Just as the title says, Ive reading and watching a lot of documentaries lately about dinosaurs and as a student of history I was curious as to how early civilizations began to describe evil or various gods, etc as associated to have tails or horns. What is the possibility that dinosaur fossils are the cause of this?
I greatly look forward to your answers and I hope I posted this in the correct place. Thank you!
Not likely. It's in the realm of possibilities, but its incredibly unlikely.
The usage of horns and tails in most cases actually is intended to evoke the goat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat
(Scroll down to the bit about religion)
Goats have been long associated with certain sets of vices, which also happened to be considered major sins in the Christian religion. It was also somewhat revered in the Pagan set of religions (along with ancient traditions like Norse and ancient Greek) and was tied as a thing of honor in Judaism- Jews were supposed to slaughter a goat when someone important visited.
So there's a lot of vectors for how the goat could be associated as a thing of evil. Or, uh, called as such to make a religion look bad.