Up to now, we all know that the future dragon and phoenix have no prototype, but they don't actually exist. But for thousands of years, they have always appeared on various objects as abstract artistic images. Why are things that never really existed deeply imprinted in the minds of ancestors? After thousands of years of evolution, most of the images of dragons and phoenixes we see today must have undergone continuous artistic processing. So what did the dragon and phoenix look like in the hearts of the ancients more than 3 thousand years ago?
Since 1986 discovered Sanxingdui sacrificial pit, the ancient Shu culture 5,000 years ago has become the focus of world attention. Recently, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology released the archaeological achievements of the small settlement in the northeast of Sanxingdui, in which the pattern of "good luck for dragons and phoenixes" about 3,200 years ago was found: the phoenix fluttered its wings and the dragon swam in all directions.
The earliest dragon image should have appeared five or six thousand years ago. The dragon found this time comes from a pottery lid engraved with dragon and phoenix patterns. Basically, the image is mature, and the dragon horn, the dragon beard and the dragon claw are all lifelike. Matching with the phoenix is the image of "the dragon and the phoenix are auspicious" that often appears in Chinese civilization.
But apart from the dynamic Youlong hovering around the pottery cover, the phoenix in the center is different from the common one. The well-known phoenix, with full wings and a long tail, looks a bit like a peacock, but this pottery cover is a crowned bird standing in the center, wearing a crowned vortex wing, in a static posture.
Among the unearthed cultural relics, the dragon and phoenix shapes generally exist independently, and it is rare for them to appear together. The dragon and phoenix patterns on the unearthed pottery cover prove the close relationship between dragons and phoenixes. With the passage of time, the image of dragon and phoenix has been changing. It can be seen that dragons and phoenixes were originally evolved from animals known to our ancestors, and later, after artistic processing, their images gradually changed.
It can be seen from this pottery that the image of the dragon was artistic at the earliest, while the image of the phoenix began to change after the image of the dragon was artistic to a certain extent. Legend has it that the dragon totem was originally a symbol of Xuanyuan tribe. Later, as the Yellow Emperor continued to annex other tribes, the image of the dragon was constantly added to the totem of other tribes. Especially after the alliance with Emperor Yan, the dragon totem and Kirin totem merged and changed fundamentally, while the phoenix totem of Dongyi tribe rarely changed. It was not until the Huaxia Alliance was finally formed that the image of dragon and phoenix began to evolve.