One reason dinos and dragons aren't around much anymore -- man tends to exterminate ferocious wild beasts first thing, when he settles a new area.
And yes, man used to be larger, healthier, smarter, and more hardy, especially before the Flood. Man, with his faculty of Reason, would have made short work of these larger beasts, just as he has done with smaller ones. Look at how easily Daniel destroys the live dragon in Scripture. Just some hair, fat, and pitch -- and the dragon dies. Brains beats brawn almost every time.
P.S. there were never any dumb "cavemen" wearing skins and wielding clubs. Men might have dwelt in caves for a short period after a disaster, including the Flood, but that's it. Man has always had full use of Reason, he could build tools (including projectiles like arrows, "darts", catapults, etc.), and was always a force to be reckoned with. Even in ancient times.
And if anything, man was smarter back then.
If a 12 year old from 2022 and a 12 year old from 1000 BC were put into ANY kind of competition, my money would be on the ancient kid. I don't care if it's physical, practical, mental, or scientific. Just remember: your 12 year old knows NOTHING about how that iPhone actually works. And there IS a downside to relying on Google and Google Maps for everything.
Very true. One only needs to look at examples like that of the once native lion population in Greece, which reportedly died out around 100 years before the birth of Our Savior, due to them being hunted down to extinction by Romans and Greeks.
Lions feature pretty prominently in ancient Greek art and mythology (for example, the Nemean Lion was the first creature Hercules fought, and the first of his twelve labors). Even the historian Herodotus mentions lions attacking the Persian army during their invasion of Greece, though his reliability as a historian has been called into question. Aristotle also mentions that lions lived in Macedonia (an area of Greece which he lived in for a time) in one of his works. There have also been remains of lions found in Greece.
Two articles on this obscure creature:
http://www.strangehistory.net/2013/06/29/the-last-european-lion/
https://greekreporter.com/2021/09/11/the-lions-den-when-big-cats-roamed-greece-video/
Definitely agree about the myth of the "caveman". Throughout human history, there's almost always been some tribes or groups of primitive people (and even today - look at the people who live on North Sentinel Island, or the remote tribes in the Congo and Amazon jungles). I think even before the Deluge there may have been remote tribes, I don't know. But even these would not have been the idiotic savages we see portrayed in media, much like how the primitive tribes we have in the world today aren't moronic. They may be brutal in some aspects (like the self-inflicted mutilation that happens in some African tribes, cannibalism, etc) and vulgar in terms of their paganism (think voodoo), but modern man is guilty of similar sins on some level (abortion, mutilation in the name of "gender identity", etc).