Four part series sinazen.com/chinamyths sinazen.com/prehistory sinazen.com/middlehistory sinazen.com/singaporemythwriter

the picture above shows Matteo Ricci and Johann Adam Schall von Bell, two Jesuit priests who held important positions in the Ming/Manchu Imperial court

In the late 16th century, after portugese sailors opened up sea routes to the far east, catholic missionaries began to arrive in china; besides theological knowledge, jesuits priests were also learned in other subjects, including astronomy. On the other hand, their view of history was limited by that of the bible: all humans were descended from Adam and Eve, and the world was populated through dispersal of descendents of Noah after all the other original occupants perished in the great flood. In China this immediately caused a problem: Chinese written history claims that 5000 years ago the territory was ruled by the Yellow Emperor, and before him there were various legendary figures that must have spread over a considerable period of time. Since it was believed that the flood took place only 4500 years ago, acceptance of Chinese written history is theologically impossible.

At the same time, certain similarities between Chinese legends and bibilic details were noted, and reconciliation between the two sides, by identifying figures/events from one side with those of the other, was attempted. Since one Chinese legend has the brother-sister couple Fuxi and Nuwa surviving a great flood and re-generating the human race, they could be identified with Noah and wife (or the Greek couple Deucalion and Pyrra); it then follows that the Yellow Emperor came later than Noah, and the Chinese history got its dates wrong. Various other schemes to make such bibilical identifications and chronical fixing were attempted by different personalities though the final results were inconclusive.

For a period of time the Jesuits were accepted: the recently installed Manchu emperors were themselves foreign to China and open to new things, while the Europeans' mathematical and astronomical knowledge found application in court in calendar work - the prediction of seasons and eclipses being important both for practical purposes like agriculture and for spiritual purposes. However, problems soon arose over whether the Catholic church should condemn Chinese ancester worship and other practices, and more generally on its attitude towards Chinese Imperical history and social philosophies. Gradually the deferential attitudes adopted by the earlier missionaries began to be unacceptable to their headquarter overseers, and their position became untenable in the second half of 18th century. In 1774 their mission was officially disbanded by the Pope. 

Were the jesuits correct in believing that Chinese and Hebrew people shared some kind of common ancient hisotry? This is what I will attempt to answer in the next few sections, and will also involve the Greeks and Tibetans.

Fuxi and Nuwa, the snake tribe's brother-sister couple who was the ancester of the Chinese people, and probably also of others; note the compass-triangle they hold, and that the Greek goddesses have the same combination at their feet

Pagan worship and fertility rituals were common practice before Christianity and Confucianism took hold in European and Far Eastern civilizations respectively, and residuals of this can be found in the Old Testament itself (or even in the New Testament - Herod, Salome and visions of Revelation all seem to point that way): Eve was able to converse with the serpent, meaning that the ancient Hebrew tribe had some affinity to the snake, and acquired the knowledge for sex from this, hinting at a tradition of snake-based fertility worship. Even God's condemnation of the serpent to crawl on its belly hinted at this: how did the snake move before that? There is a snake that can stand up: the cobra, whose worship was widespread: it was obviously present in ancient Egypt and west Asia, and is still found in parts of India and Africa today. To me, the story hints that Hebrews used to live in a place that had cobras, but later moved to a location where snakes could only crawl, and logically deduced that it was their tempting humans into having sex that caused the change.

The diagram above shows the Chinese tribe's legendary ancesters, the half-human, half -snake brother-sister couple Fuxi-Nuwa, with their tails intertwined, holding up the compass and the right angle. Now snakes intertwine to breed; the diagram thus show that the ancient Chinese also engaged in snake-based fertility worship, and Fuxi-Nuwa had some connection with Adam-Eve - in fact, nu-wa and e-ve sound a little similar and could be different versions of the same name. (So, in fact, could be no-ah.)

Adam-Eve were supposed to have committed original sin, and the basic tenet of Christianity is that humans can only cleanse themselves by following Jesus. Whatever its religious importance, the idea is incompatible with our knowledge of human pre-history: far from being sinful, sex was important in tribal culture both because of the need to promote child birth and tribal survival in the age of low life expectancy, and because of its supposed link to agricultural and herding/hunting productivity: sex is men planting their "seeds" in women to grow into new humans, and the whole tribe engages in fertility worship in the hope of abundance.

From this analogy of earth with women, the Chinese logically identified men with heaven; the analogy is then extended to other binary pairs: sun-moon, day-night, light-dark, and finally yang-yin, which encompasses all the concrete examples of binary pairs with an abstract concept; the contrast of binary pairs implies dynamic changes: the alternation of day with night, sun with moon, etc, generates the movement of time; the communion of man-woman propagates life...

The Chinese also conceived heaven as round and earth as square: standing on a flat plain, you see the horizon at the same distance in all directions, forming a circle; the blue sky covers this circle like a hemisphere, hence round heaven, but straight lines go in four directions on the flat earth, and straight lines form sqauares; hence the earth is flat/square. Now the compass is used to draw circles, and the right angle to draw squares; hence, the compass represents heaven and right angle earth; they also represent man-woman and other pairs of yin-yang; hence we see Fuxi and Nuwa holding the compass and right angle respectively.

But curiously, compass-triangle also has a place in European culture: the above diagram also shows a Greek mythology illustration with three nymphs and a compass-right angle combination at their feet. Further, we shall later see this combination in other European contexts. Is this a coincidence, or is their a deeper connection between East and West?

In fact, as soon as we identify Fuxi-Nuwa with Adam-Eve, we have an alternative explanation of original sin: sibling incest - Eve was created from Adam's rib, meaning that they arose out of a common body. In both Hebrew and Chinese written history, obscure stories about primitive ancient practices were given "modern" interpretations, thus losing their original meaning.  When various suggestive details are placed together into their tribal contexts, a very different picture began to emerge.

a diagram showing the mason use of the checkerboard and compass-triangle symbols, plus unearthed chinese pottery urns and jade men with checkerboard decorations

In October 1307  King Philip of France ordered the arrest of the leaders of the Knights of the Temple or Templars on charges of heresy and devil worship; after their confessing under torture, Pope Clement agreed to the dissolution of the Templars, the execution of some members, and the handing over of the Templars' property to the Hospitaliers (or Knights of St John). Even today it is generally thought that Philip was motivated by getting his hands on the Templars' money, but if we judge by the result, then this is quite incorrect, since no trace of the reputed fabulous wealth was found, and even today there are people who still make a lifelong pursuit out of chasing after the "buried treasure."

My own views on the Templars are quite different: Since they were involved in banking and money transfer, they would have lent out their funds, so that their main assets were in what today's accountants call "accounts receivable"; after their downfall, those who borrowed money from them would have conveniently forgotten to repay (and might be afraid to be known as Templar clients) so that the Templar assets simply evaporated. Further, I believe they were indeed heretic and engaged in worship practices unapproved by the Church.

Suspicions about their religious purity had existed almost immediately after their occupation of the Jerusalem temple; it was widely held that they discovered ancient documents describing the rituals of the Hebrews and were practising them. However, their military reputation and their services to important people in the Church and the European courts through their international network, including financial services, provided them with protection, especially in view of the need to maintain unity in the face of the Muslim onslaught on the Holy Land. After the failure of the Crusades and their retreat to European home countries, their position became more precarious, and some of their dealings with King Philip may have disadvantaged him with a last straw impact, but it would be incorrect to see that as the main cause - medieval people took religion much more seriously than we, so that consciously at least, he would be thinking of spiritual issues.

Very little reliable information about the Templars' actual worship practices remain - evidence presented against them at their trial and their own confessions are both untrustworthy. What we can go by is the practice of the Freemasons, who officially acknowledge their Templar tradition: after the arrest of their leaders, some  of the Templars escaped to Scotland and found refuge in the town craft leagues; gradually they rebuilt a new organization  and an international network. Quite a number of US Presidents (including George Washington, together with a substantial number of fellow revolutionary leaders) were Masons, and in a number of countries in the West, Mason membership remains important for professions like police, for which group cohesion has a special value.

The Masons, too, were accused of cult worship, and again little reliable information is available as members are sworn to secrecy, but let's look at the diagram above showing some familiar Mason features, and we immediately see the compass and right angle. Obviously, these are familiar tools of trade for masons and craftsmen, but two points: first, we saw earlier that the Chinese use compass to represent round heaven or yang, and right angle to represent square earth or yin - is this just a coincidence? second, the Masonic compass-right angle combination happens to form a six-pointed star similar to the Star of David - another coincidence?

I also point out that the black-white checkerboard floor of the Masonic Temple is also significant: it coincides with the mesh pattern frequently seen in neolithic Chinese  pottery and jade objects. Its meaning to the Chinese is obscure, though there are vague stories about Fuxi inventing the fishing net so that there is some kind of association to him. A much stronger documentary evidence happens to exist in Tibet however: in Chronical of Tibetan Kings, the Tang-era King Sonjanganpo was said to have used his magical power to build the Dazhao Temple in one night, and added various decorations to please different interest groups, in particular the Swastika to please the "shaman followers", and the mesh pattern to please the "tibetans". While we do not exactly understand what the mesh meant to the Tibetans, it appears there were nomadic descendents whose worship practices were related to the Indo-European Swastika and agricultural descendents whose traditions were related to the mesh, since the neolithic Chinese sites with mesh pottery were agricultural and pig-keeping rather than nomadic and cow-goat related. The Indo Europeans practised cremation, while burial in soil was the practice in the Chinese sites, whereas Tibetans, consistent with their mixed origin, did both at various times.

To my mind, the various pieces of isolated information fit an overall pattern: Not only did the Masons/Templars adopt certain ancient Hebrew worship practices, these practices originated from the very remote past when Hebrews and Chinese shared a common origin. Given the limited evidence so far, this might seem a far-fetched proposition, but the pursuit is only starting...

(Note: I have not read Davinci Code, but have read Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum which intertwines a story about vanity publishing with that of Templar pursuit - I thought the story much poorer than Name of the Rose)

the Uroboros snake that swallows its own tail, symbolizing the identity of begin and end, thing and nothing, yin and yang...

the ancient jews believed that humans lost their paradise when they ate the fruits of the tree of knowledge; the greeks had a related concept: Hesiod said he lived in the age of iron in which men had become evil, whereas in the beginning it was the age of gold when men were gods, then silver when men were noble, then bronze when men were heroic (Homeric); but it was the chinese who took the idea further: in Daodejing, Laozi derided the Confucian (and Platonic) ideal of government by the wise with the dismissive words "With the Sage came the Big Lie", and proposed that only by keeping people simple minded could one have a perfect society

Daodejing views the world as having come from nothing, because thing and nothing are the same; nothing is the base of everything; it is the Tao of all things, and to get on in the world, we must follow the Tao of nothing; striving is bad because it strains; trying to get more, we would end up with less; if some get more, others would end up with less; hence less is more and thing is nothing

But Laozi did not invent the idea of thing-nothing himself - he was not a nihilist hermit, but a government official interested in the technique of ruling, and indeed the Legalists, like Hanfeizi, would claim him as a pioneer of their school, because a ruler need to practise the art of nothingness, not revealing his personal thoughts about the actions of his subordinates, who are supposed to be strictly guided by the law; pulling in the opposite direction,  the later Taoists turned Laozi into a unworldly hermit retreating from the public life, even an immortal with cosmic powers; exploited and distorted, Laozi and Tao were almost anything an author would like them to be

In fact, the idea of thing-nothing was much earlier than Laozi, as revealed by archaeological discoveries dating from over 5000 years ago or twice as old as Laozi: coiled jade dragons found in Manchuria/Inner Mongolia border region and pottery paintings of human faced fishes both show a snake whose tail touches its head, similar to the Uroboros snake of West Asia - head is tail, end is beginning, nothing is thing - not only is the principle of nothing very ancient; it is also common between East and West (the curled body may also have been inspired by fetuses, with some mystical significance associated with the start of life, cosmic power, etc)

Uroboros played some part in Hebrew and Babylonian religious practice, and has some connection to the Templars/Freemasons, though reliable details are difficult to get; its main place today is in European witchcraft, and the presence of the Star of David inside the Uroboros coil reveals its Hebrew origin; the geometic similarity to the Masonic compass and triangle is interesting and will be further discussed later

Deucalion and Pyrra throwing rocks that turned into humans

earlier I pointed out the similarities between Adam-Eve and Fuxi-Nuwa, but there is a major problem: Adam-Eve are about how human race started, while Fuxi-Nuwa are about how it recovered from the flood, creation versus re-creation; the Hebrews had a separate re-creation story, but with a different, male figure Noah, in fact two such stories, since Lot's escape from his city's destruction after divine warning is so similar to Noah surviving the flood.

actually, Chinese legends do include a creation myth figuring Nuwa too: she first made humans individually by kneading mud; later for higher productivity, she flung mud with a piece of ivy and the drops turned into humans; the re-creation and creation stories are carried in books side by side without anyone being bothered by the contradiction; when challenged, any author or reader would dismiss the issue as "these are just stories" or at most "maybe there were different figures given the same name"

Greek re-creation story has Deucalion and Pyrra throwing rocks on a riverbank to quickly produce new humans; this is rather like Nuwa's mud flinging, but again there is a contradiction: this time the Chinese story is about creation, Greek re-creation; I previously pointed out that the name Nu-wa sounds similar to E-ve on one hand and No-ah on the other, hinting that the two Hebrew stories might well have shared a common origin.

making humans from mud is culturally related to farming, with human life being dependent on soil, to burial in soil after death with life returning to soil (and hopefully regenerating from there), and to the invention of pottery making; in China there is usually the mention of "yellow" mud, linking the skin colour of the people with the colour of the soil in the area which the Yellow River passed on its way to the sea; this however may be an added detail after the people arrived in china

there is a simple explanation for all these overlapping and contradictory stories: before the invention of writing, history was passed down the generations orally; different legendary fragments are produced as they passed through different tribal branches and storytellers; the fragments may be repetitious, contradictory and incomplete; when the time came to write the stories down, the authors would attempt to tidy things up by collecting from different sources, consolidating obviously similar stories into one, and laying out individual episodes into what looked to them like a logical sequence, sometimes adding their own touches to make things fit; to the authors of Genesis, it was logical that there should be a creation episode before a re-creation episode; the Chinese, not trying to produce a tribal religious document, did not take things so seriously, and left the stories as they were; however, as the stories continued to circulate among people, new versions can generated too, as discussed in the following section

Lot and his family escaping from the doomed city guided by an angel

there is a curious story inserted into some Han books: a pregnant woman was warned by an angel to run eastwards without looking back if she saw water in the mortar; one day this occurred and she ran, but looked back, saw her village submerged in water, and turned into a mulberry tree; her baby was found in the tree's hollow and later became an important Shang historic figure

what does this remind us of? first there is an analogy to the escape of Lot from Sodom, his wife looking back at the burning city and turning into a salt pillar; second, a hint of the story of Moses actually; there is an important difference from Lot however: Lot's story is a moral tale - the good are rewarded, but they must obey divine will completely, and disobeying the command against looking back brought instant punishment; this does not come across very clearly in the Chinese story

but things do not end there; I now present a set of stories involving different characters yet capturing the same or related ideas

Group A. Because of some good deed, a brother-sister pair was warned about impending flood and escaped in a boat; they picked up a survivor despite being told not to do this; the rescued ingrate tried to harm them in some way...

This group of stories (and there are many versions all over China, and indeed in other cournties too) is the  closest to Lot's story, with divine reward for the good and punishment for disobedience; it appears that the moral tale had somehow been joined with the brother-sister re-creation story

Group B. A brother-sister pair, more often an old woman, was given divine warning along the line "if the eye of this statue turns red, escape"or "if blood appears on the city gate, escape"; their/the old woman's frequent checking of the statue/gate aroused question by some official or naughty boy, who decided to play a practical joke by painting the statue/gate red, but this made the disaster occur ; in versions with the brother-sister, they survive to regenerate humans, whereas the fate of the old woman is often neglected.

This group of stories is also widespread, with a particularly well known version in Japan involving not a statue/city gate but a tower on a hill; the story's moral is more subtle: it is dangerous to play tricks with divine will.

Group C. The father of a brother-sister couple captured the thunder god  (who for some reason is a centepede on earth) with the help of his chicken, but the couple released him; the thunder god then send down a flood to destroy all but allowed the couple to escape

Group D. A tribe that does not eat chicken visited a neighbouring tribe, and was made to eat chicken, which started a tribal war and total destruction; this might seem to have no relation with  the earlier ones, but then we note that the tribe involved worshiped the thunder god, which did not like chicken! Since the cock crowed the dawn, the chicken tribe would be bird-sun worshipers, while the thunder god tribe presumably worshiped cloud-dragon-snake-moon

Group E. The fire god Zhurong and water god Gonggong had a great war; after his defeat, Gonggong butted the heaven pillar Buzhoushan causing the sky to collapse and the land to be flooded

So what was the story from which everything started? was it a flood/tsunami that wiped out a whole snake-worshiping tribe leaving a brother-sister couple to regenerate humans, or was it a snake-bird tribal war that destroyed everything? we simply do not know; all we have are reconstructions of later authors who took various legendary fragments and tried to put together complete narratives, throwing in their own ideas in the process

prometheus stealing fire from heaven and being punished

in the flood discussion I already broadened our sights to Greek legends; here I fix on the story of Prometheus

fire was an issue of critical importance to primitive people, and indeed some prehistorians regard its use as the divide line between man and ape; it tenderizes meat and improves its taste as well as digestibility; it frightens away savage beasts that might otherwise endanger humans; it burns away bushes and grass, turning them into fertilizing ashes, to facilitate spring planting; perhaps more importantly for the primitive times, it turns food and other offerings to the gods into smoke, which rises to heaven so that the gods get to enjoy the offered things and are persuaded to shower blessings on the offerers

at first only some tribes, indeed only selected members of these tribes, know the secret of how to light fires and keep them burning; others had to obtain fire from them, thus putting themselves in a subordinate position; this is the original meaning of getting fire down from heaven; a tribe that allows its secret knowledge about fire to be shared with others would weaken its position, hence the gods' anger with Prometheus; equivalent stories exist in China and other parts of Asia

more intriguing is the Chinese story of Emperor Zbuanxu ordering his fire chief Zhongli to "separate heaven and earth"; why the fire chief for this particular job? because the separation is about heavenly fire and earthly fire: only Zhuanxu's own tribe was permitted to keep a divine fire for worshiping and communicating with heaven; other tribes can only worship the earth, and must put out their fires on a particular day each year, the cold food day, and relight their hearths with fire received from "heaven" that evening; the practice was followed even in Han times

Unfortunately for Zhuanxu, some tribes baulked at the order, and the hapless Zhongli was ordered to attack and suppress these defiant subjects; the fight did not go well for Zhongli however, and he was executed for his poor show; these were the events behind the "collapse of heaven" when the defeated tribe chief Gonggong was supposed to have knocked down the pillar of heaven at Buzhoushan (the mountain too wide to go around)

solomon's baby judgement

there is an interesting Tibetan legend about Princess Jincheng, sent from the Tang court to marry a Tibetan king: she gave birth a a son, but another royal wife claimed the baby was hers; as the two women fought over him and the baby started to cry, the Princess, fearing for him safety, gave him up rather than risking injury. The similarity of this story to that of Solomon's baby judgement was obvious

Now one might suspect that the story was a fairly recent one, brought to the east by traders or missionaries and tibetanized; but there are other examples of tibetan versions of european stories:

the great Tibetan chancellor Ludongjan went to the Tang court to ask for the hand of Princess Wencheng on behalf of the king; in anticipation of the need to find his way back to his own tent from a banquet after heavy drinking, he took a roll of string with him and unrolled it as he went in, and was able to use it to guide his return - clearly following the Greek story of Tisius and the Labrynth

Ludongjan was asked to pass a silk thread through a piece of jade as part of the test he must pass in his suit; he used an ant to achieve it - the story of Daedalus in Syracuse; this story could not have been introduced into Asia by missionaries/traders because there is also a Chinese version with the role of the clever guy played by Confucius that appeared in a Han Dynasty book - while the book itself no longer exists, it was quoted by slightly later books so that the story was authenticated to be early, probably existing in oral versions long before Han times; whether it also existed in Tibet at the time, or was introduced from China later and Tibetanized, is a matter of guesswork. 

but most importantly, a number of history books say that the early Tibetan kings were sent from heaven to govern people on earth, and as soon as their sons are old enough to ride horse (corresponding to reaching the age of 13), the kings "returned to heaven" - the practice of regicide in the style of Golden Bough, the book on ancient tribal practices by Fraser; similar stories of Chinese and Korean legendary kings who returned to heaven when a dragon was sent down to fetch them; the various versions are so different and so tied up with each region's individual history that they could not have been localized versions of some recently transferred story that came with missionaries/traders；instead, they are based on actual practices in each region inherited from a common origin

in my view, the story of Solomon was more ancient than the time of Solomon: with his 500 concubines, it was unlikely that he would attend to minor judiciary matters personally, and in at least some versions of the story the two women were prostitutes who lived in the Temple, presumably to fulfil functions related to fertility worship, reflecting more primitive practices than those in the more sophisticated times of Solomon, (similarly, the stories of Samson, supposedly just a bit before Saul, David and Solomon, and some deeds of Salome and Herod, supposedly in the time of Augustus, also reflected more primitive ages) but were attributed to him by flattering chroniclers; the story existed early enough for the ancesters of the Tibetans to bring with them as they migrated eastwards

there is a curious ancient novel about king Mu of Zhou visiting a goddess called Western Queen Mother, who also features in numerous other stories and has been thought to show some resemblance to the west asian Astarte; the Hebrews had a reverse story: the visit of Queen of Sheba, a rather pagan story which is again likely to be much older than Solomon's time. However, given the obscure nature of both stories, it is unlikely that any definitive link between them could be established

four depictions of the three fates, whose yarn on the spindle determines the length of a new born's life

Let us turn to the story of Sleeping Beauty, which can be seen to have three parts: the final prince-getting-princess part is the kind of romantic fairytale that came into being after the age of chivary, though probably derived from the earlier Gothic tale of Siegfried/Brunnhilde; while the starting third witch part was taken from Greek mythology - it also appears as part of the Trojan War story (which itself has like four more parts: Paris-Helen elopement causing war, Iphegenea-Agamemnon tragedy, Hector-Achilles, and Wooden Horse, not all fitting together well, e.g., Paris was rather young to be the wisest man in the world, and his wisdom was little used in helping his city to survive).

The middle part, the taboo on touching the spindle, serves to link the two ends together, but is itself a bit of a puzzle: first, it is clearly Delphic in concept - knowing the future does not help one to avoid it - and therefore much older than the final, chivaric part, but no corresponding Greek spindle taboo seems to be known; second, why the spindle and not something more obvious in a princessly context, say a sword, or in a domestic context, say a pet animal? Either of these could be the cause of death without changing the story in any noticeable way except making it more natural.

Before continuing, let's take a digression into the story of Rumplestiltskin, which hints at the old Phoenician custom of first child sacrifice, voided when people adopted an alternative worship practice to honour the god by chanting its name. In other words, while the story itself is medieval, it is based on much older cultural practices. As in Sleeping Beauty, the Rumplestiltskin story puts royalty next to spinning, with the king marrying the girl that could spin straw into gold. That her father chose to boast about her spinning, rather than some other skill, reveals how a woman's role in the household was defined in his time, but more than just domestic issues are involved to make the spinning girl good enough to be queen.

A number of taboos relating to spindles are known, such as not touching them during certain periods of crop growth for fear that the stems would be twisted, during meetings of the elders for fear that arguments would stray, or during a hunter's meal for fear of his arrows not going straight. These may be just explanations people thought of to justify a pre-existing taboo that banned the handling of spindles except in certain prescribed situations. Why would a simple tool attain this kind of importance? Probably because spinning was part of some important ritual during primitive times.

To see this, we need to go all the way to China and pick up some of its mythological stories related to mulberry, silk and weaving. The story of Cow Boy and Weaving Fairy is familiar even to many western readers: She and her sisters, daughters of the Heavenly Emperor, went to the Yao pond to bathe, and her clothes were stolen by Cow Boy, who with his bull were previously expelled from heaven (presumably an example of the matriarchal practice of expelling male children when they reach puberty.) Weaving Fairy followed Cow Boy home and had two children by him, and was then taken back to heaven by her father's soldiers. When the Cow Boy gave chase, the Queen Mother caused the Silver River (Milky Way) to appear between them preventing a meeting. Later she relented, and allowed them to meet once a year on the 7th day of the 7th month, over a bridge made by black birds. The day became a festival on which night girls would worship the Fairy with fruits and vegetables to make progress in female skills such as sewing.

Now why do fairies need to take the risk of bathing where intruders can surprise them? in fact, why do they need to bathe at all? do fairies get smelly and itchy if they dont wash themselves regularly? How often do fairies bathe in order to keep clean and enjoy watery fun? To make sense of this, we need to look at another story: Jian Di the princess was bathing in a pond with her sisters, found an egg, swallowed it, and became pregnant, later to give birth to the founder of the Shang tribe, and even in Zhou times the Shang descendents were still poetically honoring the event "The black bird by Heaven's command, descended to make the Shang tribe". A similar story existed with the later-to-be-Imperial Qins, whose matriarch founder Nuxiu was weaving, found an egg, swallowed, and got pregnant, with similar stories for the Manchus, Koreans, etc.

It should be clear that bathing and egg swallowing was a fertility ritual of the ancient Shang/Qin tribes, but rituals do not produce pregnancy unless men participated, and while this detail is missing from the latter two stories, it is remedied in the Weaving Fairy story: while the girls were bathing, the men sneaked away their clothes, which were presumably returned after sex had taken place. This ritual was held once a year, the only occasion when men and women got together, before the girls went back up to "heaven" to continue their weaving duties.

But again, how do royalty and spinning/weaving go together? To get another piece of the puzzle, we go to Zhou and Han history, with episodes in which the Queens performed ritualistic raising of silkworms, and royal palaces had their own weaving rooms where high status women spun and weaved, because it was the tradition. In some obscure way, this was supposed to promote agricultural productivity and human fertility. Legend has it that the wife of Yellow Emperor started this by introducing the silkworm. Many mentions of fertily rituals in the mulberry forest appear in stories, and both Su Nu (White Maiden) and Xuan Nu (Black Maiden) whose names Su and Xuan share parts of the character for Silk, were credited with innovative sexual techniques, further confirming the ancient textile-fertility connection.

Ancient Europeans had no silkworm, but spun and weaved wool. Greeks attached sufficient importance to the spindle by imagining the three Fates determining a newborn person's longevity by the length of a yarn. It is not too much to imagine that other Europeans too had rituals involving princesses and textile making, but then a new tribe arrived as conquerors, bringing a new religion. As result the old practices were outlawed and the penalty for practising the old spindle rituals was severe. Touching the spindle was previously restricted, a sacred object not to be used profanely, but after the conquest, the restrictions became altogether life threatening. A princess touching the spindle risks death.

DNA tests show that all the humans of the world are descended from a small group that left Africa around 60,000 years ago. Within 10,000 years after that, some had reached Australia, presumably via India and Indonesia, mostly migrating along the coast. However, any ancient sites they might have left behind could not be located, since the melting of the glaciers that took place from around 10,000 BC caused a rise in sea levels that would have submerged all the low lying locations they lived at en route. Most probably they were close relatives of the Sen or Bushman tribesmen that still roam parts of Africa.

We do not know whether the same small group split into three, or some other closely related group(s) left Africa later following the steps of the first. One lot, after passing through Iran and Kazakstan, found large grass eating animals like the  mammoth on the great planes of eastern europe and developed the hunting skills needed to use these as food source. By following migrating herds. some of them pass through Siberia and ended up in North America, while others turned west and adapted to the cold climate of western europe. Their descendents are the modern Mongoloids and Caucasoids. Others remained in central asia and took up farming and herding.

Whatever method of making a living, the people were frequently on the move: after slash-and-burn exhausted the fertility of their current land, the farmers would find a new plot near by, while the herders drove their cattle and sheep where grass and water could be found. The hunters followed the elks and mammoths.

While some of the Mongoloids ended up in China, there had also been a second, in fact larger source, coming up along the coast from the south, whose genes are more closely related to the Pacific Islanders. These coast hugging people developed quite different skills from hunting: fishing (with net - hence the importance of the mesh symbol), boat building, navigation... They worshiped thunder gods and dragons. Hunters used bow and arrow, and making arrows requires feathers; the hunters thus had an affinity to birds; they saw the sun as golden bird. In contrast, the agricultural people felt greater affinity to snakes that hibernated in winter and awoke in spring, the moon whose cycles coincided with menstration and fertility.

One such tribe, probably after living in India where they worshiped the cobra and developed their abstract thinking, went both east and west, arriving at the east coast of China about 10000 years ago and followed the two great rivers westwards into the interior parts of China, meeting the hunters/nomads coming down from the north and the west. Some of those that went west from India ended up in Egypt where they built the pyramids, others in Babylon where they developed a different set of ideas about the world, in particular evolving from a syllabic language to a phonetic one. We know them as Sumerians. A nomadic tribe called the Habiru (East of the River) picked up some of these after living around and mixing with the Sumerian/Babylonian people, then went on westwards towards the Mediteranian.

All roads lead to Rome, but some are better maintained than others; what distinguished the Chinese and Jews were that they preserved more of their primitive legends in their written records. They were both people of the book(s), allowing us to see glimpses of their common past.While other traces can also be found in different cultures, e.g., Celts had stories of the moon and the hare that have Chinese equivalents, Greeks had Promethius, Daedalus and the story of Icarus flying too close to the sun parallelling the Chinese story of Kuafu who chased the sun and died of thirst, while early versions of Zeus-Apollo had them fighting each other like the Chinese thunder god and sun god;  American natives had legends about winged dragons and thundergods; in west asia we hear about the firebird (phoenix) reviving on the tree of life (palm), in china we have Shenning's daughter coming back to life on the mulberry tree as the Jingwei bird; in Egypt we hear of the brother-sister couple Osiris and Isis; however, none were as clear and as suggestive as the Old Testament stories.

The scenario I outline here cannot be "proved"; all these similarities in traditions and legends can be mere coincidence, or subsequent cultural transfers 2-3 thousand years ago via some indirect contacts that we do not know about. The chance of conclusive archaeological discoveries, scientifically revealing the migratory paths and cultural evolvements I suggest here, is quite unlikely. I believe many people would find my view hard to accept because it disturbs their thought systems: most Chinese people like to believe that their culture is their own and owes nothing to foreign supply, while many Christians and Jews would find my bibilical re-interpration heretical. But IF you would like to have an explanation for the similarties and connections, I offer you one, without religious or chauvinistic motivations. Whether it satisfies you is a question of judgement.

Four part series sinazen.com/chinamyths sinazen.com/prehistory sinazen.com/middlehistory sinazen.com/singaporemythwriter

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