Chinese mythology merely fantastic types of the bestiary sort. Sometimes the dragon is considered part of this category, related to it, or the ruler of all the swimming and crawling folk. This may include the giant marine turtle or tortoise Ao, the Bashe snake reputed to swallow elephants, a nine-headed snake monster reminiscent of the hydra known as Xiangliu, and the White Serpent from the novel "Legend of the White Snake". Various birds are found in Chinese mythology, some of them obviously based on real birds, other ones obviously not, and some in-between. The Crane is an example of a real type
Germanic Heroic Age 5th to 6th centuries reflected in heroic poetry are likely historical, but only rarely can this be established from independent historiographic tradition, as in the case of Hygelac, king of the Geats who appears both in the heroic poem "Beowulf" and in historiographic sources such as the "Liber Historiae Francorum". Germanic Heroic Age The Germanic (or "German") Heroic Age, so called in analogy to the Heroic Age of Greek mythology, is the period of early historic or quasi-historic events reflected in Germanic heroic poetry. The period corresponds to the Germanic Wars in terms of historiography, and to the Germanic Iron