As the saying goes, Donkey meat on the ground, dragon meat in the sky? For many people in China, the dragon is a legendary sacred object, but it was really eaten in the Xia Dynasty. So what creatures does the dragon here mean?

(1) Yu Long's family and Qi Long's family

In Sima Qian's Historical Records, they described such a mysterious thing, saying that it was Kong Jia, the monarch of the Xia Dynasty. He was lucky to get two dragons from heaven, but because they were a female and a male, and no one who could raise dragons could make them produce and breed in batches, he was worried that he could not eat dragon meat for a long time after eating them, so he put up with it. Historical Records? Xia Benji: Emperor Kong Jiali, a good spirit ..... Heaven has brought down two dragons, male and female, and Kong Jia can't eat them, so he didn't get the name of the dragon. Tao and Tang Dynasties declined, followed by Liu Lei, who followed Rao Long's example of calling on the Dragon Family to serve Kong Jia. Kong Jia gave him the surname Yu Longshi.

Until later, a man named Liu Lei returned from studying with the Qianlong family and went to work for the monarch Kong Jia, which made Kong Jia so happy that he was named the Yulong family. I won't worry about eating dragon meat in the future, and I can eat as much as I want. Kong Jia, a descendant of Dayu, was the 14th monarch of Xia Dynasty, and of course he was said to be the 16th.

I was deceived when I saw many people here, saying that dragons were not imaginary things of the ancients. In fact, we need to understand that in the Xia Dynasty, the dragon could be artificially raised and used as a kind of snacks, which was obviously an animal in the ancient Central Plains. The dragon of later generations has become auspicious and deified. Therefore, the meaning of dragon in ancient literature may not be really dragon. So, what animal was the dragon of Xia Dynasty based on?

(2) The Clam Sculpting Dragon and the Chinese Alligator

In p>1987, in a tomb at Xishuipo Site in Puyang, both sides of the skeleton of the male tomb owner were decorated with dragon and tiger patterns made of clam shells. Among them, the image of the dragon is particularly striking. It has no slender snake-shaped body, but a short body and thick limbs, like a tiger. Different from the tiger, it has a thick tail, eagle claws on its limbs and a long and narrow double kiss on its head. This image is actually more like a crocodile.

In fact, crocodiles were widely distributed in China in the pre-Qin period, and there were bay crocodiles in many areas of China. Crocodiles were also called? Pig woman dragon? 、? Jilong? The Chinese alligator has another name? Earth dragon? . According to the book of Jin? Zhou Chu Zhuan and Shi Shuo Xin Yu recorded that the dragon killed by Zhou Chu in addition to the three evils was actually a crocodile.

The records of dragons in ancient books often indicate that dragons are aquatic animals. Many of the descriptions in Zhouyi are also in line with the habits of crocodiles. For example, "Hidden dragons are in the deep" (lurking in the water), "Seeing dragons in the fields" (appearing in fields near the water) and "The dragons are leaderless" (social animals without leaders). ?

Archaeologists also found many drums made of crocodile skins and crocodile bone plates in the Taosi culture about 4, years ago, which can prove that crocodiles existed in the Yellow River valley at that time. So,? Xiaolong? And? Royal dragon? The dragons raised are probably crocodiles in the ancient Heluo area. The dragon totem of later generations is an animal imagined by the ancients, which is made up of many kinds of animals and is not limited to crocodiles.