In many myths and stories, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, there are descriptions of the third eye of mankind. For example, the Indian god Shiva, the Chinese god Erlang and so on. It is believed that the third eye has extraordinary abilities and is able to see through the future. Today's Hindu women often draw a red dot on their foreheads, which is actually a symbol of the eyes.
Myths are a legacy of ancient totem worship. From the mythological stories, it is not difficult to find some legendary relics of ancient civilizations. In mayan legends, the time of the earth's existence is divided into four solar epochs. Mankind is now the Fourth Solar Age, and the civilizations that preceded it have gone extinct.
Among them, the first solar age is the Gendaya civilization, which is rumored to be a superpower civilization. The men of the Gendaya civilization had three eyes, in the middle of their foreheads, with emerald green eyes that were said to communicate with the gods.
In the Japanese anime drama "Three-Eyed Child", there are also descriptions of ancient three-eyed humans. At that time, human beings generally had three eyes, and later due to their excessive strength, they were punished by the gods, and the three-eyed humans were basically extinct.
After all, the above is just a myth. So, in the real world, do humans have a third eye? After research, scientists have really found suspected evidence.
Modern medical research has shown that behind everyone's thalamus, there is a gland called the "pineal gland", which is similar to the third eye of a human.
This pineal gland weighs about 0.1-0.2 g, although it does not have visual function, but it is very sensitive to the surrounding ambient light, has potential perceptual ability, and may retain part of the function of the eye.
For example, the pineal gland is very sensitive to ambient light, and it connects with the eye through nerve fibers. When the external ambient light is very strong, the pineal gland will secrete less pineal hormones; conversely, when the external ambient light is very dim, the pineal gland will secrete more pineal hormones, stimulate the eyeballs, and allow people to see darker scenes.
There are even very few people whose pineal glands have supersensory abilities. Russian scientists have done experiments, and they put some photo negatives in opaque envelopes and place them on the foreheads of the experimenters. As a result, there are very few people who can really roughly describe what's in the photo negative. How can these people perceive the contents of the photos, exactly as imagined? The possible reason is that the pineal gland has an extraordinary imagination, according to the stimulation of external light, the imagination is converted into neural signals, and reaches the retina, showing a virtual image on the retina. Of course, the above process may also be coincidentally partially overlapped with the real content.
In addition to humans, scientists have found that many fish, amphibians, and mammals have glands similar to the pineal glands. So, from the evolutionary instinct of animals, why did this gland form?
Probably, animals in ancient times evolved from water, and it took a long process for these animals to move from water to land. In the beginning, when they emerge from the water, they have a great fear of the world outside the water, so they need to evolve a light-sensitive eye at the forehead of the top of their heads.
When the animal really comes ashore to live, because the symmetrical stereoscopic vision and imaging function of the real eyes far exceeds that of the third eye of the forehead, slowly, the function of the third eye disappears.
However, in some animals, a third eye can still be seen, such as the reptile beaked lizard. Reptiles are generally very sensitive to light and magnetic fields, and some can also sense earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and it is not known whether it is the function of the third eye.
In the theory of Chinese medicine, there is a similar description of the third eye, the so-called "heavenly eye". Traditional Chinese medicine health care, qigong, etc., believe that the heavenly eye is near the "Yintang Acupoint", that is, between the two eyebrows, which contains the secrets of the human body.
There are also many descriptions of the third eye in Buddhism. For example, in many Buddhist murals and sculptures, some Buddhas have a third eye carved on their foreheads. Some practitioners believe that through diligent practice, they can open the third eye and achieve the strange function of seeing through samsara.
Further research on the pineal gland by scientists also showed that after the age of a person exceeds 14 years old, the number of cells in the pineal gland is getting smaller and smaller, and the glial gland is gradually increasing. Among them, the interior contains calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and other crystalline materials, like a pile of sand crystals. Doesn't that look like an eyeball?
Of course, there are also many medical scientists who say that the pineal gland may be just an ordinary endocrine gland, mainly secreting gonadotropins that inhibit the pituitary gland, inhibiting gonadal regulation of sexual reproduction, and not having the ability to see the eye at all.
Whether the pineal gland is the third eye of man or not remains to be studied.