Legends are all based on certain facts, and then through generations of interpretations, they finally form a story version. The core of the myth of Nuwa patching up the sky may be that Chinese ancestors burned tiles to cover their houses to prevent leakage, which reflects Nuwa's invention of tiles.
The Nuwa era was an era when pottery was invented and widely used. The invention of pottery originated from the mud coating technology in house construction. It was first used to prevent ventilation. Later, it was gradually discovered that the mud coating also had important functions such as fire prevention and leakage prevention. In the late Fuxi period when gourds were widely used, the ancestors took this The technology was applied to gourds, and the bottom of the gourd was coated with mud to prevent leakage and prevent the gourd from being burned by fire, so that food could be cooked. As a result, the mud layer was sintered into pottery as hard as stone, and pottery was invented. Further, ancestors also discovered that fired pottery would not leak at all. When the roof leaked, Clever thought of using broken pottery pieces to cover the damaged areas of the roof. He was inspired by this and fired pottery pieces specially used to cover the roof to completely solve the problem of roof leakage, thus inventing the tile.
The word "tile" has the same pronunciation as the word "娲", which simulates the "rattling" sound made when pottery is rubbed. In fact, in some places, pottery pieces are called "tiles" and pottery is called tiles. , such as "earth pot", "earth basin", etc.
The tiles are as hard as stone, and the tiles fired from different soils have different colors, which can be called "five-color stones"; the roof leaks because the roof has defects and cracks, and it is as dark as when there are heavy clouds. The thatched roofs of the simple houses where the ancestors lived may have led the ancestors to believe that rainwater also leaked from the gaps in the cloud cover. Therefore, when continuous rain brought inconvenience to people's production and life, the ancestors would imagine making five-color stones to repair the leaky sky like covering the roof with tiles. Such an undertaking is beyond the reach of human beings and can only be accomplished by a divine being. Naturally, this divine being was Nuwa, and the myth was born.
One possibility is that the original legend was just a story about Nuwa burning tiles to cover the roof. In the process of spreading, this story was added to and gradually transformed again and again. "Burning tiles" evolved into "making five-color stones", "covering the house" evolved into "patching the sky", and was finally wrapped in layers of gorgeous mythology. In the coat. As recorded in "Huainanzi 6.1 Lan Ming Xun", in addition to the deeds of mending the sky itself, there are also the reasons for mending the sky, as well as the series of deeds such as cutting off the turtle, killing the black dragon, and accumulating reed ashes after mending the sky, creating the Nuwa's great cause of organizing the world.