Why is fish the most common image in Yangshao culture pottery paintings?

The National Museum of China has a painted pottery basin with fish patterns unearthed at the Neolithic Yangshao Cultural Site in Xi Banpo, Shaanxi Province. There are two murals in the basin, one with a fish pattern on the face, the other with a rounded forehead, the left half painted black, and the right half painted black and semi-arc. The characters have slender eyes, straight nose and serene demeanor. There are two deformed fish lines on the mouth, the fish head and the outside of the mouth overlap, and two opposite small fish on both sides of the ear form a strange mermaid combination. The whole character is filled with a mysterious atmosphere.

Later, the patterns of "fish pattern" and "fish pattern face" were also found on pottery unearthed from Banpo site of Yangshao culture in Shaanxi Province. The fish-faced basin is an instrument for people to hold sacrificial activities during the Banpo period of Yangshao culture. There is a view that the face in Fish Patterns on the Face is the face of a wizard, and the wizard must wear makeup and two green snakes when practicing. But wizards can't put real snakes and fish in their ears and mouths, so they wear masks. Fish, faces and so on are all part of the mask. More accurately, the pattern of "fish face pattern" should be the image representation of the wizard mask.

Because the ancestors were dominated by the concept of "animism", sacrificial activities were held frequently, the most important of which were sowing sacrifices and harvesting sacrifices. During the Banpo period, fishery and agriculture occupied an important position, and fish symbolized a bumper harvest. Therefore, from this wonderful picture, fish expresses the good wishes that the villagers in Banpo area have been longing for for for more than a year. In addition, because fish has a strong reproductive ability, it has become an ancient reproductive totem worship of the Chinese nation, so the image of fish will appear in a large number of Yangshao cultural pottery paintings.

According to the historian Zhou Benji, the auspicious patterns of the Zhou Dynasty include birds and fish. In Han Dynasty stone reliefs, the fish pattern is mostly carp, which is often painted with dragon and phoenix patterns to form an auspicious theme, symbolizing the meaning of prosperity, full house of children and grandchildren and Feng Chu. It can be seen that the symbolic meaning of symbols has multiple meanings and related extended meanings because of the different combinations, carriers and environments.