Recently, the ice pier of the mascot of the Winter Olympics has once again been fired out of the circle, turning over netizens from all over the world. "How to have an ice pier" has become a hot topic on the Internet. The ice pier is a cute giant panda covered in rock sugar shells, which once again proves the unparalleled circle powder strength of the national treasure.
Known as the "living fossil of the species", the panda has a very long history, as early as 8 million years ago, and has spent a long time with humans since then. But from the perspective of literature and history to trace the history of giant pandas, young culture scholar Hou Yinguo told the Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter that the history of giant pandas is more confusing than any other animal, even the divine beasts that do not exist in the real world, such as shenlong, Bai Ze, and qilin, can more clearly outline their journey of "getting along" with humans, only when mentioning giant pandas, scholars often fall silent.
On the Internet, it is rumored that the giant panda was once the mount of Xuan You and the emperor during the conquest, and some people say that the original name of the panda was actually a cat bear, are these legends and stories true or false? Today, based on historical texts, let's talk about how the ancients saw giant pandas.
Giant pandas were first mistaken for "pandas"? misinform!
Giant panda is the "living fossil" of the animal kingdom, as early as the Cenozoic Era, the first panda and ancient apes, saber-toothed tigers and other animals have been active on this planet, at this time the first panda is only the size of today's fox, the population is not yet developed. After millions of years of evolution, in the early Pleistocene, about two million years ago, small species of pandas appeared, half the size of today's giant pandas. During this period, the ancestors of mankind also began to appear on the stage of history. Most scientists believe that the small species of panda began to become an omnivore that also ate bamboo. After another million years, the bamboo-based Pap panda became the protagonist of giant panda history, with no worries about food and clothing, and its size became larger, even larger than today's giant pandas. About 10,000 years ago, the Pasteur's giant panda was gradually replaced by a slightly smaller living panda.
Hou Yinguo traced back to the origin, the giant panda is called today's name, in fact, only more than a hundred years of history, Tongzhi eight years (1869) from the French priest Armand David discovered the giant panda in the earliest scientific sense of Deng Chigou (Muping) in Baoxing County, Ya'an, Sichuan, according to his diary, the locals originally called it "flower bear" or "bamboo bear", Father David named it "black and white bear". This year he made a specimen of a giant panda and sent it to Henri Miller Edwards, curator of the National Museum of Natural History in France, which was subsequently exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History in France and subsequently shocked the world. This giant panda specimen is still well preserved in the museum.
There is a widely circulated story about the naming of giant pandas, that is, the original Chinese scientific name of the giant panda is called "cat bear", in 1939 in Chongqing Beibei Civilian Park for public exhibition, although Chinese used to write from right to left, but according to the Reading Habits of English, took the writing style from left to right, the public still read from right to left, so that when the people visited, the mouth was full of pandas, and even the reporters in the news reports also mistakenly wrote pandas, over time. The name Panda replaced its original name Cat Bear.
Is this reliable? Hou Yinguo said that the story is well known among giant panda enthusiasts, but the legend of "misunderstanding" itself is a misunderstanding, and Professor Xia Yuanyu, a famous scholar in Taiwan, first introduced this story in an article titled "A Wrong Fifty Years - Justifying the Name of the Panda" in 1978.
"If you look at the Republic of China periodicals and newspapers, you will find that in the years before this exhibition, many media reports have long referred to this animal as 'panda'." Hou Yinguo said that in the 1911 World Monthly Newspaper, there was a report that "the western parts of China are about 5,000 feet above the sea surface, and the pandas live deep in the bamboo forest, and the naturalist attention is also searchers", and also accompanied by pictures of giant pandas. In addition, for example, in 1929, the Shanghai "Current Affairs New News" reported that "the son of the former president of the United States traveled to Shanghai and hunted many rare birds and animals, including pandas and golden monkeys."
The earliest record of giant pandas, the ancients wrote?
Since the late Qing Dynasty, the giant panda was "discovered" and sensationalized the world, scholars began to review the historical books, trying to find traces of giant pandas, people out of love for pandas, and strive to argue, before and after actually from ancient books to find more than twenty kinds of animals that are considered to be giant pandas, some of which are too outrageous, not to be ignored by most scholars, and common sayings are cats, cats, tapirs, tapirs, badgers, white leopards, donkeys, white bears, fierce leopards, fierce clans, zhiyi, fur coats, iron-eating beasts, horned ends, etc.
Some scholars believe that there are giant pandas in the pre-Qin classic "Shang Shu", which is actually based on the sentence "like a tiger like a cat, like a bear like a cat" in the "Shang Shu Mu Oath", some people say that "貔" is a panda, and some people say that "罴" is a panda, in fact, there is no direct evidence, and the ancients have never had a relevant explanation.
Hou Yinguo said that in the records that may be directly related to today's giant pandas, the earliest is xu shen's "Explanation of Words", which says "tapir, like a bear and yellow-black, out of Shuzhong", the origin and image of this tapir are similar to today's pandas, although it is not said to be white-black, but the yellow-black is also relatively close. Looking at the explanation of "tapir" in "Erya", there are only three words of "tapir, white leopard", but Guo Pu's commentary of the Eastern Jin Dynasty says: "Like a bear, small head, bì feet, black and white barges, can lick copper and iron and bamboo bones, bone joints are strong, zhongshi less marrow, skin is wet." Here, the keywords of "like a bear", "black and white refutation", and "bamboo" make people shine, and it seems that they can be sure that the tapir they are talking about is today's giant panda.
The record of its ability to "eat iron" is also an earlier source. Guo Pu believes that the sound of the tapir characters turns to fierce, tapir and fierce are the same kind of animal, there is a sentence in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas and The Western Mountain Classic" that records "the beast is more fierce leopard", Guo Pu's annotation says that "the fierce leopard, like a bear and small, shallow and shiny, can eat snakes and eat copper and iron, produced in Shuzhong", and the previous commentary on "tapir" is very close. The tapir is also written as 貊 or 狛, and the Book of later Han Dynasty Andian Yi biography records that "mourning the beast out of the beast", and Li Shan of the Tang Dynasty quoted the "Chronicle of the Eight Counties": "The cat is as big as a donkey, like a bear, with many forces, eating iron, and pulling everything that is touched." ”
Hou Yinguo also pointed out that the ancient tapir character actually included three different animals, which is also where many scholars are hesitant about whether the "tapir" is a panda. One type of tapir is the white leopard. The second type of tapir, for example, bai juyi in the Tang Dynasty's "Tapir Ping Zan" says: "Tapirs, elephant trunks, rhinoceros, oxtails, tiger feet, born in the southern valley." The third type of tapir is the giant panda. "But the ancients often mistook two tapirs for the same animal, and different legends would be mixed together to form a complex text." No images similar to today's giant pandas have been found. ”
Reported in the Monthly Of the World in 1911
The giant panda that "eats iron" was once a mount of Xuanyu?
"In the records of tapirs, there are often records of eating copper and iron, which in the eyes of the ancients was the most amazing thing about this animal, so the records of the past especially emphasized this feature." Hou Yinguo mentioned that Bai Juyi of the Tang Dynasty believed that tapirs only ate copper and iron, and did not eat other things. It is a bit funny that there are many People in Shu today. In the dwelling places of the floating butchers, there are often people who are hanging in the cauldron and cooking, and they are afraid of the iron utensils. At that time, it was said that the monks of the temple on Mount Emei, in order to prevent the iron pot from being eaten, hung the pot after cooking. The ancients sometimes referred to it directly as the "iron-eating beast".
Hou Yinguo told reporters, "Of course, giant pandas can't really eat iron, it may be that there were pandas licking iron tools that were observed by the ancients, and then mistakenly thought that they could eat iron, and then even rumored that their feces can also digest gold iron, and even the dung can be made into jade cutting knives." Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" explains in detail the medicinal value of tapir, which believes that tapir urine can cure the swallowing of copper and iron into the abdomen, and drinking it with tapir urine can turn the metal swallowed into water.
The Southern Dynasty Ren Fang's "ShuYi Ji" "Now there are Xuan You teeth, two inches long and indestructible" These records obviously do not mention what mount Xuan You has, if it can be related to the panda, it is two words of copper and iron. Xuanyu image copper-headed iron forehead, giant panda "eating copper and iron". Hou Yinguo said that during the Yellow Emperor's Great War, Xuan You's mount was an iron-eating beast, which is today's giant panda. Although this "new knowledge" is groundless, it is undoubtedly very disseminated, and some popular science bloggers have also played a role in fueling the waves, and in just a few years, Xuan You once rode a panda has become a "knowledge point", which is a common scenario of knowledge "false transmission" in the Internet age.
Hou Yinguo said that the ancient god beast Was once also regarded as a panda. In the late Ming Dynasty, there was a traveler Hu Shi'an, who recorded in his compilation of the Emei Mountain Fang Zhi "Translation of Elai", an animal called "CatTail", which looked like a dog, with yellow and white fur, thick appearance, sluggish personality, and was not very afraid of people, and was often bullied by the dogs on the mountain. The cry is loud, probably like chanting "Tuofo", likes to climb trees, can climb to the top of fir and pine trees, and likes to sleep under the bamboo hedge fence at night. Judging from the description, this animal seems to be a giant panda, so to speak, the mythical beast since ancient legend is not a giant panda.
There has always been a local legend that the local dialect of this animal is called "Fur Fur", which is some literati who have come to travel, and feel that the name of Fur Fur is really indecent, so it was changed to the harmonic pronunciation of "貔貅", which actually has nothing to do with the ancient god beast 貅貅. Since then, everyone has said that the cat is a panda, and even pushed up to the "Book of Shang", "History" and other books about the cat, that they are all pandas. Hou Yinguo said that it is not difficult to understand the public's expectation of proving that pandas have long been recorded in important ancient texts, but it is far-fetched to say that the cats in the "History" are pandas according to this record.
The only ancient story related to the giant panda
Was there really a story about giant pandas in ancient times? Hou Yinguo said that in ancient times, most of the records about giant pandas were entries in dictionaries and books, and there was no story to speak of, and the only interesting story came from the Ming Dynasty novel "Chronicles of the States of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty".
The thirty-fifth of them said, "One day, the king of Chu and his heavy ears hunted in the Ze of Yunmeng. A soldier drove out a strange beast from the valley: "Like a bear, its nose is like an elephant, its head is like a lion, its feet are like a tiger, its hair is like a jackal, its mane is like a wild pig, its tail is like an ox, its body is larger than a horse, its writing is black and white, its swords and arrows, it cannot be hurt, it chews iron like mud, its axles are wrapped in iron, and it is eaten by all of them, and it is fast and unremarkable." The king of Chu asked Zhong'er what the name of this beast was, and Zhao Wanbo, the minister who was following him by Chong'er's side, went forward and said, "This beast has its name known as tapir."
"Seeing this, this beast is obviously a giant panda." At this time, Wei Yi, another warrior under Heavy Ear who had followed him to escape, went straight to the panda and punched several punches in a row, but he did not expect that this panda had a tongue passing, and he ate a section of the golden belt around Wei Yi's waist, Wei Yi was furious, shouted "Evil beasts must not be rude" and jumped up, rode on the panda and stuck his neck, and finally consumed the panda's strength, grabbed its nose and led it to the two kings. The King of Chu couldn't help but sigh, and his men were both literate and martial, "There is nothing in our country."
"After all, the Chronicles of the States of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty is a novel, this story does not exist in history, and it is interesting that if we carefully savor the original text, we will find that the author obviously has not seen the real giant panda." Hou Yinguo laughed and said that he combined the tapir and the panda, two kinds of animals called tapirs, on one animal, such as describing this tapir as "its nose is like an elephant", which is actually the characteristics of the tapir, and our cute panda rolling does not have an elephant nose.
It is reported that young cultural scholar Hou Yinguo will regularly launch historical and cultural interviews in Purple Cow News, aiming at the cultural hotspots that everyone is concerned about, hooking and interpreting "China in classic books".
Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Zhang Nan