"Huai Nan Zi said Xun Lin" put forward the theory that Nu Wa and God * * * jointly created human beings. When Nu Wa created human beings, the gods came together to help her: the Yellow Emperor created women and men, chimed the bells to create ears and eyes, and sang Lin created arms and palms, so Nu Wa could change and create education in many ways. Gao You, a scholar at the end of the Han Dynasty, commented: "The Yellow Emperor, an ancient god, was divided into men and women when he made beginning of life; Shangqing and Sanglin are taboo words of God. Nu Wa is the king of the world. There are many changes in creative education. What is said here is that the social evolution of creating education (human beings) is not just the credit of one person. "
Another legend was put forward in later times. Nu Wa and Fuxi are brothers and sisters to breed human beings. "unparalleled record": at the beginning of the universe, there were only two brothers and sisters between heaven and earth. At the foot of Kunlun Mountain, there was no one else in the world. I want to be husband and wife, but I am ashamed. My brother and sister immediately went to Kunlun Mountain and cursed: "If God agrees to marry my brother and sister, please gather all the clouds in the sky or disperse them." So the clouds in the sky immediately closed, and brother and sister became husband and wife. The Chinese nation is the offspring of both of them.
There is a saying that Nu Wa created human beings in Yi Tong. Wherever there is Laiwo Temple, there is a custom of begging children in Laiwo Temple. Although there is no scientific basis, it is permeated with a primitive reproductive worship culture. In primitive times, tribal wars were cruel and frequent, all of which depended on human confrontation, with many deaths. Therefore, people expect women to have a large number of children, so that the clan can prosper and avoid the fate of extinction. As a result, the "goddess of mending the sky" came into being. In the myth of "Goddess of Mending Heaven", the sky fabricated by Nu Wa is the sky above her head; The ground you support is the ground under your feet; What is created is a world where human beings can live in peace; It embodies the fearless spirit.
According to relevant data, there are currently five Nuwa tombs in China and two in Shanxi Province, one in Fengling, Ruicheng County and the other in Zhao Cheng, Hongtong County. Looking up some ancient books, such as General Examination of Literature, Records of Universe and Records of Nine Cities, it is said that Nuwa's tomb is in Zhao Cheng. Moreover, Nu Wa, who was enshrined in the past dynasties, is also in Zhao Cheng. In addition, Fushan County also has Laihe Temple and Goddess of Heaven. The mythical Jizhou refers to the junction of Shanxi and Hebei today.
It is said that Nu Wa is a real historical figure, and the ancient history of Nu Wa's mausoleum is also recorded, but the opinions are different. It is said that Nu Wa lives in the Loess Plateau, and her tomb is located in Houcun, Dongzhen Town, Zhao Cheng, Hongtong County, Linfen City, Shanxi Province. The tomb of Nuwa may have existed for more than three or four thousand years. Like the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, it is also the temple of the ancient emperors in China. Every year around the tenth day of the third lunar month, a seven-day large-scale temple fair and sacrificial activities are held. There are Ruicheng in Shanxi, Shanzhou in Henan, Rencheng in Henan, Jining in Shandong and so on. As can be seen from the above literature, the activity area of the Nuwa family is generally centered on Luoyang, reaching Rushui in the south, Taihang in the north, Tongguan in the west and Luxi in the east. Nuwa era is an era when pottery was invented and widely used. The invention of pottery originated from the mud painting technology in building construction, which was first used to prevent ventilation, and later gradually found that mud painting also played an important role in fire prevention and leakage prevention. In Fuxi era, while the gourd was widely used, the ancestors applied this technology to the gourd, smearing mud on the bottom of the gourd to prevent it from being burned by fire, thus cooking food. As a result, the mud layer was sintered into stone-hard pottery, and pottery was invented. More distant ancestors will find that the fired pottery will not leak at all. When the roof leaks rain, the wise man thought of covering the broken part of the roof with broken pottery pieces, and was inspired by this. He fired ceramic tiles specially used to cover the roof to completely solve the problem of roof leakage, thus inventing tiles.
Tiles are as hard as stone, and tiles fired in different soils have different colors, which can be called "five-colored stones"; The reason why the roof leaks rain is that the roof is defective and cracked, as black as the grass roof of the humble house where the ancestors lived when the clouds were overcast. Therefore, the ancestors may think that the rain in the sky also leaks from the cracks in the clouds. Therefore, when continuous rain brings inconvenience to people's production and life, ancestors will imagine melting five-color stones to make up for the leaking sky, just like covering the roof with tiles. Such a cause is beyond human power, and only a man of God can do it. This man of God is naturally Nuwa, and the myth was born.
Another possibility is that the original legend is just a story about the roof covered with tiles. In the process of spreading, this story has been polished again and again and gradually deformed. "Burning tiles" evolved into "refining five-color stones", "building houses" evolved into "mending the sky" and was finally wrapped in a gorgeous coat of myth. As recorded in "Huai Nan Zi Lan Mingxun", in addition to the deeds of repairing heaven and earth, there are also reasons for repairing heaven, and a series of deeds of repairing heaven, such as breaking the eagle, killing the black dragon and accumulating reed ash, have created the macro cause of Nu Wa to tidy up heaven and earth. Although some prehistoric events exist in the form of folklore or myth, they are based on facts. The underwater archaeological exploration in the Black Sea found that the "century flood" recorded in the Bible was based on facts. Although there is no accurate written record of "Dayu controlling water", it is generally believed that the fact of this myth is to control ancient floods. Then, is there such a factual basis for a myth that is older than Dayu's water control-"Goddess mending the sky"? A researcher from the First Monitoring Center of China Seismological Bureau suggested that the myth of Goddess mending the sky may actually be a disaster in meteorite shower in ancient times. The research basis of this statement is that the special landform of Baiyangdian Basin was left by a huge meteorite shower impact in the middle and late Holocene. When studying the historical landforms of Baiyangdian River Basin, researchers found that there are a large number of special landforms from Renqiu and Hejian to Baoding and Wang Du, extending to the northwest, and all the way to Wanxian and Mancheng.
The reason for the formation of this dish-shaped depression is that scientists use computer digital technology (DTM), and use linear topographic maps and aerial photographs published nearly a hundred years ago to peel off modern topography and artificial landforms layer by layer, leaving only the original natural landscape. By comparing the restoration map of the depression with other meteorite impact craters with similar formation ages at home and abroad, it is found that the dished depression and its group in Baiyangdian area are the remains left on the modern alluvial plain after the huge meteorite shower impact in prehistoric times.
According to the study of modern meteorite impact by geological and geomorphological methods, it is speculated that the impact occurred in a very wide area, from northern Shanxi to central Hebei, and may even extend to the vicinity of Bohai Bay. It happened at some time in prehistoric times, most likely 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.
It is speculated that the scene at that time was a small comet entering the earth orbit, rushing into the atmosphere over the northern part of Shanxi and exploding at high altitude. In a very short time, it fell into the vast area from northern Shanxi to central Hebei, forming a large-scale meteorite shower. A large number of impact craters have been formed in the plain area. After the erosion of surface running water and the transformation of ancestors, a number of large impact craters finally formed Baiyangdian Lake. Other smaller waterlogged depressions have gradually become the main residential areas in this area. Some of these depressions have been eroded by surface water, but a large number of impact craters still exist-"dished depressions" still remain on the highlands between river beds. Analyzing the legend of the goddess mending the sky is very similar to a large-scale collision of alien objects (meteorite shower).
The earliest records of Goddess of Mending Heaven are Liezi Tang Wen and Huainanzi Lanmingxun. In these two works, the myth of the goddess mending the sky is roughly discussed as follows: in ancient times, "the four poles were abolished, Kyushu was split, the sky was not restored, and the land was incomplete;" The fire does not go out, and the water is inexhaustible. " In other words, the sky is falling, fires are burning, floods are flooding, birds are committing crimes, and animals are rampant. Just as people were wailing and ghosts were everywhere, a goddess named Nu Wa stepped forward. She "refined five-color stones to make up the sky, broken the aojiang enough to set up four poles, killed the black dragon to help Jizhou, and accumulated reed ash to stop lewd water." So as to overcome this major natural disaster. The wonderful description in this paper should be the whole process of a large-scale meteorite shower impact. "Four poles are abandoned, Kyushu is split, the sky is not covered, and the earth is not surplus" is a large-scale meteorite shower formed after the explosion of small celestial bodies. "Fire that never goes out" is a huge impact, explosion and subsequent fire on the ground; If the small celestial body is a comet, its composition is mainly meteorite ice. After the meteorite ice melts, a large amount of surface water will be formed, resulting in "inexhaustible water". "Kill the black dragon to help Jizhou, and accumulate reed ash to stop dirty water. Tian Bu, the four poles are positive, the lewd water is solid, Jizhou is flat, locusts die, and people's livelihood is ruined. " This myth was compiled according to ancient legends in Qin and Han Dynasties. Jizhou, of course, should be an area of ancient Hebei Province, which means that this paragraph describes the scene after the disaster in Hebei Plain subsided. The geographical distribution of the "Goddess of Mending the Sky" remains is located in the south and west of the proposed impact zone.
The impact of alien objects may cause great damage, the most important of which is the impact on ancient climate. Quaternary geologists studied the law of Holocene climate change and found many important cooling events. The Holocene Great Warm Period from 8500 to 3000 years ago was an important stage of the development of ancient human civilization in the Neolithic Age, but it was also a period of severe climate fluctuation. Among them, a cooling event more than 4000 years ago, known as the "Little Ice Age", had a great impact. This time is also the most important moment for the development of Central Plains civilization, and many scholars attach great importance to this issue. When using the high-resolution analysis method of environmental evolution (time scale is 10- 100) to study Holocene paleoenvironment and other issues, it is pointed out that there was a cooling event 4800-4200 years ago, and the result of the event led to the changes of ancient culture. It is believed that Hongshan Culture, which flourished in Mongolia, Liaoning and Hebei, suddenly declined and the development of Xiaoheyan culture fell into a trough, which may be related to this incident.
There is clear evidence in archaeology that the mythological remains of the goddess Nu Wa and the goddess of mending heaven are active in Shanxi and Hebei. The geographical distribution of these relics is just near the south and west of the proposed impact zone, and this impact corresponds to the research results of paleoclimatologists-the cooling events from 4800 to 4200 years ago, which were triggered by the impact of meteorite shower. The reasonable explanation for why Baiyangdian area left a blank area of ancient culture in the late Neolithic period is that there was a huge disaster here.
This study not only coincides with the Holocene cooling event proposed by paleoenvironmental experts, but also coincides with the vacancy area of ancient culture proposed by historical geographers in Hebei Plain. The influence of natural environment on early human development is extremely important. The boundaries of various cultural areas are often the boundaries of natural geographical environment. However, when studying this problem, scholars found that the central part of Hebei plain, namely Baiyangdian area, is neither a mountain range nor a desert, but should be a lake pond and a tile shop area which are very suitable for the survival and reproduction of ancient humans, but left a vacancy area of ancient culture in the late Neolithic age.
Archaeological research shows that the late Neolithic culture equivalent to Yangshao culture era is very rare, and the remains of Longshan culture in the later period are almost blank. In fact, the book "Physical Geography of China" (Historical Physical Geography) has long pointed out that "whether in the Neolithic Age, the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, or even the Spring and Autumn Period, there was an extremely vast area without settlements in the middle of the (Hebei) plain". Mr. Tan Qixiang, a famous historical geographer, also pointed out that "Hebei Plain is a barren and uninhabited scene".
In fact, the study of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties of Chinese civilization also confirms this point. According to the historical documents Chunqiu and Zuozhuan, the vacant areas of ancient culture delineated by the situation maps of various vassal States in the Spring and Autumn Period completely coincide with the affected areas drawn by the above historical landform methods. This is obviously not accidental. This area is mainly Baiyangdian river basin and its areas extending to the northwest and southeast. It shows that the economic and cultural development in this area is much later than that in the surrounding areas, and the more reasonable explanation is that the geographical environment has deteriorated due to huge disasters. It is more likely to be the psychological trauma of ancestors and the taboos caused by it. The disaster was a meteorite shower collision. After the huge impact disaster, a large number of people died and moved out, interrupting the vigorous development of local ancient culture. A few years after the disaster, a new ancient culture gradually formed. This disaster has experienced legends from generation to generation, and a beautiful myth-"Goddess of mending the sky" was born.