The legend of the dragon has a long history in China, and the earliest can be traced back to the ancient Fuxi era. According to some records, Fuxi, the ancestor of Huaxia, once witnessed a strange beast with a dragon's head and a horse body in the Yellow River area, and he thought that this strange beast was very powerful, so he decided to use the dragon as a tribal marker and called it the dragon master. The clans in the tribe are also named after dragons, such as the Haoying Qianlong Clan, the Dating Julong Clan, the Hun Chaos Descending Dragon Clan, the Yin Kang Tu Long Clan, and the Lilu Shui Long Clan. Later, the Yellow Emperor defeated Emperor Yan and Xuan You, unified Huaxia, and began to use the dragon as a totem, from this point of view, we are all "descendants of the dragon".
Since the dragon totem was determined, the dragon has become the object of worship of the Chinese ancestors. So what exactly does a dragon look like? According to historical records, the image of the dragon in the Western Han Dynasty was as follows: the body was slender, snake-like, the body was not divided, and the tail was finned. The head resembles a crocodile, the whole is thin and long, divided into two kinds of winged and wingless; in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the image of the dragon became like this: the body is thick, tiger-like, the tail is clear, the horns are like bull horns, and some have fins. Later, with the change of dynasties, the image of the dragon also evolved, and it was not basically determined until the Ming Dynasty.
So what kind of image was the dragon during the Ming Dynasty? Li Shizhen made this description in the "Compendium of Materia Medica Wings": "The dragon scales the length of the insect. Wang Fu said that its shape has nine similarities: the head is like a camel, the horns are like a deer, the eyes are like a rabbit, the ears are like an ox, the neck is like a snake, the abdomen is like a mirage, the scales are like a carp, the claws are like an eagle, and the palms are like a tiger. It has eighty-one scales on its back and nine nine yang numbers. It sounds like a copper plate. There is a whisker next to the mouth, a pearl under the chin, and a reverse scale under the throat. There is Boshan on the head, also known as the ruler wood, and the dragon cannot ascend to heaven without the ruler wood. Breath into clouds, can turn into water, but also can turn into fire. ”
From this description by Li Shizhen, it can be seen that the dragon is actually a synthesis of a variety of animals, with extraordinary abilities, which can call the wind and rain. So the question is, does the dragon exist or not? Some people say that dragons are only fictional and represent people's good wishes; others say that dragons did exist, but later became unsuitable for the environment and became extinct, if not, how can they appear in the 12 zodiac signs? Moreover, in the summer of 1934, there was also the famous phenomenon of "falling dragons" in Yingkou, when there were many witnesses.
However, according to Mr. Wen Yiduo, a famous scholar in China, the prototype of the dragon is actually a snake, while Wei Juxian, an expert in ancient Chinese history, believes that the prototype of the dragon is a crocodile. So, does the dragon exist or not? In September 1988, a cultural relic was unearthed during the construction of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, and experts claimed that the existence of the dragon was ironclad! This cultural relic is the dragon and tiger pattern found in the Yangshao cultural site in the west water slope of Puyang County, Henan.
At that time, experts found a male skeleton in Tomb No. 45, and on his right side was a dragon with a mussel shell, with its head facing north and east, its head bowed, its front paws, its hind legs kicking, and its tail swinging like a swimming in the sea. To his left is a tiger with a mussel shell, its head facing north and west, its eyes wide open, its teeth open, like a tiger descending the mountain. This pattern is consistent with the ancient astronomical four elephants middle eastern palace dragon and the west palace white tiger. Subsequently, experts found patterns of people riding dragons and people riding tigers in another tomb. This is in line with the legend that "the Yellow Emperor rode the dragon and ascended to heaven" and "The Yellow Emperor rode the dragon to the four seas". The mussel dragon unearthed this time is the earliest dragon pattern found in Chinese archaeology so far, dating back to about 6400 years, so it is called "China's first dragon", archaeologist Zou Heng is even more blunt: "Chinese civilization, the origin has its own origins, dragons and tigers are there, and the evidence is like a mountain."