The dragon is one of the most representative cultures of the Han people, and Chinese also claims to be the descendant of the dragon. But it is an obvious fact that dragons do not exist in nature, only in myths and legends.
<h1>So since the dragon is not real, why did it become the common totem of the Chinese ancestors, and even sublimated into a symbol of imperial power? </h1>
Mr. Wen Yiduo once put forward the famous totem conjecture, that is, in ancient times, each clan tribe had its own worship of totems, and the snake totem tribe would assimilate the totems of weak tribes after annexing other tribes, and eventually formed the image of a Chinese dragon with a snake body, animal limbs, eagle claws, fish scales, and antlers.
The saying of "comprehensive totem" was widely circulated and was once recognized by later scholars. It is undeniable that snakes were regarded as magical animals in ancient times, and Fuxi, one of the Three Emperors, and the Sanxingdui civilization in Sichuan, all have some kind of origin with snake worship.
However, the dragon is "the result of the merger and assimilation of many weak units of the snake totem" and is not supported by archaeology. The polygonal pottery of the Neolithic Yangshao culture has both fish frogs, deer and birds, and even flowers and suns, which shows that during the Yangshao culture period, a strong "snake" totem cultural group was not formed.
In the three major groups of ancient Huaxia, Dongyi and Miaoman, the Shaohao clan of Dongyi was ordered to be an official in the name of a bird, and the Shang Dynasty, which was also born in Dongyi, also left the legend of "Heavenly Destiny Xuan Bird, Descending to Give Birth to Shang", and the bronzes of the Shang Dynasty were mostly based on animal face patterns, and there was no dragon shape. The Miao Man clique led by Xuan You used cattle and birds as totems, and still did not see dragons.
Only the Yellow Emperor of Huaxia Group is compatible with the dragon.
The Yellow Emperor's general was named Ying Long, and after the Yellow Emperor's death, he "flew in the sky on a dragon", and so on. If we compare the types of archaeological cultures with the documentation that the Yellow Emperor defeated The Yan Emperor and Xuan You became the co-lord of the world, then the Longshan culture characterized by black pottery completely replaced the Yangshao culture featuring red pottery, which undoubtedly coincided with this change of dynasty.
In other words, the era in which Yan Huangyu lived corresponds to the type of archaeology around 3000 BC. But this will bring up another doubt, the emergence of dragons predates the existence of the Yellow Emperor.
In a Yangshao cultural site in Puyang, Henan, the owner of the tomb number M45 was buried with a dragon and tiger pattern posed with mussel shells, which were corrected by carbon fourteen and tree wheels, and the tomb age was around 4000 BC, and the dragon claws were the first five and last four, confirming that the dragon prototype in the tomb was a Yangzi crocodile.
The C-shaped dragon jade found in the Hongshan culture of Inner Mongolia around 5300 years ago is very similar to the dragon in the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty, curled and insufficient, and shows a clear inheritance relationship with the jade dragon after the Han Dynasty.
These two archaeological findings illustrate at least two points: First, before the Huaxia Group was formed, the image of the dragon had already appeared, and the Chinese civilization at that time was still in the initial stage of the starry sky, and had not formed a co-lord of the stars and the moon (the Yellow Emperor tribe), so the theory that the dragon was a totem of different tribes annexed by the snake tribe was not self-defeating. Second, the C-shaped jade dragon found in the Hongshan culture is different from the prototype of the Mussel Shell Dragon of the Yangshao culture in Puyang, the latter has been confirmed to be a Yangtze crocodile, while the former prototype has nothing to do with the Yangtze crocodile, in terms of shape, the C-shaped jade dragon is more like a curved lightning or human embryo.
In fact, there is no evidence that the Neolithic pattern is the totem of the ancestors, and the representative pottery of the Shanxi Tao Temple site (Yaodu), which also belongs to the Longshan culture period, is painted with a dragon, while the Longshan culture pottery in the Haidai area has no black pattern. In addition, the Shang Dynasty, which is believed to use birds as totems, rarely saw bird patterns on its bronzes.
Therefore, equating the pattern on the pottery with the tribal totem is a misunderstanding.
The emergence and evolution of dragons is very similar to the origin of Chinese civilization, that is, the clan tribes living in different regions, out of reverence for nature and life, gave birth to primitive sacrificial ritual vessels, such as the above-mentioned C-shaped jade dragon (actually lightning or embryo), the Puyang mussel shell dragon (actually a Yangzi crocodile), the dragon at the tao temple site (actually a snake), in addition to the dragon head jade pipe of the Liangzhu culture and so on.
These dragons, which were regarded as the different appearances of the predecessors of the "Chinese Dragon", had to be called "dragons" for the tribes that actually used these artifacts at that time. It's just that after the Chinese civilization has been pluralistic and unified and formed a common cultural identity, posterity will go back and examine these early ritual instruments, and will try to unify the original snake, Yangzi crocodile, and beast patterns into the prototype of the dragon (although the snake and the Yangzi crocodile are very different).
<h1>The time node is just the stage of the transition from the Warring States to the great unification of the Qin and Han Dynasties. </h1>
In fact, the Qin and Han dynasties were both the formation period of the unified Han nation and the stereotyping period of the dragon shape, which fully shows that the descendants who call themselves dragons are the centripetal expression of the Chinese's unification culture. Although from a molecular anthropological point of view, even groups belonging to the same Han nationality will have haplogroup differences and be divided into northern Han and southern Han, this does not in any way affect the high recognition of the common ancestor and common culture.
Therefore, the dragons that were stereotyped during the Qin and Han dynasties could be used and inherited by all the Chinese people. However, with the strengthening of feudal imperial power, around the time of the Tang and Song dynasties, the dragon was monopolized by the emperor and became a symbol of the emperor, and ordinary people no longer had the right to call themselves "dragon sons and dragons". It was not until the collapse of imperial power that the dragon returned to the popular field of vision.