Cover news reporter Liu Kexin
The Year of the Rabbit is just around the corner. From "jade rabbit pounding medicine" to "little rabbit obediently, open the door", rabbits have accompanied people through the long years. What kind of existence were rabbits in ancient China? Will there be people who keep it as a pet? On the occasion of the 2023 New Year, the cover news reporter invited Lu Peng, deputy director of the Center for Science and Technology Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to talk about what rabbits are like in history.
Rabbits and rats parted ways 62 million years ago
The Book of Poetry has recorded how rabbit meat is eaten
Although in the eyes of the public, rabbits are furry and cute, Lu Peng told reporters that in fact, there is a close relationship between rabbits and mice. "In terms of skeletal morphology, both rabbits (belonging to the order Rabbits) and rats (belonging to the order of rodents) have lifelong incisors, indicating a close relationship between rabbits and rats, and Linnaeus, the founder of modern taxonomy, listed rabbits and rats as rodents together in 1735."
And they parted ways 62 million years ago. In the 70s of the 20th century, Mr. Li Chuanku of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, studied the remains of animals unearthed in the early Paleocene (about 62 million years ago) in Qianshan, Anhui, and found that there were "Anhui model pika" and "oriental Xiao mouse". "Among them, the Anhui model pika-based rabbit is the ancestor type of rabbit-like animals, and the oriental xiao mouse is close to the ancestral type of rodents, and the two have the characteristics of intermingling in skeletal morphology, which indicates that on the one hand, the pika-hoka is homologous, on the other hand, the two have diverged at least 62 million years ago, and rabbit and rodents have embarked on their own independent evolutionary paths."
Lu Peng told reporters that rabbits were introduced to the mainland late. In ancient times, the use value of hares was mainly in meat, hunting pets, sacrifice, medicinal use, fur development and other aspects. "Rabbit heads are indispensable in the Sichuan people's food map, and Chengdu people call them rabbit brains," Lu Peng said, "In fact, in ancient China, the main use of hares was the source of meat." According to the Book of Poetry, Xiaoya Gongye, "There is a rabbit head, and the cannon burns ... There is a rabbit head, a burnt ... There is a rabbit head, burnt cannon", depicting the situation of ordinary people in the Western Zhou Dynasty who made captured white-headed hares into gourmet hospitality through processing methods such as cannon, burnt, and burnt. The so-called "cannon" is to wrap the furry animal in mud and burn it on the fire; "Burnt" means to cook food over fire, while "burnt" means smoked. According to the Book of Rites, the official banquet should be prepared with "six animals" as meat dishes, that is, pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, fish, and geese, and rabbits were not included. Although only rabbit meat was prepared, the owner changed three different cooking methods, which shows his intentions.
But there is also another saying in ancient China, that is, pregnant women cannot eat rabbit meat. There is a record in the Eastern Han Dynasty's "On Heng and Fate and Righteousness": "Pregnant women eat rabbits, and children lack lips." "Because rabbits are three-lobed and open-mouthed, pregnant women are forbidden to eat rabbit meat so as not to give birth to children with rabbit lips, of course, this is a superstitious statement without scientific basis." Lu Peng explained. In addition, rabbit fur has good warmth performance, is not easy to entangle, simple cooking method and low price, can be used to make fur, rabbit skin can be boiled rubber, rabbit hair can also be used to make rabbit brushes. In the Ming Dynasty's "Qi Min Zhishu", which transcribes Wei's birthday during the Three Kingdoms period, it is written that "the first iron combed rabbit and sheep green hair", which shows that the history of making pens with rabbit hair can be as early as the Three Kingdoms period.
But hares can also cause damage to the ecological environment. Once in Australia, there were examples of the rapid expansion of hares, disrupting the ecological balance. In view of this, the burrowing rabbit is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as one of the world's top 100 invasive species.
The earliest rabbit-shaped jade is currently in the Neolithic period
The ancients used to be buried with live rabbits
Among the cultural relics, there are also many cultural relics with rabbit themes or rabbit images. In the Palace Museum alone, there are collections such as jade rabbits from the Shang Dynasty, rabbit monkeys with copper belt hooks from the Han Dynasty, porcelain rabbits from the Tang Dynasty, three-colored scratched rabbit pattern pillows from the Song Dynasty, white jade rabbit-shaped pendants from the Yuan Dynasty, double rabbit picture pages from the Ming Dynasty, and so on.
"According to the material of cultural relics, the image of rabbits is common in jade material cultural relics, ceramic cultural relics, bronzes and portrait stones." Lu Peng told reporters. Take the Anhui Hanshan Lingjiatan culture around 5300 years ago as an example. One jade rabbit ornament was unearthed in this cemetery M10, which is the earliest rabbit-shaped jade object found so far. This jade rabbit ornament is 6.8 cm long, 1.9 cm in height and 0.2 cm thick, the jade is gray-white, the jade rabbit is running high, its ears are close to the back, its hind feet are raised, its tail is rolled up, and the lower part of the rabbit is a long ground strip with 4 round holes for drilling.
The bronze rabbit statue unearthed in Tomb No. 8 of the Jinhou Cemetery in Qucun, Shanxi, is the earliest bronze vessel with a rabbit as a veneration so far. This rare bronze rabbit has a slightly extended head, round eyes, ears close to the back, limbs bent, in a leaping shape, short tail, a mouth on the back, and round fire and thunder patterns on both sides of the rabbit's body.
The rabbit in the Eastern Han portrait stone on the east wall of the ancestral hall No. 4 Songshan in Jiaxiang, Shandong, can represent two different "rabbit" images in the world and mythology. "On the upper side of the portrait, the Eastern Prince is in the center, the horse's head, chicken's head, and dog's head with winged gods kneeling on the left and right sides, and on the left side of the portrait stone, there are two rabbits standing facing each other with one forelimb to support the mortar, and one forelimb holding the pestle, as if pounding medicine. There is a squatting toad between the two rabbits, holding the mortar with its forelimbs. On the underside of the portrait, fish, chickens, pigs' heads, pigs, and rabbits hang from the kitchen beams, all of which are prepared for cooking. ”
"The burial pit of the Luozhuang Han Tomb in Jinan, Shandong Province, is the remains with the largest number and richest variety of animals unearthed so far." Luozhuang Han Tomb is a tomb of the princes of the Western Han Dynasty, a total of 36 burial pits have been found in the tomb, and more than 3,000 precious cultural relics of various kinds have been unearthed. Among them, more than 110 animal remains were unearthed in the large animal burial pit numbered No. 34, including 4 species of sheep, pigs, dogs, and rabbits. Among them, there are 45 rabbits.
Lu Peng told reporters that what is more special is that the pit is divided into two layers with wooden boards, and the upper layer is placed in addition to the remains of animals such as pigs, dogs, rabbits and sheep, and two rabbit cages. The wooden cage on the west side is well preserved, with a length of 1.8 meters and a width of 0.47 meters, and multiple complete rabbit bones were found in the cage. "Based on the archaeological phenomenon that the rabbit bones in the cage are messy and the outside of the cage may be a fleeing rabbit, it is speculated that the living rabbit was buried at that time."