The Draco standard

[Robert Vermaat]

And "draco" like symbolism is present in Dacia area since bronze age at least, if you look at some zoomorphic bracelets that was found here, with a serpentiphorm body ended with various animal heads

Like these (first is dated in bronze age, second somewhere around IV century BC)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...brasov.JPG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...11_-_2.jpg

The heads in this case are some horse heads, but there are others with spirals and horned heads and such. I posted this just to see the connection with horses too, since the bronze age (so before the individualization of other indo-european populations)

Diegis,

These images mean nothing. There is so much animalistic artworks around Europe and Asia of this very kind, it's impossible to use these as direct evidence for the "presence of draco-like symbilism in Dacia since the Bronze Age". Look at Scuthian artwork for instance. Sure, this is present in the area of Dacia during the Bronze Age, but it's also present in other areas during that same period.
Reasoning like that, we can find 'draco-like symbolism' all over the Near East to the Far East! They are just animal heads on jewellery. Not proof of the origin of the draco only in Dacia during the Bronze Age.

Those are bracelets, but if a "draco" standard was made of wood and some fabric and leather it probably didnt survived.
Fact is that Romans always associated in their images the Draco with the Dacians

You can possibly prove either of that.
I mean, I would go as far as to agree that the Romans most probably came into contact with Dacian windsocks (I won't call them dracones because Dacians also used other animal heads for them, like wolves), but it goes to far to say that 'therefore' the Romans only knew Dacian windsocks. The very fact that the Romans only used the dragon as animal for their windsocks (instead of other animals) must also mean something. We know that other cultures used the windsock, and it's just as logical to assume that the Romans knew Dacians using them, as to assume that the Romans knew other tribes using them. Such as Roxolani, Sarmatae, Massagetae (whom I think were assumed by ancient authors to belong to 'the Getae' but not the same as the Dacians).