The year of the pig is coming, and the Chinese zodiac is almost over. As a closet pig, there is also a very interesting "life story", which is probably the prototype of the "dragon" that does not exist in the Chinese zodiac, don't you think? One is a simple and honest "pig" and the other is a soaring "dragon". What do you think of them?

But don't say, although we have a lot of speculation about dragons, for example, the older generation all think that "snake" is "little dragon", but the only complete archaeological evidence chain is pig.

This evidence is the Jade Dragon in the "Hongshan Culture" found in my hometown Chifeng. Yes, it looks like a "C" dragon. We can enlarge the head of Yulong to see:

Enlarged view of C-shaped jade carving faucet unearthed in Sanxingtala Village, Wengniute Banner, Chifeng

The dragon's snout stretches out in front, slightly, its mouth is closed, its nose is truncated and it has symmetrical round nostrils. Does this nose look like a "pig nose"?

If you think this is not enough, take a look at the following:

1976 Jade Dragon Unearthed from Fu Hao's Tomb in Yinxu, Anyang City, Henan Province, China Museum.

Is this very different from the "dragon" you know?

How important were pigs in ancient times?

In the eyes of the ancients in China, the pig was a magical animal with spirituality. In the Middle Ages, the Wei family was a god pig with the ability to create the world.

Zhuangzi, a great thinker in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, talked about Tao's creation of the world in his book A Collection of Zhuangzi's Internal Works. There is such a passage in the second paragraph of The Great Master: Love and faith, inaction and intangibility, can be transmitted but not received, but can be invisible. Since there is a beginning, since there is a root, there is no heaven and earth, and it has been preserved since ancient times? I want Webster to have it, so I can slap the world. "

It means that this kind of thing "Tao" can be felt and honest, but it is intangible and inaction. Can be taught and obtained, invisible. "Tao" has roots and roots, which existed before there was heaven and earth. Levi got it and used it to cultivate land.

In Zhuangzi's view, Webster got the Tao first, and the Tao could judge heaven and earth, and then Fuxi, Huangdi, Zhuan Xu and the Queen Mother of the West continued to build heaven and earth. Without Pig God's creation of the earth, all roads would not be able to show their skills, and Wei Wei's contribution to creation was the first.

There is a "Tuyu Mountain" in Weizhou, southwest Gansu. According to legend, Dayu's wife Tu Shanshi changed it. In the middle, she was originally a god pig, and without telling Dayu, she turned Yu Wang's sons into wild boars. She led all the pigs to Weizhou to help Dayu control water. When Dayu saw her, she left with the pigs. Dayu was anxious to reach Mianzi border. Suddenly, he saw a mountain standing in front of him. Only when he asked the pedestrians did he know that the mountain was only blown by the strong wind. Dayu carefully looked at the shape of the mountain, like a group of wild boar struggling to arch the mountain. Dayu's grief came from his heart and ordered the construction.

It can be seen from this story of Xia Dynasty that the pig was already a member of the story a long time ago, and it was also a very important role.

Hemudu culture pottery pig

Zhou people's worship of pigs has reached a higher level. According to Zhou Benji, Zhou people lived as "dogs" at first, but later they became "masters of dogs" and became Zhou. Tapirs are a known universe, which consists of two tapirs. Tapirs are not a place name, but a cultural custom. The word "tapir" and the word "sitting" are the same, and both mean honour person. Only the word "man" was replaced by tapirs representing tribal leaders.

Let's focus on the word "tapir", which is the original writing of pig. Duan Yucai, a scholar in Qing Dynasty, pointed out that "Hai", "Gou" and "Zhuo" are the same characters in seal script, and the ancients painted a lying wild boar.

There are six kinds of characters used by the ancients: pictographic, signifier, knowing, pictophonetic, transliteration and borrowing. "Home" is a foreign word, "One" stands for house, and "Jackal" is a pig. Some scholars believe that the original meaning of the word "home" is clan, which can be found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions's works, such as "reporting home", "reporting home to father", "reporting home to mother" and "reporting home to mother".

In the ancients, pigs were top grade, and in the minds of the ancients, they were clean and noble things. Putting the tapir in the "home" shows that the ancients attached importance to pigs.

Among the folk proverbs developed later, there is also a saying that "no pig is a family", which shows that pigs play an important role in China's long-term agriculture.

From the beginning, the word "tomb" has both the meaning of "big" and "high", such as "The Book of Songs at the Turn of October in Xiaoya": "The mountain tomb is fortunate to collapse". Mountains and mounds can be called, which shows their height. Of course, the people buried in the mountains are not ordinary people. Tombs originally did not refer to the tombs of ordinary people.

In the early days of culture, "burial" did not refer specifically to the dead in graves. It can also refer to the heirs who are still alive, because they are the embodiment of the dead ancestors. For example, there is a saying in Shangshu Taishi of Zhou Shu: "I am a friend of Tsukiji", and the Tsukiji referred to by Zhou Wuwang is the leader of each tribe in the military alliance. This is because in the eyes of the ancients, although the "pig" in the tomb is still alive, it has the name "Tsukiji Jun".

Archaeological findings show that the owners of Hongshan Culture's tomb are all buried on their backs, that is, hooking their legs. The word "cross" may mean intersecting with the sky. The reason why the pig on the word "burial" wants to add a point to its pig's foot may mean "crossing the sky", and the person who intersects with the sky should be "".

Hongshan Culture's "tomb" is also an altar to worship heaven. The altar dedicated to heaven was built together with the ancestral grave, representing "the unity of heaven and man". Culturally, offering sacrifices to heaven is as important as offering sacrifices to ancestors, and it will always be like a mountain, because all the things buried in it will go to heaven after death.

Hongshan Culture has an older source, that is, Xinglongwa Culture 8000 years ago. The site is located in Xinglong Village, Aohan Banner, Chifeng City. Archaeologists found the earliest nephrite in China in this site. In a central tomb in Xinglongwa Culture, two complete wild boars were buried with their owners. Funeral custom fully embodies the cultural connotation of "burial".

Xinglongwa Culture human-pig burial tomb

Archaeologists found an S-shaped pig-headed dragon about 20 meters long in a pit at the Chahai site in Xinglongwa Culture, with a complete wild bone directly placed on its head. In the eyes of archaeologists, this further proves that the predecessor of the dragon may really be a pig, and the primitive dragon is indeed a pig dragon.

Not far from the site of Xinglongwa Culture, there is the site of Zhaobaogou Culture, which has been around for 7000 years. Archaeologists found a large number of pottery statues there, one of which depicts a deified pig. There are also many pig heads in pottery products. All these show the important position of pigs in the local tribes at that time.

Let's look at Liangzhu culture in another field. The central area of Liangzhu culture distribution is in Taihu Lake Basin. Its greater feature is that there are many jade articles and exquisite pottery, which embodies the economic prosperity and high civilization at that time. There are many images of jade pig dragons in many jade ritual vessels, which are sincere and reflect the worship of pigs in Liangzhu culture.

Among the jade articles in Liangzhu, there is a kind of tooth that looks like a wild boar, called punching tooth, which is used to drill holes and untie knots, and can also be worn. This is carefully made. There are rows of pig teeth on the skeleton of the tomb owner of Liangzhu culture, as well as the unearthed pig face emblem, all of which show the deep and wide worship of pigs in Liangzhu culture.

From pig to dragon

"Shan Hai Jing Overseas Western Classic" records: "When Xuanyuan is poor, people face the snake, and the tail meets the head." According to many experts, the Jade Pig Dragon in Hongshan Culture does have a snake-shaped body, and its tails are connected. Some people think that Jade Pig Dragon is related to Xuanyuan State.

Archaeology can confirm that such a pig dragon in Hongshan Culture was handed down in an orderly way. Many jade dragons have been unearthed from Fu Hao's tomb in Yin Ruins, which are similar to those in Hongshan Culture, as shown in the second picture at the beginning of this article.

In 2005, archaeologists excavated the tomb of Gong Rui in the Western Zhou Dynasty in Liangdai Village, Hancheng, Shaanxi Province, and the jade pig dragon of Hongshan Culture was unearthed in the tomb. This jade pig dragon is very big, exquisite and typical in shape.

Gong Rui was an aristocrat in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and this jade pig dragon also showed the relationship between Zhou people and Hongshan ancestors. There was no cultural relics market in the two-week period, and the concept of "hidden treasure" did not necessarily exist in ancient times. All jade pig dragons are artifacts and symbols of higher power of the tribe. Basically, it is passed down from generation to generation through blood relationship, or passed down through the power change of conquest and merger.

Jade Pig Dragon Unearthed from Tomb No.26 of Guo Rui in Liangdai Village

In the Han Dynasty, princes and civilians could be buried with jade pigs. In Jiankang, the capital city, jade pigs are occasionally unearthed, but the most unearthed is talc pigs, which reflects the grade difference of jade pigs. Rich nobles use jade pigs, and civilians can only use talc pigs.

So, how did the image of the dragon change from a pig with blue face and fangs to what it is today?

Although we can now find from Hongshan Culture that the initial state of dragons is related to pigs, in some records, it is also mentioned that some ethnic minorities have prototypes of fish or crocodiles, and dragons based on animals such as tigers. The final image of the dragon can not be separated from the continuous integration and integration of each other for thousands of years.

Looking at the paintings related to dragons in various dynasties, we can basically see that dragons evolved from snake-shaped tails into whips in the Han Dynasty, and it was not until the Tang and Song Dynasties that dragons became familiar shapes. However, the shapes of African claws, African tails, African heads and African whiskers have been changing since then. The lion's tail appeared in the Five Dynasties and became a fish's tail in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Therefore, although we know from many archaeological discoveries that pigs and dragons used to be related, it only shows that our worship of "pigs" is comparable to that of "dragons". In fact, it is not difficult to understand that in the ancient underdeveloped period, fierce animals such as pigs, tigers and lions were revered by people, especially in some fishing and hunting villages. Of course, the "pig" here must also refer to "wild boar", not domestic "domestic pig".

This article is an exclusive manuscript of the observer and may not be reproduced without permission.

The above is the related content of the animals related to the Dragon and the Twelve Zodiac, and it is about the sharing of archaeology. I saw what Dragon and Phoenix Dance is, and I hope this will help everyone!