Human uses of reptiles have for centuries included both symbolic and practical interactions.
Symbolic uses of reptiles include accounts in mythology, religion, and folklore as well as pictorial symbols such as medicine's serpent-entwined caduceus. Myths of creatures with snake-like or reptilian attributes are found around the world, from Chinese and European dragons to the Woolunga of Australia. Classical myths told of the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra, the Gorgon sisters including the snake-haired Medusa, and the snake-legged Titans. Crocodiles appear in the religions of Ancient Egypt, in Hinduism, and in Aztec and other Latin American cultures.
Practical uses of reptiles include the manufacture of snake antivenom and the farming of crocodiles, principally for leather but also for meat. Reptiles still pose a threat to human populations, as snakes kill some tens of thousands each year, while crocodiles attack and kill hundreds of people per year in Southeast Asia and Africa. However, people keep some reptiles such as iguanas, turtles, and the docile corn snake as pets.
Soon after their discovery in the nineteenth century, dinosaurs were represented to the public as the large-scale sculptures of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, while in the twentieth century they became important elements in the popular imagination, thought of as maladapted and obsolete failures, but also as fantastic and terrifying creatures in monster movies. In folklore, crocodiles were thought to weep to lure their prey, or in sorrow for their prey, a tale told in the classical era, and repeated by Sir John Mandeville and William Shakespeare. Negative attitudes to reptiles, especially snakes, have led to widespread persecution, contributing to the challenge of conserving reptiles in the face of the effects of human activity such as habitat loss and pollution.
Context
Culture consists of the social behaviour and norms found in human societies and transmitted through social learning. Cultural universals in all human societies include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers physical expressions such as technology, architecture and art, whereas immaterial culture includes principles of social organization, mythology, philosophy, literature, and science.
The ethnobiologist Luis Ceriaco reviews the place of reptiles in culture, as studied by ethnoherpetology, considering their practical uses, namely food, medicine, and other materials; their contribution to "ecological equilibrium", the balance of nature; and negative or fearful attitudes to them (especially snakes), causing persecution, an additional challenge for conservation. This persecution, Ceriaco states, is related to and perhaps caused by myths and folklore about the animals.
More broadly, ethnozoology studies the place of animals in human life, spanning topics including using animals for food, whether by hunting or by domestication and farming; animals as pets, in entertainment, and in sport; reports of mythical animals; human attitudes towards animals; medicinal and magic religious uses; and the exploitation of traditional knowledge of animals, such as in conservation.
A more recent perspective is to view the interactions of humans and reptiles as something of "more-than-human agency", in other words the subject of a multi-species study. For example, the behaviour of crocodiles "is constructed in interaction, both between people and crocodiles, and among people"; markedly different results depended on "institutional arrangements and attitudes towards sharing a dam with crocodiles" in different villages in Benin, where knowledge of crocodile habits reduced attacks.
Symbolic interactions
In mythology and religion
Reptiles both real, like crocodiles and snakes, and imaginary, like dragons, appear in mythology and religions around the world. A widespread theme is the World Turtle that supports the world; it is found in the mythologies of Hinduism, China and the Americas. Romulo Alves and colleagues recorded the use of 13 species of reptiles (crocodilians and snakes) in Brazil for magic religious purposes such as magic spells, attracting sexual partners, and as amulets to protect against the evil eye.
A dragon is a reptile-like legendary creature in the myths of European and Chinese cultures, with counterparts in Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries. The (genuine) plesiosaur Woolungasaurus is named after the Woolunga, a mythical reptile of Australia. In Greek mythology snakes are associated with deadly antagonists, as a chthonic symbol, roughly translated as 'earthbound'. The nine-headed Lernaean Hydra that Hercules defeated and the three Gorgon sisters are children of Gaia, the earth. Medusa was one of the three Gorgon sisters who Perseus defeated. Medusa is described as a hideous mortal, with snakes instead of hair and the power to turn men to stone with her gaze. After killing her, Perseus gave her head to Athena who fixed it to her shield called the Aegis. The Titans are also depicted in art with snakes instead of legs and feet for the same reason—they are children of Gaia and Uranus, so they are bound to the earth.
Crocodiles have appeared in religions across the world. Ancient Egypt had Sobek, the crocodile-headed god, with his cult-city Crocodilopolis, as well as Taweret, the goddess of childbirth and fertility, with the back and tail of a crocodile. In Hinduism, Varuna, a Vedic and Hindu god, rides a makara, a water-beast like a crocodile, and he is called Nāgarāja, lord of snakes. Similarly the goddess personifications of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers are often depicted as riding crocodiles. In Goa, crocodile worship is practised, as at the annual Mannge Thapnee ceremony. In Latin America, Cipactli was the giant earth crocodile of the Aztec and other Nahua peoples.
In Hinduism, snakes are worshipped as gods. The cobra is seen around the neck of Shiva, while Vishnu is often depicted as sleeping on a seven-headed snake or within the coils of a serpent. There are temples in India solely for cobras, which are sometimes called nagaraja (King of Snakes), and it is believed that snakes are symbols of fertility. In the annual Hindu festival of Naga Panchami, snakes are venerated and prayed to, and given gifts of milk, sweets, flowers, and lamps.
In religious terms, the snake rivals the jaguar in importance in ancient Mesoamerica. "In states of ecstasy, lords dance a serpent dance; great descending snakes adorn and support buildings from Chichen Itza to Tenochtitlan, and the Nahuatl word coatl meaning serpent or twin, forms part of primary deities such as Mixcoatl, Quetzalcoatl, and Coatlicue.".
The Amaru, a mythological being with serpent-like characteristics, is a common motif in Andean and South American mythology.Steele, Paul R. (2004). "Encyclopedia of Mythic Narratives, Themes, and Concepts". Handbook of Inca Mythology. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. pp. 95–98. .
In Christianity and Judaism, a serpent appears in Genesis 3:1 to tempt Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge."Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" King James Version, Genesis 3:1 In Neo-Paganism and Wicca, the snake is seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge. A legend tells that Saint Patrick banished snakes from Ireland; there are no extant native snakes there. The legend of Saint George and the Dragon, which has pre-Christian origins, tells that the saint, often depicted on horseback and armed with a lance, killed a dragon.St. George and the Dragon: Introduction in: E. Gordon Whatley, Anne B. Thompson, Robert K. Upchurch (eds.), Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections (2004).
More recently, the urban legend of New York sewer alligators holds that pet reptiles, released when they grew too large for their owners' comfort, thrived and grew to monstrous size beneath the city's streets.
As symbols
The snake or serpent has played a powerful symbolic role in different cultures. In Egyptian history, the Nile cobra adorned the crown of the pharaoh. It was worshipped as one of the gods and was also used for sinister purposes: murder of an adversary and ritual suicide (Cleopatra). In America, the snake has served as a symbol of deceptiveness, as when US President Andrew Jackson told the Creek Nation in 1829 that he spoke with a straight tongue, not a forked one.
Three medical symbols involving snakes, still used today, are the Bowl of Hygieia symbolizing pharmacy, and the Caduceus and Rod of Asclepius, symbols of medicine.
The ouroboros is a widely used symbol, claimed to be related to alchemy. It is depicted as a coiled snake eating its own tail, representing the cycle of life, death and rebirth. The snake is one of the 12 celestial animals of the Chinese Zodiac. Ancient Peruvian cultures often depicted snakes.
The tortoise was a fertility symbol in ancient Greece and Rome, and an attribute of Aphrodite/Venus. The turtle has a prominent position as a symbol of steadfastness and tranquility in religion, mythology, and folklore from around the world.Plotkin, Pamela, T., 2007, Biology and Conservation of Ridley Sea Turtles, Johns Hopkins University, . A tortoise's longevity is suggested by its long lifespan and its shell, which was thought to protect it from any foe.Ball, Catherine, 2004, Animal Motifs in Asian Art, Courier Dover Publications, . In the cosmological myths of several cultures a World Turtle carries the world upon its back or supports the heavens.Stookey, Lorena Laura, 2004, Thematic Guide to World Mythology, Greenwood Press, .
In literature
Reptiles have appeared in literature since ancient times. Pliny the Elder, for instance, describes the legendary basilisk as a snake "twelve fingers in length".viii. 33 The animal reappears many times in Western literature, including in Isidore of Seville's medieval Etymologiae, and more recently in J. K. Rowling's 1998 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Among the many other reptiles in children's literature, Rudyard Kipling's story "How the Elephant got his Trunk" in his 1902 book Just So Stories features a crocodile who grips and stretches the elephant's nose.
Turtles and tortoises feature in books for children and adults, from The Tortoise and the Hare in Aesop's Fables to Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher and Br'er Turtle in Uncle Remus's folktales. In Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, the world was created by the turtle Maturin, one of the guardians of the tower.
Snakes, too, have played a role in literature since ancient Rome, where Cadmus kills a gigantic serpent in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and as prophesied is transformed into a snake. The eponymous heroine in William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra kills herself with an asp viper, while John Milton's Paradise Lost describes Satan as a mighty serpent, "Fold above fold a surging Maze his Head / Crested aloft, and Carbuncle his Eyes; / With burnisht Neck of verdant Gold, erect / Amidst his circling Spires." In D. H. Lawrence's Snake, the thirsty poet is forced to wait while the snake "sipped with his straight mouth, / Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, / Silently." Among the novels that feature snakes, Lemony Snicket's 1999 The Reptile Room tells of a herpetologist who cares for orphaned children and dies of snakebite, while Barbara Kingsolver's 1998 thriller The Poisonwood Bible portrays a missionary in the Congo, who is greeted by the planting of deadly snakes in his friend's houses, and then his own.