China is one of the four ancient civilizations in the world with a long history. People used to regard the legendary Yellow Emperor as the ancestor of the Chinese nation, so it has been "up and down for five thousand years".
In the long history of 5,000 years, there are many vivid stories, many of which are recorded in writing.
What was it like five thousand years ago? There are many myths and legends in ancient books. For example, the ancients have long been exploring how the world came into being and how human beings originated.
There is a myth that Pangu created the world, and it is like this-
The universe turned out to be a chaos, with neither light nor sound. Pangu used a giant axe to divide chaos into two parts, light gas ascended to heaven, heavy gas sank to the ground. Since then, the sky has risen by ten feet every day, and the ground has thickened by ten feet every day. Eighteen thousand years later, the sky is already high and the ground is already thick. Pangu is a giant standing between heaven and earth. After his death, all parts of his body became stout.
Another myth is that Nu Wa created everything in the universe, and it is like this-
At first, heaven and earth somehow collapsed, the earth tilted, floods and fires burned, and human beings and all living things were destroyed. At this time, a woman named Nu Wa formed the sky with colorful stones, cut off the four feet of the giant aojiang, set up four poles, stopped the flood with reed ash, put out the fire, and then slowly created creatures and humans.
Judging from the above two myths, Pangu is an epoch-making hero, and Nu Wa is not only the creator of the world, but also the ancestor of mankind and all things.
Myth is just a myth, of course, we can't take it seriously. With the development of science, according to the fossils excavated underground, it is proved that an ape-man transformed from an ancient ape is the earliest ancestor of mankind.
Apes are not as strong as fierce beasts, but unlike animals, they can make and use tools.
The tools of the ape-man are mainly chopped sticks and knocked stones. They use these rough tools to fight wild animals and look for food. They also use simple tools to pick fruits or dig the roots of plants to eat. At that time, it was impossible to survive by individual strength, so apes lived in groups and jointly responded to the invasion of wild animals. This era of mainly using stone tools is called "Stone Age" in archaeology.
Archaeologists divide different stages of development according to the different stone tools and related active relics found. The stage of making and processing stone tools is called "Paleolithic Age" and the stage of grinding and processing stone tools is called "Neolithic Age".
In the Neolithic Age, primitive people could not only make stone axes and hammers, but also grind the bones of wild animals into bone needles to sew animal skins into clothes.
About two million years ago, ancient humans were active in the vast land of our motherland. The earliest primitive human remains and relics in China were found in Yuanmou, Yunnan, Lantian, Shaanxi, Zhoukoudian, Wushan and Fanchang, Anhui.
1927, the Peking man fossil was discovered in China with a history of 400,000 to 500,000 years. Later, the tools made and used by "Beijingers" and the remains of fire were discovered one after another. Lantian Man unearthed in Shaanxi has a history of 800,000 years. Since 1950s, many ancient ape fossils have been found in Yunnan, accompanied by stone tools, among which
During the period of 1997, archaeologists discovered a large number of paleolithic tools used by ancient humans during the excavation and investigation of the site of "Wushan Ape Man" in Longgupo, Miao Zhen Town, Wushan County, Chongqing. This result strongly confirmed the existence of "Wushan ape-man" two million years ago.
During the period of 1999, archaeologists discovered a large number of stone products and bone products during excavation in Fanchang herringbone cave, Anhui Province. Experts jointly identified these stone tools as the remains of early humans from 2 million to 2.4 million years ago, thus advancing the history of human beings in Asia by at least 300,000 years.
In the course of millions of years of evolution, ape-man is getting closer and closer to modern people. For example, from the fossil of another primitive man-"Neanderthal" found in Longgushan, Zhoukoudian, Beijing, the shape is basically the same as that of modern people. They lived a social life fixed according to their blood relationship and formed the primitive society at that time in the form of clan commune. Judging from the use of tools, they have entered the Neolithic Age, which is a cultural site of the Neolithic Age in China.
The history of Chinese civilization is only five thousand years, but there are traces of human activities tens of thousands of years ago, hundreds of thousands of years ago, or even longer, which are much more reliable than the myth of creation!