Diverse traditions gather the legend regarding the death of dragons that fight against heroes. In the West, the dragons represent Evil Forces, they feed on human beings and they protect hidden treasures on the bottom of the seas or the core of the Earth. Other times they are imagined as guardians of a beautiful princess who must be rescued.

For example, Medea gives quick aid to Jasón to obtain the Golden Fleece by sleeping the dragon that watched the oak on which the expensive reward was hung. The slaughter of the dragon used to end the career of most heroes of the Antiquity: Beowulf, Hercules, Siegfried, Saint George, Saint Michael and the Knights of the Round Table, specially King Arturo, Lancelot and Tristram.

Besides obtaining treasures and release beautiful captives, the defeat of the dragon granted the capacity to acquire knowledge and offered physical invulnerability. In spite of the bad fame that the dragons won in the West, all were not evil. Pliny the Elder tells the history of the knight Thoas of Arcadia, who had a dragon as a companion; thanks to him Thoas was saved from the attack of thieves.

It was believed in the existence of real dragons until recent times. For example, in Austria, during the XVI century, exhibited fossil remains of a rhino with the body covered with wool adducing it was proof of a prehistoric dragon. The skull of the animal was conserved in Klagenfurt until the conclusion of World War II. The investigator Konrad von Gesner tried -without too much success- to base these beliefs, giving them certain scientific character.

In the mythology of different cultures the dragons increased their size; wings grew from them and brought forth numerous heads. In Egypt, Mesopotamia and India, towards the year 3000 BC., there are documents that support this evolution in diverse legends.

In Colchis (that is how the Southeastern coast of the Black Sea is denominated) a dragon took care of Golden Fleece. Jason and the Argonauts obtained it ingeniously, helped by Medea, as it was indicated previously. On the other hand, the hundred-headed dragon named Ladon that guarded the gold apples of the Hesperides.

On the other hand, in the ethnic group Hausa -to the north of Nigeria- the history of a dragon is told on which every night he would choose a victim to feed himself, until the young Dan-Hanta is able to kill him thanks to hot stones that he threw on the beast’s mouth.

Old pre-Columbian legends speak of a cruel flying dragon that harassed the tribes who lived near the borders of a lake and was immune to arrows and spears, thanks to his extraordinary speed. It was thanks to an ingenious hero known as “Bearer of the Sky” that this beast managed to be destroyed.