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Wait I thought European dragons where influence by geco-roman and ancient celtic myths? Then again it could be possible. But if I remember must legends of European dragons usually live in places like Africa and India. Which make sense that both places of venomous and large snakes living there.
Yesterday, I read a chapter about the Parisian saint Marcellus from the book “Time, Work & Culture in the Middle Ages” by French historian Jacques Le Goff. In it, he alludes to the hypothesis, that dragon depictions from the Merovingian era have been influenced by Chinese motives that have come to Europe through cultures from the Central Asian steppe.
That certainly makes sense to me, since the Huns have had a presence in Europe up until the 5th century, but I’ve never heard of this hypothesis before. Le Goffs sources are all in French (for example “La Civilisation mérovingienne d'aprés les sépultures, les textes et le laboratoire” by Edmond Salin), which I can’t read, and a quick search in Google Scholar didn’t bring up anything interesting.
Does anybody know if this hypothesis is still considered? The book is from the late seventies, so maybe it’s something that never caught on or has been discredited since then, but I haven’t found anything on that, either.