It has been said that myths are fairy tales in human childhood. Indeed, ancient myths have no frame, no restrictions, simple and natural, Pangu can lift the sky with one hand; Gonggong can knock down a mountain with one hand; Kuafu can drink the Yellow River with two mouthfuls; Xingtian was cut down. The head can also use the milk as its eyes and the navel as its mouth, waving its stems to fight. Can we modern people think like this? Not. If others don't laugh at you, you will feel embarrassed yourself. why? Because there are many lines in the mind, there are also many frames. There is no freedom at all for those who have been put on the ground in prison.
How old is a myth? This is not clear, you say it is 6,000 years old, it is not an exaggeration, you say it is 20,000 years old, it is not an exaggeration, even if you say it is only two years old, this is the vitality of mythology. Humanity is passed on from generation to generation, and our ancestors told us these myths at dusk, and when we become ancestors, we will tell the same myths to our descendants at dusk. As long as new life is born on Earth, myths will always be the same age as this new life.
So, what is a myth? There are not many people who can answer this question. Even if there are some answers, you have to be very careful, because there are many misunderstandings about myths circulating in modern times, especially the misunderstandings from the so-called experts. will be deceived. Now let's walk into the myth without any prejudice, and you will naturally conclude what a myth is.
Historian Gu Jiegang has a complete set of theories about mythology. He believes that mythology is a "historical theory of layers and layers." What does that mean? For example, when we move bricks from one place to another, we only find out that the first brick to be moved is always at the bottom, and the last brick to be moved will be at the top. When Gu Jiegang was studying Chinese mythology, he found that Chinese mythology seems to have the above characteristics. The more ancient the gods, the later they appeared. For example, the Yellow Emperor can be said to be the oldest and largest god in China. He is the one who created mankind. However, the formation of the Yellow Emperor was quite late, and it began to form around the Spring and Autumn Period. Therefore, the history reflected in myths is a history of layers and layers. In this way, myths are made up by primitive people, and they are relentlessly made up from generation to generation. With the progress of society, people's ability to fabricate myths has become higher and higher, so new myths have replaced old myths, and the myths we see are all new myths.
Gu Jiegang's theory has influenced people's research on myths for a long time, and everyone has invariably formed such a view: myths! It's nothing more than a primitive man's imagination. It sounds funny, but it's meaningless. In a word, in the eyes of experts, myths are myths and cannot be regarded as history at all.
On the surface, mythology is an appendage of religion. When the primitive people are very backward, whenever they hold major religious sacrifices, the oldest and most knowledgeable priests of this tribe will tell people about their origins since the beginning of the world. Tribal mythology. Nowadays, the myths of many primitive tribes in the world are included in the congratulations or eulogies during the sacrifice. For example, most of the myths of the Yao people in China are included in the "Miroduo". During the event, it was sung and passed down by the masters (shamans) of the nation. Because of this feature of myth, it becomes more illusory like religion in people's eyes.
Max Muller said: "Myth is a disease of language." Fraser said: Myth is "a false interpretation of either human life or external natural phenomena." Freud thought: "Myth's view of the world is mostly just the psychology projected on the external world." Myth is the precipitation of unconscious process, "Myth is a collective psychology, not an individual psychology." Some even say that myth is the "early physics of all metamorphosis". In short, in the eyes of experts and scholars, myth is the spiritual fantasy of primitive people or something produced under a special psychological activity.
Myths are far from being as simple as one might think.
In the sense that myth is essentially a means of information accumulation and transmission, it seems more accurate to understand myth as a form of historical narrative. Because we believe that the early appearance of myth is not deliberately fabricated by some people, it should be a true representation of human knowledge and experience. Engels believed that primitive religion was spontaneous, and that spontaneous religion "had no deceitful elements when it came into existence", and what Engels said about primitive religion was equally applicable to myth. Myth is a form of oral history.
Of course, in the process of the formation and dissemination of myths, due to the limitation of the level of knowledge, due to the mistakes of human compilation, and also because the myth itself needs to integrate, digest, and merge the content of other myths of the same type in the development, the myth has been lost on the one hand. The original appearance, on the other hand, is severely distorted. But no matter how it evolves, the essence of its oral history will not change.
When Western scholars came to the ancient African continent, they quickly realized that the importance of oral history could not be overemphasized. They found that the backward tribes attached great importance to oral history far beyond the imagination of modern people. They regarded oral legends not only as the transmission of knowledge but as a sacred and great cause. Once the people in the tribe who have mastered the content and skills of oral legends are old, the tribe will hold a grand ceremony to select the successor. Those who are selected must receive training for more than 20 years. All myths and legends, but also the ability to weave into the latest events of the tribe. This discovery by Western scholars further confirms the credibility of myths and legends. read
We believe that what primitive people want to tell future generations in mythology is not just a fantastic fantasy, let alone a boundless dream, it is to tell us something real, some history that happened in which era of the event. So what exactly is it?
In the 20th century, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann believed that myths are not all imaginary worlds, which contain some historical reality. Taking the vague hints implicit in Homer's epic as the only clue, he searched for the legendary city of Troy in various countries and finally found its ruins. Before that, the academic community had always believed that the city of Troy in Homer was a fictional city.
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The Indians living in South America still have such an ancient myth: "A pillar of fire fell from the sky." However, according to the location provided by this myth, geologists found a crater there. Thus confirming a certain authenticity of the myth.
According to Sumerian clay tablets, there were five cities of Elideu, Babqibila, Larak, Hippal, and Shulpak before the Great Flood. If the records and legends about the Great Flood are considered fictitious, then the records in the clay tablets must also be considered absurd. But archaeologists found three of the five cities "before the Flood" at precisely the locations provided by the tablet documents.
The earliest slave societies in China were the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. This arrangement is found in oracle bone inscriptions, as well as in the writings of pre-Qin scholars. In ancient Chinese myths and legends, not only did Yu control the waters, pass the throne to Xia Qi, and establish the Xia Dynasty. There are records, and there is also a legend that Jian Di devoured the eggs of Xuanbird to give birth to the ancestor of the Shang family. However, for a long time, historians have been skeptical about the above records, thinking that the Xia and Shang dynasties were probably not real dynasties, but ideal societies in the legends of the ancients. Since the 1930s, large-scale archaeological excavations have confirmed the authenticity of ancient records and myths, and legends. From a large number of unearthed cultural relics, people not only confirmed the existence of the Shang Dynasty but also found the Xia culture layer, once again It proves that the mythological records cannot be ignored.
Myths may be unfamiliar to everyone, but the folklore is something that almost every one of us can encounter in our life. It is very close to us. The principles of folklore are very similar to myths in many places. If we travel to various places, we can often hear local people talking about some legends in the region, and many of these legends themselves are explanations for the phenomenon that the ancients did not understand. For example, the legend about a ginseng baby in the northeast region is Very popular, this legend just wants to tell people that there are many ginseng in the local area! There are also some legends related to the products or minerals in this area. For example, in some areas it is said that golden horses are running, so there must be gold in these areas. Therefore, behind any kind of legend, there is an objective basis for its generation, which is the explanation of some incomprehensible phenomenon.
Objectively speaking, human beings have a very limited understanding of their history. According to archaeological evidence, human beings have appeared on the earth for millions of years (this is the view of history textbooks and not our view), but we can be very good The history we know is only a few thousand years old. Take China as an example. Although there were oracle bone inscriptions in the Shang Dynasty more than 5,000 years ago, our understanding is still very limited, because the oracle bone inscriptions themselves are very difficult to understand. Now we can understand some of the characteristics of the oracle bones. , but whether it is right or wrong, we do not know, everyone has their solution, which is very subjective. In the beginning, Guo Moruo was known as a master of oracle bones, but now it seems that his statement is not beyond dispute. This is the case for the Shang Dynasty, and we are even more obsessed with the Xia Dynasty, and we are not even sure which are the cultural layers of the Shang Dynasty and which are the cultural layers of the Xia Dynasty. What about before the Xia Dynasty?
In the history before the Xia Dynasty, we can only rely on the data of archaeological excavations to study, but from these data, we can only draw some basic judgments because these data can not tell people what happened at that time. Therefore, to study the Chinese primitive society before the Xia Dynasty, we must not only rely on physical archaeology but should make more use of primitive myths and legends. In these oral documents, there is a large amount of historical truth that has disappeared.
For example, almost all people who study myths are puzzled by one phenomenon: similar civilizations! In ancient times, cultural exchanges between regions had not yet been formed, and the civilizations of each region had great independence. For example, between the African continent and the Australian continent, because of the Pacific Ocean, in the pre-BC era, the Australian aborigines were It impossible to go to the African continent or any other continent by canoe. However, people have found that in their closed early myths and legends systems, the myths of various regions and ethnic groups in the world are surprisingly similar, such as the record of the Great Flood, the record of the ten days, the record of God's creation of man, The records of the disappearance of the sun, the records of the chaotic world... are so strikingly consistent that one has to suspect that they came from the same background, different accounts of the same event, which in turn proves that myths and legends are not simple fantasies.
Therefore, when studying prehistoric civilizations, there is no other source on earth that is more direct than myths and legends. Before words and paintings were produced, human beings only had language. In the era of language but no words, primitive people could only rely on oral forms to transmit knowledge and trace history from generation to generation. This is the source of myths and legends. From the perspective of time alone, the source of myths was deeply buried in the brains of primitive people long before the emergence of writing. If 6,000 years ago was the beginning of the history of human civilization, then myths were formed and circulated in society earlier than the history of civilization. I don't know how many years, maybe thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, that is to say, for people on earth, myth is the only oldest recorded form of that age that is close to our unknown.
Among the myths of all ethnic groups in the world, Chinese myths have great historical value. Many people relish ancient Greek mythology and then accuse Chinese mythology of having no system. This is completely unreasonable. The existing ancient Greek mythology has been out of its original state because Westerners found that mythology contains too many unreasonable and immoral elements, so there has been a "justification of mythology" movement, which is to used later people. The moral outlook and world outlook have re-adapted the myth. Although this kind of myth seems very systematic, its historical value is minimal. It is no longer an oral history, but a falsification of future history.
And Chinese mythology has always been in the "original ecology". Since ancient times, people have always recorded mythology without doing too much post-processing on it. Therefore, the role of oral history in Chinese mythology is more obvious. From the perspective of time, Chinese mythology has not been broken. It is a historical record with the largest period in the world, from the ancient gods in the legend to the appearance of writing. From a formal point of view, Chinese mythology retains its original appearance. Compared with ancient Greek mythology, there are few traces of posthumanization, so it retains the most valuable materials of prehistoric people.
With the further development of science and technology, human beings have made breakthroughs one after another in astronomy, archaeology, biology, anthropology, etc. In this case, can we look at these from a newer perspective? What about myth?