Other
Scientific paper
Sep 1998
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998aas...192.2005c&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, 192nd AAS Meeting, #20.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30, p.1151
Other
Scientific paper
It is still only speculation, but an earlier visit to a Han dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) tomb has started the idea, and a recently found study of another Han tomb has convinced me it is worth pursuing. What it is is that the ancient Chinese Sky Animal which represents North was not the turtle or tortoise until about the time of Han. My own visit was to an Eastern (later period) Han tomb which had been moved to a museum near the ancient capital of Luoyang. The ceiling of the inner chamber was rounded, made of brick. Drawings of a tiger and a red bird were clear to the west and south. A rounded object was at the north. Outside the tomb was a sign which said it was 'cun,' which means village. Chinese characters often have homonyms, but 'cun' has few. I have also visited the neolithic village of Banpo, near the Yellow River in the north. It has noticeably large and deep trenches to keep out wild animals, and one separates the residential area from the business area. This village is dated earlier than 4000 BC. The trenches definitely remind me of later depictions of the turtle with a snake wound about it. The recent findings of a tomb at Puyang with shapes of tiger and dragon have dated it to 3000 BC. Nothing was placed at the south side. Something was at the north, but one might argue about that. Finally, I found this article in Chinese Studies in Archaeology (1979), translated by S. Cahill of UC, Berkeley, called "Analysis of the Western Han Murals in the Luouyang Tomb of Bo Qianqiu" by Sun Zuoyun. Although Western Han is earlier than Eastern, the pictures in the tomb were well preserved. There were tiger, dragon, vermilion bird, and other animals, but no tortoise. Instead, there was a sun with a bird inside, and the moon with a frog. Several hundred miles north of the Yellow River, there is the Amur River. The natives there had robes decorated with snakes, lizards, and frogs, and other animals, but no turtle. Later reasons for having the turtle or tortoise is a separate problem. My point here is that the Sky Animals which represented life on Earth, did not represent a real turtle in the north. Perhaps they wanted an animal to represent a neolithic village of the north, slow and hard-shelled.
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