“Here be dragons” means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps where potential dangers were thought to exist.“‘Here be dragons,’ is a very interesting sentence,” said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. “In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say there’s bad stuff out there.”
“Here be dragons” means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps where potential dangers were thought to exist.“‘Here be dragons,’ is a very interesting sentence,” said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. “In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say there’s bad stuff out there.”