Glyph evolution
In the bronze inscription stage, the structure of the word "beast" changed again, and the word on the left was helped by something like Tian Zi, which helped to make the tools for catching animals more powerful and impactful.
The animal heads of seal script and official script, the upper part of the left side has become two squares, and the overall glyph appears more linear and square. Since then, animal roles have been basically stereotyped.
In the Chinese character simplification movement, the dog character on the right side of the animal character was deleted and became the current animal character.
Word meaning conversion
With the development of society, the word "beast" is gradually used as a noun. So people invented a new word "hunting" to mean hunting.
Animals also have a special usage, that is, they refer to tigers alone. For example, the word "beast's mouth" means "tiger's mouth" because in the Tang Dynasty, people often changed the word "tiger" to "beast" in order to avoid Li Hu, the grandfather of Tang Gaozu Li Yuan.
History and culture
According to research, as early as the production and the beginning of the week, there were simplified characters with only "hey" and no dog. In the following ancient prose, the words "hey" and "beast" are universal. Their pronunciation and meaning are exactly the same. It was not until the Han Dynasty that the word "hey" was abandoned.
So, when wEre the two circles on the word er written? According to textual research, this writing method was first seen in calligraphy works such as running script and cursive script in the Jin and Tang Dynasties, and gradually gained wide recognition and inheritance.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the word animal, tells us a historical fact. In the Oracle bones era or earlier, people have tamed dogs as hunting assistants.