how, when your prey is at your mercy, you seize it, not let it go. When the god Enlil, who was Humbaba's master, discovers Humbaba's murder, he utters a curse upon his killers.
Rebuttal To An Old Roman Mosaic Claim
There is a old Roman mosaic shown in the book on page 38 of what appear to be 2 horned headed sea dragons with their necks entwined with each other that's compared with an image of a Tanystropheus taken from John Mann's book The Day of the Dinosaur. Unfortunately, Taylor failed to realize that Tanystropheus lacks horns on its head, and a flexible neck. Plus, the monsters in the mosaic have only 2 legs while Tanystropheus had 4. The monsters seem to have a fish like tail while Tanystropheus only has a normal reptilian (albeit stub-like) tail. The YEC hoaxers must have covered up the ends of the monsters so that no one will know the real truth behind them. Also, they have fish heads kind of forged at the shoulder areas of their bodies to make them, in a way, resemble a chimera type creature. Looking at them closely, those monsters' heads could closely resembled Synthetoceras a prehistoric deer from the Miocene Epoch about 12-9 million years ago. Perhaps someone found the remains of this creature and made a picture of what the creature may have looked liked on the Mosaic. If it is so, then the YECs must have misinterpret the image on purpose to prove their dino-myth to be true, yet it is not so.
Rebuttal To A So-Called Dinosaur Drawing Claim
The so-called Native American carving of an Edmontosaurus shown on page 39 is actually a scorpion. Edmontosaurus never looked like what it is depicted in the picture next to the photograph. It looks more like a cheap version of a Neeve Parker painting as shown in John man's The Day of the Dinosaur than what Edmontosaurus really does look like based on fossilized evidence. Speaking of evidence, Carl Sagan (1934-1996), a famed scientist, says "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" Since there is no truly extraordinary evidence for all of these things Taylor promotes, then there is indeed no sense of ever accepting his dragon/dinosaur falsehood.
Falsehood About Alexander The Great's Discovery
Story possibly shown in the updated version of the book:
When Alexander the Great and his army were invading India at one time, he was shown to a cave where it contained large hissing serpents (reptiles) the Indians kept and worshiped inside of it. Despite what Paul claimed in his book, Alexander and his army may have actually saw gharials, long narrow nosed crocodiles that were kept in the caves instead of dinosaurs. No one ever knew what sounds the dinosaurs made when they were alive because no one was there to hear their voices calling out to each other, millions of years ago. But, we do know that crocodiles and gharials do hiss and they've been worshipped as gods by the people of India who has a very high concentration of Hinduism and Buddhism in their country. It is most likely that this is what Alexander must have saw in the cave instead of dinosaurs. Otherwise it is a made up myth.
