Ancient cattle are the first of the six animals, regarded as the most important domestic animals, for the farming society, farming cattle is an important means of production, so in ancient times great importance to cattle, most eras prohibited the private slaughter of cattle and the consumption of beef. In addition, the cattle were given a special mission to suppress the flood.
Of course, it was not real cattle that suppressed the flood, but forged iron bulls, some of which were sunk into the water, some of which stood on the embankment, and some of which were placed in the water to expose the water. Legend has it that more than 4,000 years ago, when the flood flooded, every time Dayu ruled the water, he would cast an iron cow to sink into the bottom and suppress the demons in the water.
Of course, this legend is not very in line with history, because dayu's time did not have iron tools, bronze is also a relatively precious thing, if Dayu wants to suppress the flood, it is most likely to use carved stone cattle. When Li Bing, a water conservancy expert of the Qin Dynasty, built Dujiangyan, he once ordered people to carve stone rhinos to suppress water monsters, according to the "Book of the King of Shu": "When the river water is harmful, Shu Shou Li Bing makes five stone rhinos, two in the house, one under the bridge, and two in the water, in order to be tired of water." "In 2013, a huge stone rhinoceros was excavated in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, carved from a complete stone, 3.8 meters long, 1.2 meters wide, 1.7 meters high, weighing nearly 100 tons, and experts have verified that this rhino was carved in the Qin Dynasty, and more than 2,000 years later we saw the true appearance of the stone rhinoceros."
During the Qin Dynasty, there were also wild rhinos in China, and later the rhinoceros became extinct, so they switched to cattle or buffaloes, and with the development of productivity, iron production increased, and tens of thousands of pounds of iron cattle could also be cast. The use of cattle to calm the water is based on the theory of the five elements of yin and yang and the branches of heaven and dry earth, the five elements are symbiotic, the soil can be used to overcome the water, and the "ugly cow" in the twelve days of dryness belongs to the gong soil, and the iron cow town river is used in order to achieve the effect of "water to cover the soil". This statement sounds superstitious, but when it was put into use, the clever ancients added a lot of practical effects to the iron bull.
In history, the Yellow River flooded many times, so there were many iron cattle that suppressed the flooding of the Yellow River, basically all over the Yellow River. Regarding the iron cattle of Zhenhe, there is a story of Huaibing monk fishing iron cattle in history: during the Song Dynasty, there were eight iron cattle on the edge of the Yellow River in Yongji County, each weighing tens of thousands of pounds, and once the Yellow River broke the embankment, eight iron cattle sank into the Yellow River, and the government issued a reward to recruit people who could catch the iron cattle, because the iron cattle were too heavy, and no one unveiled it for a long time. Later, a monk volunteered to come up with a solution: first let people dive into the water to tie up the iron bull, hook the iron bull with two large boats full of dirt, and then shovel the dirt on the boat into the water, and fish the iron bull with the buoyancy of the water. The iron bull in the story is not only used for the zhenhe river, but also used to fix the pontoon bridge on the Yellow River, and the eight iron cows weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds, ensuring the stability of the pontoon bridge.
Iron cattle in many places are placed in the water and exposed to the water, which plays a role in marking the water level and warning floods. In Zhoukou City, Henan Province, there is an iron cow, located in the middle of the confluence of the three rivers of Shahe, Yinghe, Jialu River, this iron cow is placed in a very clever position, played a role in measuring the water level, the local saying "buffalo drink water, downstream will break the embankment!" "The mouth of the iron bull became a flood warning line, and when the water level soared in ancient times, many lives were saved by observing this iron bull.