Chapter 5 Chapter 2 Age of Mythology

When and how Chinese history began, we are not sure. This is a major and serious topic, which will force us to talk about the origin of the universe, the origin of human beings and the origin of Chinese people, which we know very little about.Historians have at least ten great theories on each of these issues, each with more than ten citations, but they cannot be conclusive.The common situation is that some antiques or bones are dug out from the ground to infer the living conditions of the owners of these antiques or bones.The results can only provide a static illustration: the development of each nation is almost exactly the same.For example, they all use stone first and then bronze.

So we decided to take a different approach to the historical data.The history of Chinese activities can be divided into the following four eras: an age of mythology Two Age of Legends Three-and-a-half letter history era Four Faith History Era Every ancient nation has their myths as the answer to the origin of the universe and the origin of nations mentioned above.The Chinese are no exception.These myths have their substantive meanings, which can at least impress us deeply. Now, let's see how the huge stage of China will be unveiled. Groundbreaking I don't know how many billions of years ago, in the ancient times, there was a giant star floating in space, shaped like an egg, orbiting in the endless dark clouds and mist, everything was silent, everything was as silent as death.Inside the giant star, there is a giant named Pangu who has been digging with his ax in an attempt to rescue himself from the siege.After 18,000 years of hard work, at 2,760,480 BC (note this year, this is calculated by mythologists using magical magic), Pan Gu swung his last axe, He only heard a loud noise, and the superstar was split into two halves by him.

Pan Gu is the ancestor of mankind, at least the ancestor of the Chinese. Half of the giant star above Pangu's head turned into gas and kept rising; half of the giant star under his feet turned into the earth and kept thickening.The universe began to have heaven and earth.The sky rises three meters every day, the earth thickens three meters every day, and Pan Gu is also three meters high every day.The higher the sky rises, the thicker the earth becomes, and the bigger Pan Gu becomes (depending on the situation, Pan Gu is the only hero who can be praised as "standing upright").But the surroundings were as dark as ever, and I couldn't see my fingers. The earth was lonely and cold.Pan Gu was very sad. He said: "This world is terrible. There is no light, no heat, no mountains, no water, nothing. The future generations cannot survive. I must sacrifice myself." So he died.

Pangu's death caused a series of new lives to be born, and the world changed greatly after his death.His right eye became the sun; his left eye became the moon; his blood became rivers and oceans; his hair became trees and flowers; his breath became wind; his voice became thunder.A smile when you are happy turns into a sunny day; a sad face when you are troubled becomes a cloudy day.And his limbs become the five mountains we introduced in Chapter 1, Section 3: the head becomes Dongyue Taishan; the abdomen becomes Zhongyong Songshan; the left arm becomes Nanyue Hengshan; the right arm becomes Beiyue Hengshan; The feet become Xiyue Huashan.Pangu created a beautiful world for mankind.

However, the master of heaven in the eyes of the Chinese is not Pangu.This is different from the Jews, who believe that the Creator of the world is Jehovah, the Lord who rules the world.Pangu of the Chinese, his mission was only to create the world, but another god called the Jade Emperor ruled the world.The Jade Emperor was invented by Taoism. The folks call him "Tian Lord" or "God God". He has a huge government organization in the sky, and all kinds of strange gods in Taoism and Buddhism serve as civil and military officials.Because his image is the projection of most emperors in the world, he will always be a low-energy bear bag.

From 2,760,480 B.C., that is, from the year when the world was created, to 480 B.C. found a unicorn, we will talk about it later), a total of 2.76 million years, mythologists divide it into ten periods.Each era of 276,000 years has its own specific name: One Nine Dragons Two Five Dragons Three Sets Sihe Luoji Pentaconnection period Six Prefaces Seven Cycles Eight Intigi Nine Chan Tong Ji ten years We don't see any significance in the division of the tenth century, but it shows that the years are long.Pangu's descendants continued to multiply, and the earth became more and more lively day by day.Mythologists say that in the Sheti period of the third era, 550,000 years after Pangu, the following three great gods appeared one after another, called the "Three Emperors". The original meaning of "Huang" is the gods, but the gods are slightly inferior to Pangu and the Jade Emperor, and we can call them the second-level gods.

one day emperor Er Di Huang three emperors The emperor was the first and most accomplished leader among the descendants of Pangu. He lived to be eighteen thousand years old and had twelve sons who helped him govern his growing people.Although these people are all descendants of Pangu, they have been scattered for a long time, scattered all over the five mountains, and they have long been strangers to each other.The emperor divided them into several tribes, and each tribe elected or designated a capable person as chief.Since then, the Chinese have become an organized nation with the embryonic form of a country.

After the death of the emperor, after tens of thousands of years, the emperor of the earth was born in Longer Mountain (the fairy mountain in mythology), with a life span of 18,000 years and eleven sons.At that time, the sun and moon transformed from Pangu's eyes, and the stars transformed from eyelashes suddenly became chaotic.Sometimes it is day for several days in a row, and sometimes it is night for several days in a row.And some stars hang very low, people will hurt their heads if they are not careful when walking.The emperor used his incomparable power to improve each item.He first fixed the time when the sun and the moon appeared, so that they would rise and fall regularly, so that day and night could be considered distinct.It is also stipulated that thirty days are one month and twelve months are one year, so that people know the calculation method of time and age.The emperor ordered all the stars to rise to the distant sky.Of course the stars were very boring there, so the Emperor specially allowed them to sleep at home during the day, and come out at night to visit their old friends who stayed on the ground.This is why we cannot see the stars during the day, but only at night.

Renhuang, born in Xingma Mountain (also a fairy mountain in mythology), has a life span of 15,600 years.There are nine younger brothers, all of whom have great supernatural powers and powerful spells.The emperor divided China into nine states and ordered his younger brothers to be governors of each state.He himself lives in the center of Kyushu and travels frequently.When traveling on a tour, they sit in a vehicle that can run in the air like a cloud. The driver has six wings and moves as fast as lightning. 25's After the efforts of the Three Emperors, the world has made great progress, but people's lives are still difficult.At first, they would only climb to the trees to pick and eat fruits, and then progressed from the picking stage to the fishing and hunting stage (they had to make progress, because the fruits on the trees would be picked, and there would be no fruits in winter), but for the fish and shrimps caught And small animals can only be eaten alive, no different from wild animals.Everyone originally lived in caves, but later on there were too many people and few caves, and those who were finally squeezed out of caves had no choice but to develop on the plains.The plains could not resist the sudden attacks of wild animals and wind and rain, and everyone, including the people in the caves, could not resist the diseases caused by cold and raw food, resulting in a large number of deaths.

All kinds of great gods and figures came into being.Just after the Three Emperors, the following five clans appeared, but unfortunately we have no way of knowing which era and what era they appeared in. a nest Er Suiren's Samfushi Four Nuwas Five Shennong The original meaning of "shi" is also a god, but the divinity seems to be less than that of "huang", so they can be included in the third level. The first to appear was Chaoshi, who taught the people not to live on the ground.He built a simple canopy with branches and leaves on the tree. As a demonstration, this is the original house, which can at least avoid wild animals and floods.People learn from him and improve their building skills day by day, and then even if they move it to the ground, it has the same effect.

The next one appeared was Suirenshi, who revealed to mankind the biggest secret in the sky, that is "fire".Fire is everywhere, but no one knows how to get it.Suirenshi taught people to drill it out of the wood.When humans have fire, they will part ways with all other animals forever.Other animals have never used fire, but people have changed to eat cooked things because of this, and their lifestyle has presented an epoch-making breakthrough. Fuxi is the third god to appear, and he seems to be more powerful than the two elders before him.He taught people how to cook with fire, and people enjoyed delicious food from then on. A dragon is painted on the bodies of officials to show their noble status; they also invented musical instruments; they also taught men and women to fix their spouses; He also made fishing nets and taught the waterside residents to fish; he also taught people to dig traps, catch live animals, and train them as domestic animals; he also taught people to plant mulberry trees, raise silkworms, and spin silk for weaving. However, to prevent this world created by Pan Gu and ruled by the Jade Emperor Tian Lao from being destroyed, and it still exists today, we must thank the fourth god Nuwa.She was a beautiful goddess, so slender as a snake that some mythologists insisted that she was a snake at all.Two heroes, Gong Gong and Zhu Rong, were dueling at Mount Buzhou (a fairy mountain in mythology)—whether it was for her love or not, we cannot be sure.As a result, Gonggong failed. He went mad with anger and slammed his head into Buzhou Mountain. After a terrible sound, Buzhou Mountain was knocked off from it.Buzhou Mountain is the main pillar between the sky and the earth. When the pillar is broken, a huge gap will be opened in the heaven.The earth lost its balance and tilted sharply to the southeast.In an instant, there was a violent storm, the sun and the moon were dark, and human beings were running and screaming, and they were about to roll like gravel into the dark abyss at the end of the earth.Nu Wa couldn't bear this catastrophe, so she took five-color stones from the mountain to burn, and after refining, she used them to fill the cracks in the sky.The bright and dazzling red clouds in the sky now are the five-color boulders that Nuwa's mend.She killed another unlucky tortoise, and used its four feet as four pillars to prop up the earth again.Nuwa used reeds to burn the ashes to absorb the flood of water that leaked from the cracks in the sky. This is the cause of the formation of the Central Plains—the Great North China Plain. They are paved with reeds ash, so they are flat and fertile. . When human beings no longer worry about the collapse of the world, they are troubled by two other things: one is not knowing what to eat and what not to eat, and the other is not knowing how to treat diseases.So the fifth god Shennong appeared. He collected various flowers and fruits, chewed them one by one and ate them one by one, so as to determine their properties and functions.As a result of stuffing everything into his stomach indiscriminately, even if he is a god, sometimes he will be poisoned more than 70 times in a day.Fortunately, he was different from ordinary humans, so he was not poisoned to death.In the end he was able to distinguish between those that can be eaten and those that cannot be eaten, and those that can be used as medicine.He wrote a huge book named "Materia Medica", in which he recorded the performance of various medicines in detail.This book has been handed down until the 20th century, and it is the most noble and authoritative classic in Chinese medicine.Shennong named some edible plants as "wheat", "rice", "sorghum", "corn", etc., and taught people to plant them; The ancestor of what we now call "dog", "horse", "cow" and "pig".China's agricultural society was completed under the leadership of this great god. three east west world The age of mythology ends here. Some historians look down on the substantive status of mythology in history, but mythology is the soul of a nation, and if there is no mythology in the history of a nation, the nation is just a group of puppets.From the content of the myth, we can understand the life background and humanistic response of the early people.All myths are full of contradictions, and sometimes they are simply incomprehensible.The same is true of Chinese mythology, but this further confirms that it is the product of the early people.If it is fabricated by a modern novelist, it is guaranteed to be impeccable. When Pangu opened up the world and created a beautiful world for the Chinese, the gods of other regions and nations were also busy making the same contribution for their nation.such as: Japanese, in ancient times, the gods in the sky were determined to create the world.They ordered the brothers and sisters Yizuanuo and Yizuran to be in charge of this work.After the brothers and sisters were ordered, they stood on the pontoon bridge in the heaven, threw a precious spear into the sea, picked it up again, and held it high in the air.The drops of water dripping from the spear immediately turned into sacred islands.There are four thousand two hundred and twenty-three drops of water, so there are exactly four thousand two hundred and twenty-three islands in Japan.The two gods, brother and sister, settled on the island, and then Amaterasu God was born from the left eye of his younger sister Yikouran, who is the god of the sun and the ancestor of the Japanese. Jews, in ancient times, the universe was in chaos.The God Jehovah walks alone on the water, thinking about how to create a world.So, on the first day, he created day and night.On the second day, he created the air and the sky.On the third day, he created the earth and sea, and all kinds of plants.On the fourth day, he created the sun, moon and stars.In the fifth month he created fish and birds.On the sixth day, he created other animals, and created a man who looked like Yahweh, named Adam.On the seventh and last day, the LORD was tired, and he rested.Adam was too lonely in the world, so God used Adam's rib to create a woman, named Eve, as Adam's companion.This couple is the ancestors of the Jews.