Regarding the explanation of the name "Nu Wa", most of the ancients thought that Nu Wa was a saint. Literally, the key word "Wa" in the word "Nu Wa" has nothing to do with the various legends and stories of Nu Wa, much like the words "Yao, Shun and Yu" used to express the names of saints.
In fact, the pronunciation of the word "tile" essentially explains the deeds of Nu Wa. The pronunciation of the word "tile" simulates the "quack" sound when the spoon rubs the bottom of the pot. When reading wā, read gā, and the pronunciation is similar. Well, the exact words should be "well". This word has many pronunciations, meaning "crooked" when reading wāi; When reading hé, ancient Chinese is the same as "harmony"; When reading wǒ, it means "crooked"; When reading wā, it is an ancient name; Reading ancient m, ancient prose is the same as "cutting"; Reading Gu means surname. In fact, these pronunciations are very close. Except for the two meanings of country name and surname, other meaning can be integrated into a kind of object name. This kind of vessel is often askew and squeaky, and it is related to grain, which shows that it is a "pot" used to cook food in ancient times. "Jiyun" is called "left or left". "Wei" also has many pronunciations. When reading gé, it means the name of an ancient country, or it is linked with "diaphragm", "diaphragm" and "partition". L √ reads like an ancient cooker, a pot used for cooking or frying, similar to a tripod. It can be seen that "Guo" and "Wei" originally represent the same kind of objects, but the former is described from the perspective of subjective function, while the latter is described from the perspective of objective shape. Cookware for ancient cooking. Tao Ge, which existed in the Neolithic Age, is similar in shape to a marching pot, with its mouth tilted outward and its three legs hollow, which is convenient for cooking and heating. Because the three feet are hollow, cooked food will also exist in the feet. To take this part of the food out, Tao Ge must tilt and then take it out with a spoon. Therefore, tilting and cutting (scraping, scraping liquid food with a spoon) fully show the function of Tao Ge. From the point of view that Wei connects diaphragm and partition, Wei's name comes from its function of separating food from fire.
Cooking with fire has always been a woman's business. When the ancients recorded the name of Nu Wa, they created the word "Wa" with a female symbol on it, which was actually the image of a housewife. There are often "frog" patterns on painted pottery in Gansu and Qinghai. Some people think it represents a frog that can protect mankind from floods, some people think it is a god, and some people think it is an image of a person squatting on the ground and eating. In fact, the pattern of "frog" is actually a symbol of frog croaking, and it is matched with pottery used to process cooking food to express the good wish of eating and drinking enough. Similarly, the giant salamander pattern appearing on painted pottery is also based on its croaking sound as a sound symbol, hoping to have a full stomach. Giant salamander, commonly known as giant salamander, is named after its sound is similar to that of a baby. Frogs and giant salamanders are amphibians, living by the water, and cooking food with pottery is also inseparable from water. It is easy to understand that there is food with sound symbols. Painted pottery often has vortex patterns, which is also the embodiment of using vortex as a sound symbol.
Pottery is one of the symbols of the Neolithic Age. China's pottery was invented at the end of the Voltages, when the ancients painted mud on the bottom of gourds to prevent fire, so as to cook food. However, historical legends believe that the Nuwa era was after the Fu era, indicating that the Nuwa era was actually a pottery era represented by pottery tile or pottery. Compared with barbecue, ceramic cookers are more convenient and effective for cooking food. Moreover, barbecue can only be used for large pieces of food, such as meat or plant root nuts, while cooking can be used for small pieces of plant seeds, which greatly improves the eating speed and saves more time. Its convenience and benefits can be said to be unparalleled. Generally, plant seeds are very small. Although it contains high-energy starch, if you eat it raw, you must chew it one by one, otherwise it will pass through the intestine. However, if you chew grains and other seeds one by one, you will hardly have enough to eat all day. It's very different after cooking. As long as it is eaten in the stomach, it can be digested and absorbed. Therefore, cooking technology has greatly expanded people's food sources. Dry plant seeds are more resistant to long-term storage than prey and fruits, so ancient people can collect and store a large number of edible plant seeds, and they don't have to look around for food in winter when food is scarce, laying the foundation for their final settlement. Therefore, the invention of ceramic cookware is a revolutionary leap in human diet technology.
Because pottery is mainly used by housewives, in the early days of pottery, housewives mainly completed the firing of pottery and improved their skills and pottery during the production process. The original pottery was simple and had a single function, which was roughly a pottery bowl. Later, three hollow feet were added under the bowl, which became Tao Ge. Tao Ge's three feet are similar to sheep's drooping breasts, and the middle is empty. Modern scientific analysis believes that this can increase the heating area and shorten the cooking time. In fact, the ancients did not necessarily think so, but thought that the food cooked in the pot was liquid, which could nourish life like milk, so adding the image of breasts to it should be able to cook more nutritious food. In addition, cooking food in pottery bowls needs support, which is more troublesome. Adding solid ceramic feet into a ceramic bowl is not easy to burn into pottery when it is thick, but easy to break when it is thin. It is best to give consideration to these two aspects when hollow. With the improvement of pottery-making technology, the ancients found more functions for pottery, such as pottery suitable for storing different foods, rations and drinking water. It is also of great significance to store in pottery. Rats naturally accompany people's lives, stealing people's rations and drinking water. Rats are good at biting people, and ordinary utensils can't escape the fate of being bitten by rats, but rats can't do anything about pottery. So storing things with pottery can effectively avoid rats. Therefore, it can be said that the use and development of pottery promoted a great progress of prehistoric civilization in China, and Nu Wa is the symbol of this era.
The emergence of family is the need for adult men and women to raise children together. Only when adult men and women get married can they raise their children more effectively. Because the wife often has to nurse the baby and take care of the older children, it is very inconvenient to move and her ability to find food and water is greatly limited, so she often depends on her husband to provide food. After the appearance of pottery, the wife can take care of the children while preparing food, that is, in the main house; Husbands can work hard to support their families, that is, outside. In this way, the whole family can eat and live together, so the family is more stable. This should be the core of the legend of Nu Wa's marriage system. On the other hand, compared with men, women are more single-minded and persistent in love, so jealousy and jealousy among married women are very serious. One thing that women can't tolerate most is that their husbands are philandering everywhere. These psychological characteristics of women determine that they pay more attention to family stability. It can be seen that it is very reasonable for the ancients to record the achievements of formulating the marriage system in the name of Nu Wa.
Women give birth to children as mothers, and women make pottery with clay. In the eyes of the ancients, when there were no human beings, there was only Nu Wa, a great woman. Nu Wa could not be transformed into a human being through marriage, but only a human being. This is actually far more in line with the truth that "everything is born of mother" than the story of God creating Adam and Eve in the Bible.
It is inevitable to blow into the fire when cooking, so as to blow up the flames. It can be reasonably assumed that in order to prevent burns and facilitate operation, the ancients would try to blow into the fire with bone pipes and bamboo pipes, and some people would notice that noise could be blown out. Then it is reasonable to invent playing instruments from this. In the early days of the Nuwa era, life was hard, and people had little leisure time to concentrate on inventing things that were of little value to improving their survival skills. They only found the phenomenon of playing the wind pipe in their routine operation and improved it intentionally or unintentionally, and finally invented the wind pipe instrument. Sheng spring is a combined wind instrument, and it is not wrong for the ancients to attribute its invention to Nu Wa, the representative of housewives.
The story of Nu Wa's arrangement of heaven and earth is full of myths, but we might as well regard them as the fantasy of Chinese ancestors challenging nature, which means that Chinese ancestors have a new understanding of their own strength and are no longer willing to accept nature. First of all, the ancients may think that lewd rain is not only caused by a loophole in the sky, but also that mending clothes and cooking food with pottery are women's full-time jobs, so the cause of mending the sky with five-color stones can only be undertaken by the goddess. Since mending the sky is the first step to tidy up the world, the rest of the process naturally belongs to Nu Wa. The claw foot is short, the center of gravity is low, and the support body is the most stable. A broken claw is enough to set up four poles, which is naturally the most effective. Dragons are sacred objects that ride the wind and rain everywhere. On the land of China, the clouds moving from north to south are generally dark and bring heavy rainfall. The black dragon is its master. In order to further prevent the rainstorm, it is reasonable to kill the black dragon and help Jizhou. As the saying goes, "Jiuqu Yellow River Wan Li Sand", due to the rich sediment, the lower reaches of the Yellow River often diverted and swung back and forth on the North China Plain, making the ancient North China Plain all over the swamp. Reed is the only wet tall grass in the northern region, which grows in the shallow water area and coastal areas of the swamp and surrounds the swamp layer by layer. The lower reaches of the Yellow River is one of the most important living areas in China before democracy. In order to improve the living environment or round up prey, Chinese ancestors would set fire to reeds, build canals to divert water and drain water, and finally transform some shallow marshes into dry land. This is a simple explanation for the accumulation of reed ash in this process to prevent lewd water.
As for the story that Fuxi Nuwa's brother and sister got married and became the ancestor of mankind, it is roughly that some parts of ancient China suffered from floods, and those who survived the floods formed the impression of fear, which was passed down from mouth to mouth to future generations. Later, the ancients took this as a starting point and then merged the story of Fuxi Nuwa. Almost all nationalities in the world have similar legends, but there are many contradictions among them, so we can't believe them all.
In the Nuwa era, following the Fu era, which focused on the utilization and development of gourd function, pottery was invented on the basis of gourd, and the production and use of pottery were promoted, which expanded the food resources for the ancient people to grow seeds, greatly improved the storage technology from pottery, and maintained the settlement life to a greater extent, thus ushered in the dawn of Shennong era. Some people think that there was a matriarchal society in ancient China. In fact, more accurately, the era of Nuwa is an era in which women dominate the technological progress of human survival.