Monsters are relative to the level of human understanding of nature, just as prehistoric humans worshiped fierce tigers and snakes as totems. For thousands of years, they have coexisted with humans, but they have played hide-and-seek with humans, and although the course of human civilization has unveiled the mysteries of the biological world, the mystery of "wild people" and monsters still exists. Humans have witnessed a large number of strange creatures in modern times; the Loch Ness Monster that appears from time to time, the sea monster that travels the sea, the Shennongjia "Savage" who hides in the forest, the North American Bigfoot who steps on the ice and snow...
Shennongjia Savage
In the face of all kinds of monster rumors, photos, objects and even documentary films, people talk everywhere, the scientific community argues endlessly, the benevolent see the benevolent, the wise see the wise, and the mystery will soon be revealed. In fact, it is difficult to solve the mystery of the ancient monsters in the short term, and it is inappropriate to rush to the conclusion of affirmation or denial. Let us use our rational minds to follow the trajectory of civilization to investigate the strange animals of the biological world, and find the clues of monsters from them!
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > where to find the monsters of the past</h1>
Monster rumors are not unique today, and many countries in the ancient world have been recorded, especially in ancient Chinese books about "wild people" and strange beasts.
In the nearly 4,000 years from the Xia Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, ancient books often mentioned "mountain ghosts", "mountain spirits", "mountain masters", "mountain edges (臊, fucking)", "Gan giants", "big hairy people", "mao people", "shenwei", "touching hypocrites", "chai sheep", "shooting", "罴" (pi), "human bear", "dry halberd" (ba), "夔" (kui), "baboon", "beating", "dai exhaustion" (fu), "shanzhang", "shandu" and so on. Some of these designations refer specifically to "savages" and some to other monsters. The ancients officially used the name "wild man" from Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" in the Ming Dynasty; "Changzhiyu ... Called as a mountain lord, or a savage. ”
From the Warring States to the Ming and Qing dynasties, there are rich records of "wild people". According to the Book of Zhou, King Chengwang of Zhou once captured "wild people", which shows that in Western Zhou 3,000 years ago, there were not only rumors of "wild people", but also "wild people". "under the Chinese Lu Language", Wei Zhao's note: "One foot, the Yue people call the mountain ashamed,...... The human-faced monkey body can speak. The "夔" and "mountain" here refer to "wild man", which has a human face, a monkey body, and can speak like a human. There are also many records of the situation of "wild people" in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Qu Yuan, the great poet of the Chu state during the Warring States period, wrote a poem "Mountain Ghost" in the "Nine Songs of Chu Ci":
If anyone is a mountain, he will be taken by a woman with a cockroach. It is both eye-catching and smiling, and Zi Muyu is good at it. The people in the mountains are like Fang Duruo, drinking stone springs are yin and pine cypresses, and Junsi I am suspicious.
The gist of this poem is: The mountain ghost is like a person standing on a mountain beam, draped in coix vines, with clouds and mist grass, shyly answering and laughing, it is very envious of me, and it is good at flowing. The people in the mountains admire the Duheng grass, drink spring water, live in the shade of pine trees, they miss me and are suspicious, I really don't know how to be good.
Qu Yuan's hometown is in Zigui County, Hubei Province, south of Shennongjia. Shennongjia is located in the mountains and mountains of northwest Hubei Province, with complex natural conditions, rich wildlife and plant resources, and is a veritable "natural zoo and botanical garden". It has a large area of primary forest, and for more than 3,000 years, the Shennongjia area has been the center of rumors about "savages" in our country. Some scholars speculate that Qu Yuan probably witnessed the image of the "savage" since he was a child, so he described the original abundance of the mountain ghost (savage) laughing, suspicious, shy, and drinking water in the "Mountain Ghost", which is both vivid and in line with the ecological habits of the "savage"; it is both poetic, full of romanticism, and in line with the reality of science.
Wang Fuzhi, a famous scholar of the Qing Dynasty, commented on mountain ghosts as follows: "Mountain ghosts, old sayings such as 夔, table yang and the like are also. Day by day depends on the shape of the wood. Or so-called wooden guest, or so-called, set, the people of present Chu have the so-called charmer... This is the product of the deep mountain. Also born of fetalization, not a ghost. Wang Fuzhi pointed out that "mountain ghost" is a local local name, not a ghost but a fetal animal, hidden in the woods during the day. Judging from Wang Fuzhi's commentary, the mountain ghost is the "wild man" we are looking for today.
Archaeologists in the Han tomb group in Fang County, north of Shennongjia, Hubei Province, found that the fragments of the nine lanterns of the ten copper coined cash trees were engraved with the image of "Mao Ren". A Chinese painting of "fish, apes, and people" found in the Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong Province, also has the image of an ape or "hand man". Henan Nanyang Han Painting Museum displays two "town tomb beasts", this beast image is a higher primate, the smaller one is an orangutan image, and the larger one is an unknown high primate image, the latter open mouth, very fierce, four fangs are quite aggressive. In the Han Dynasty, people placed its image carved stones in the burial chamber, and it may be believed that this beast can fight tigers and play a role in suppressing demons and avoiding evil. Therefore, Chinese painting scholars regard this object as a "town-based beast". Judging from some ancient records. It is clearly a "slow" image.
In the Han Dynasty, "grabs" were widely distributed in the Qinling Mountains and Nanyang. During the Western Han Dynasty, the emperor ordered people to catch the "reins" in the Qinling Mountains and transport them back to Kyoto to watch in person. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the great scientist Zhang Heng vividly described it in the "Nandu Fu". At that time, the plant cover in Nanyang was very good, all kinds of animals flourished, and in the primeval forest, "tigers, leopards, yellow bears swam under them, and toads played on their peaks." The cursed crow flew on it, and the ape flew in the middle. The "Mao people" and "pigs" mentioned by the Han Dynasty people are what we call "wild people" today, and the Han people have a more specific understanding and vivid depiction of the image of "wild people".
Although the Divine Anomaly Sutra has absurd superstitious legends, it also preserves some true accounts of the situation of the "wild man". The Sutra of divine anomalies and the Western Wild Scriptures say:
"There are people in the mountains of the West, who are more than a foot long, who catch crabs on their bodies, and who are not afraid of people. See people staying overnight, twilight according to their fire to moxibustion shrimp and crabs, wait for people to be absent and steal salt to eat shrimp and crabs. The name of the mountain, its sound is self-proclaimed. People tasted bamboo in the fire, burst out, and they were shocked..."
The "mountain face" mentioned here is the "wild man", which is not tall and naked. By nature, we are not afraid of people. He makes a living by catching shrimp and crabs. At night, he would grill shrimp and crabs over the fire and steal salt to eat. Another example is the "Divine Alien Scripture and the Western Wilderness Classic", which says: "There are people in the western wilderness, who are as long as people, wearing a hundred knots of defeat, with tiger claws in their hands, and with the name of the sun dancing sodium." Serve people alone, eat people's brains. The "nang religion" mentioned here may also be a kind of savage, which is more primitive than the "mountain" mentioned earlier, and it also maintains the beast habit of cannibalizing human brains. His hands were as strong and powerful as a tiger's claws, and he was as tall as a man, dressed in grass.
There are also rumors of "wild men" in Western culture. It is often mentioned in ancient travel stories that giant savage tribes inhabited distant Africa and Asia. Ancient Greek artifacts also have portraits of hairy "savages" courting women. In the Middle Ages, people encountered these animals more and more frequently, but their authenticity was long debated. In modern times, in 1932 some Nepalese hunters were scared away by a furry "savage.". In addition to the "wild man" rumors, in 1550, The English published the book "Zoological and Humane Treasures of the Arctic", which recorded the so-called sea monsters witnessed by many sailors.
For example, the big fish that occasionally appear near Iceland, like a small mountain, can knock over a boat, but are not actually sea monsters, but whales. As for this terrifying monster, it is actually a kind of whale. There are also two huge sea monsters, one with a hideous megalodon. The other has sharp wavy horns and a long whisker on its square head. There is a fish whose head resembles a dog's head, so the Germans called this sea monster "fur seal".
In 1537, this slightly pig-like sea monster was discovered, and this monster with a wide raised ridge on its back was also cetacean. This crustacean with its terrifying large pincers is known as the crab ancestor, but its natural enemy is a rhinoceros-like monster. Much like a goose, this monster has a large leather sac at the bottom of its upper jaw called a throat sac, which is easily reminiscent of the "bird of mercy", the quail. There is also a sea monster with horns on its head like a cow, which has now been confirmed to be a manatee.
There are so many monsters in the world, and the image of the "savage" written by the ancients is all kinds of, varied, mysterious, and unpredictable. Because the ancients did not understand the truth of the "mystery of man", once they encountered some kind of monster they did not know by chance in the lofty mountains or rivers, lakes and seas, due to sudden panic, they inevitably had some hallucinations, and the illusion was mixed with the rich imagination of the ancients, so a very strange and strange "wild man" image spread like a myth. Since ancient times, strange creatures have always been shrouded in colorful mysteries.