The legend of shennongjia savage has a long history, and it has a great posture with the Loch Ness monster, the alien flying saucer, and the Bermuda Triangle, which are called the four unsolved mysteries of the world today.
The debate on whether there really are "wild people" in the Shennongjia area has never stopped, and opponents believe that to this day no direct evidence such as the living body or bones of a wild man has been found, and that the so-called "wild man" is just a gimmick artificially created by profits.
Supporters, on the other hand, based on the constant discovery of hairs, footprints, sleeping beds, and descriptions of many witnesses, believe that wild people really exist, and some even sell their property and go to the Shennongjia area at their own expense to carry out tracking investigations.
According to incomplete statistics, so far, the number of witnesses to "wild people" has reached 114 times, and about 260 people have claimed to have seen "wild people", including farmers living in Fangxian and other places, as well as teachers, workers, cadres and foreign tourists.
Shennongjia has a radius of more than 3,000 square kilometers, complex terrain, rich wild resources, and a large area of forest areas that maintain a pristine style, which provides the possibility for the existence of unknown species. However, the environment is suitable for the existence of unknown organisms and the actual existence of unknown organisms are two different things.
First of all, it is certain that the legend of the savages of Shennongjia is by no means a gimmick made up for the purpose of tourism development and so on, because the development of the Shennongjia area has been at the end of the last century, while the legend of the savages has existed for more than 2,000 years.
One of the twenty-four histories of the "Southern History, Liangwu Emperor Benjishang" once recorded that "there are hundreds of Mao people in Yingcheng who are overstretched and weeping, because they throw yellow cranes and rocks, and the essence of Gaicheng is also"; the Northern Song Dynasty's "Taiping Imperial Records" also has a record of "people in the south, three or two feet long, naked and looking at the top, walking like the wind, and the name is called "the fish", where the Mao and the ray refer to wild people.
In addition to the history, in the notes of the literati and inkers of the past dynasties, there are also many portrayals of the image of "savages", from Ge Hong's "Baopuzi" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the "Anthology of Literature" of the Southern Dynasty, to the "Compendium of Materia Medica" of the Ming Dynasty, and the "Notes of Reading Wei Caotang" of the Qing Dynasty Ji Yun have recorded the "wild people" in the eyes of witnesses in different periods, which boil down to: resembling a person, full of hair, and tall (about 2-3 meters).
Until the 1970s, there were still villagers who claimed to have encountered or seen the wild people in Shennongjia, and in the era when they did not know how to hype, these simple farmers did not know each other, but the description was also very similar: about 2 meters high, hairy throughout, running like a fly, and roaring loudly.
The "Savages" are not only recorded in the Zhishu, but also have portraits circulated. In 1976, the Han Tomb of Hongta Commune in Fangxian County unearthed a bronze-cast cash cow nine-son lamp, on which the image of a "humanoid animal" with large eyes and thick eyebrows, hair, no tail, and fur was found.
As for the origin of the wildlings, the Qing Dynasty's "Fangxian Zhi And Miscellaneous Records" made the following record: "Fangshan mountain is high and far away, the stone cave is like a house, the hairy people, the long Zhangyu, the hair is all over the body, the chickens and dogs that eat people are out of the time, and those who refuse will be robbed... According to the law of the system, it is only necessary to use the hand to shoot together, called: "Build the Great Wall!" Build the Great Wall! "Then the Mao people fled in a hurry", as to why the wildlings were scared away when they heard "building the Great Wall", the Fangxian Chronicle explained that these wildlings were refugees who fled into the mountains during the Qin Dynasty to avoid the construction of the Great Wall.
This record of the Fangxian Chronicle has also become one of the main bases for many supporters who firmly believe in the existence of savages in Shennongjia. In this way, the legend of the wild man has a long history, and the image tends to be unified, which is by no means created by the hype of the people at the moment.
The "Fangxian Chronicle" may not be valid.
First of all, the "Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Nine Classics of the Middle Order" once mentioned that there was a kind of "Gan giant" in Xiongshan (present-day Shennongjia), who was about one foot tall, with long hair, long hair, walking, and good laughter, and the "Chinese" also said that "the monster of wood and stone is a dragon, and the Yue people call it a mountain and a monkey body."
The Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Chinese are all pre-Qin documents, which shows that at least in the Warring States period, there was already a legend of the Shennongjia Savage, which had nothing to do with the Qin Dynasty.
Secondly, there is a record in the Fangxian Chronicle that is often overlooked, "During the Qin Dynasty, the people who built the Great Wall avoided the mountains and did not die for a long time, so they became this strange." That is to say, the "savages" mentioned in the "Fangxian Chronicle" are not the descendants of the Qin Dynasty refugees who escaped from military service, but the Qin Dynasty refugees themselves who have lived for more than 2,000 years, which is obviously impossible.
It can be seen that the so-called "Shennongjia savages came from refugees fleeing the Qin Dynasty to escape servitude" is not valid.
However, this only rejects the statement that the Shennongjia savages are Qin refugees, and does not deny the existence of savages in the Shennongjia area.
In order to find out the truth of the legend of the wild man, the Chinese Academy of Sciences launched three large-scale scientific expeditions in 1976, the largest of which consisted of 110 members of 32 colleges and universities, and 56 PLA scouts, covering an area of 5,000 kilometers and covering an area of 1,500 square kilometers.
However, apart from the major discovery of the golden snub-nosed monkey, no objective evidence of the existence of the wildlings has been obtained.
Therefore, from the end of 1981 onwards, the "wild man scientific expedition" at the national level completely stopped. This also means that the national level no longer recognizes the "existence of savage entities in Shennongjia".
However, as a special cultural phenomenon, the "legend of the savage" has become the intangible cultural heritage of Hubei Province.
Since the "wild man" does not exist as an entity, why has the vitality of the legend of the "wild man" been so tenacious for thousands of years and has been passed down for so long? In fact, this is just another level of the Mandela effect.
It is precisely because of the mysterious nature of the original forest of Shennongjia that the primate images that were originally scattered have gradually become a collective memory of the wildlings, and even the longer the time, the more specific and vivid the images of the wildlings. So that when people see unknown creatures in a trance, they will preconceived that this is Shennongjia, and humanoid creatures must be "wild people", which has become the basis for human beings to continue to build the collective memory of wild people.