What are the eloquent Zodiac animals?

The Zodiac, also known as the Zodiac, is twelve kinds of animals in China that match the twelve earthly branches according to the year of birth, including rats, cows, tigers, rabbits, dragons, snakes, horses, sheep, monkeys, chickens, dogs and pigs. The origin of the zodiac is related to animal worship. According to Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Yunmeng Sleeping Tiger Land in Hubei Province and Fangmatan in Tianshui, Gansu Province, a relatively complete zodiac system existed as early as the pre-Qin period. The earliest handed down document that recorded the same Chinese zodiac as today was Lun Heng written by Wang Chong in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The zodiac is an intuitive representation of the twelve earthly branches, namely, Zi (mouse), Ugly (ox), Yin (tiger), Mao (rabbit), Chen (dragon), Si (snake), Wu (horse), Wei (sheep), Shen (monkey), You (chicken) and Xu (chicken). In modern times, more people regard the zodiac as the mascot of the Spring Festival and become a symbol of entertainment and cultural activities. As a symbol of folk culture with a long history, the zodiac has left a large number of poems, Spring Festival couplets, paintings, calligraphy and paintings and folk arts and crafts depicting the image and symbolic significance of the zodiac throughout the ages. Apart from China, many countries in the world issue stamps of the zodiac during the Spring Festival to express their wishes for the New Year in China.

There are different opinions about the origin of the zodiac, and there is not enough evidence for all kinds of opinions. Recently, when researching and analyzing heavenly stems and earthly branches ancient prose, I accidentally discovered a secret that is most likely close to the truth of the origin of the zodiac: the zodiac does come from the earthly branch, but it does not appear at the same time as the earthly branch, but is used to indicate that the zodiac will come into being after twelve o'clock every day. Because the original configuration of earthly branches was lost because of the passage of time at that time, after the earthy branches represented twelve o'clock, in order to remember or analyze the heavenly stems, people combined with each other according to the relative activity time of animals every day and the original font configuration of earthy branches, resulting in the zodiac.

Its secret lies in the change of the configuration of the ancient prose of the earthly branch, the most obvious of which is the "sea" of the earthly branch. Let's take a look at the ancient prose of The Sea:

Excerpts from Chinese multifunctional fonts

Judging from the difficulty of seal cutting in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, with the least melody, is obviously the earliest remains. The above picture shows that the configuration of the word "sea" began to change before the Western Zhou Dynasty. As for the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the inscriptions "Hai" and "tapir" are almost similar in configuration, and the obvious difference may only be in the tail, as shown in the following figure:

Excerpts from Chinese multifunctional fonts

Although the font changes obviously, referring to the use cases of ancient Chinese, the word "sea" in the pre-Qin period is used as the name, and the rest is used as the local branch "sea" (see the vocabulary database of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bamboo slips in the pre-Qin period). It is estimated that there is only one possibility for this to happen, and that is, people's understanding of earthly branches changed before the Western Zhou Dynasty at the latest. From the word "hai" to the word "tapir", this variation is to solve the twelve earthly branches with the zodiac. The variation is estimated to come from the change of calendar.

The earliest calendar is probably the pure sun (ten-day) calendar, or the heavenly dry calendar (the earliest concept of five elements even originated from the heavenly dry, that is, the sun runs). This calendar originated from the observation of the sun and divided a solar cycle (a year) into ten parts. Due to the need for observation facilities and a certain degree of calculation, this calendar should only be in the hands of a few people such as wizards. At this time, people are most concerned about survival. The corresponding historical era probably started from the Yellow Emperor. The word "yellow" of the Yellow Emperor didn't mean yellow at first, but should be worn by adults (see my book "Does the Yellow Emperor really exist?" ). Combining with the fact that the Huangdi clan claimed to have the Xiong clan, we can imagine that the Huangdi era was the initial era when the ancients moved from mountainous areas to the plains to start large-scale agriculture, instead of relying on fire to drive away wild animals. Regarding the ten-year calendar, Zuo Zhao devoted seven years to the public, which states: "There are ten days in the sky and ten people. Therefore, in matters, God is also * *. "

Around the time of Emperor Yao, people who had completely adapted to the agricultural life in the plain began to pay attention to racial reproduction. The first calendar of Yin and Yang (the solar terms are not perfect, it is estimated that there are only four solar terms) invented by Emperor Yao was just to meet this need. It divides the twelve places into four seasons (the legend that Yi shot at the sun in the era of Emperor Yao is probably the myth of the calendar change event in which the lunar calendar replaced the ten-day pure solar calendar), and sets officials in four directions to show respect for the people. This behavior is actually the beginning of centralization. According to Records of the Historian, there were many disagreements with Emperor Yao in April, which represented the rebound of local forces against centralization. Some readers may wonder why the four seasons are twelve earthly branches, because the Pharmacopoeia has four words: mid-spring, mid-summer, mid-autumn and mid-winter. On the one hand, these four words represent solar terms, on the other hand, they also imply that a season has three months. In addition, the lunar calendar divides time according to the plastic cycle of the moon, and the average year is twelve months. So it is natural to remember the moon with the original earthly branches.

Around the middle and late Shang Dynasty, people began to settle on a large scale. Due to frequent communication, people began to need to determine a certain time of the day, so the twelve earthly branches began to refer to the twelve hours of the day. But for ordinary people, it is really confusing to record time based on human reproduction, so they use animals that are relatively active at various times of the day to refer to twelve hours (or simply attached). So the Zodiac and the Zodiac were combined after people spent a long time recording the time. Later, people used to record the time with earthly branches, and record the year with the zodiac, corresponding to the earthly branches in the main branch year.