What are the ancient classification of animals and plants?

In ancient China, with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, people not only accumulated valuable classification knowledge in animal and plant categories, but also further classified animals and plants.

Through constant observation, analysis, comparison and understanding, the ancients gradually developed an ancient traditional understanding of the classification of animals and plants, distinguished large animals from small insects, and gradually formed the ancient classification system of animals and plants in China.

Legend has it that a long time ago, before Longmen was opened, Yishui was blocked by Longmen Mountain, and a big lake accumulated in the south of the mountain.

Carps living in the Yellow River have heard that Longmen is beautiful and all want to go sightseeing. They started from the Yellow River in Jin Meng, Henan Province, passed the Luohe River, and then came to Longmenkou along the Yihe River. But there is no waterway on Longmen Mountain, so they have to gather at the foot of Longmen North Mountain.

A red carp said to everyone, "I have an idea." How about we skip this Longmen Mountain? " "How can you jump so high?" "If you don't jump well, you will fall to your death!" The partners are confused and can't make up their minds. So, the red carp volunteered to say, "Let me have a try first!" " "I saw it from half a mile away, with all its strength, jumping into the clouds like a left arrow, and staying there for a long time, driving the clouds and rain in the air forward. A mass of skyfire came from behind and burned its tail. It endured the pain, continued to leap forward, and finally crossed Longmen Mountain and fell into the lake in the south of Shannan. In a blink of an eye, it became a dragon.

Seeing this, the carp in the north of the mountain are scared to shrink together and dare not take any more risks.

Just then, I suddenly saw a dragon descending from the sky and said, "Don't be afraid, I'm your partner Red Carp, because I jumped over the Longmen and became a dragon." You have to jump bravely! " "

Hearing these words, the carp was encouraged and began to jump off the Longmen Mountain one by one. But except for a few who jumped into dragons, most of them couldn't get through. Anyone who can't jump over and fall from the air will have a black scar on his forehead. To this day, the Yellow River carp still has a black scar on its forehead.

Ya Ya Shi Yu, an exegetical work by Lu Dian in the Song Dynasty, records: "A fish jumps over the dragon gate and becomes a dragon after crossing it. Only carp is possible." It means that a fish jumps over the dragon gate and becomes a dragon after crossing it. Only carp can do this.

As early as the early days of human society, the ancients began to learn to distinguish some useful and harmful animals and plants in the simplest collection, fishing and hunting production process.

With the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, people have been observing, analyzing, comparing and understanding in practice, and gradually came up with the idea of classifying all kinds of living things around them, and gradually formed the ancient animal and plant classification system in China.

The classification of animals and plants is an important means for human beings to understand and utilize biology, which is of great significance to agricultural production and medical development.

After the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, ancient biology in China entered a new period of development, which was marked by the appearance of some works on animals and plants. Both Yu Gong and Shan Hai Jing describe local products, mainly animals and plants. Shan Hai Jing not only records the names of plants and animals in various places, but also records their morphological characteristics and uses.

It is the oldest traditional classification in China to summarize the species of the whole animal and plant world with grass, wood, insects, fish, birds and beasts. This classification is fully reflected in Erya, the earliest dictionary in China.

Erya is a book devoted to the interpretation of ancient Chinese characters. It was probably collected from the Warring States Period and was not completed until the Western Han Dynasty. There are four chapters in the book, namely, releasing grass, releasing wood, releasing insects, releasing fish, releasing birds, releasing animals, releasing livestock, etc., specifically explaining the names of animals and plants.

The first six articles are mainly wild animals and plants, and the last one is mainly domestic animals. From the order of its contents, it reflects people's understanding of the classification of animals and plants at that time, that is, plants are divided into grass and wood, and animals are divided into insects, fish, birds and beasts.

The detailed understanding of the classification of animals and plants in each chapter of Erya basically reflects the objective reality of nature. This is the simple and natural understanding of the ancient working people of China on the classification of animals and plants. This simple classification method has a long history and is widely spread.

According to the words about the names of animals and plants in the Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Yin Ruins, it can be clearly seen that some animals or plants with similar appearance have been linked in the long-term practice of agriculture and animal husbandry more than 4,000 years ago to show the same sex of such animals or plants; Compare some animals or plants with different external morphology to show their differences. For example, the traditional Chinese characters such as pheasant, chicken, sparrow and phoenix are all "home" and have wings, indicating that they belong to birds.

There are not many glyphs about insect names in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, but it still reflects people's understanding of insect classification at that time. For example, both insects and silkworms are "worms", which means that they belong to the same insect class. Cereals are short-growing herbs, which are suitable for agricultural cultivation and are one of the main sources of people's living materials. The name of grain in Oracle Bone Inscriptions has the shape of a grain, which indicates that they belong to the same category and are all herbs.

Perhaps it was because people didn't strictly distinguish between various kinds of fish at that time, so there were no words reflecting the names of various kinds of fish in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. All kinds of fish are represented by shapes to show that they belong to the same class. Therefore, it can be said that in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, there has been a prototype of the classification of insects, fish, birds and animals.

It is this ancient traditional classification method that has been applied to the sub-chapters of Er Ya. Judging from the specific content of each article, it is obvious that people have a clear understanding of each category.

The names of more than 100 plants contained in Free Grass are all herbs.

For example, onions and garlic, Caoshi said, "You are a leek. Wild onions. Diligent and demanding. Hey, mountain garlic. "

The names of leek, leek, leek, leek and leek are arranged together, indicating that they are of the same class. However, leek, onion, garlic and other plants are considered to belong to the same genus in the current taxonomy, which is called "Allium".

Dozens of plant names in Shi Mu are woody plants. This shows that plants are divided into herbaceous and woody categories, which is basically consistent with the current understanding of taxonomy.

For example, in "Poems", it is said: "Li, red; White people. " Obviously, if you divide the glutinous rice into red and white, you naturally regard glutinous rice and glutinous rice as a category, which reflects the ancient concept of glutinous rice in China. Others, such as peaches and plums, pines and cypresses, mulberries, elms, fungi, algae, Tangdu and so on.

Most of the more than 80 animal names contained in "Releasing Insects" are arthropods. The rest are mollusks.

For example, cicadas, in "Flying Insects", the names of salamanders, clams, cockroaches, cockroaches and other animals are arranged together, indicating that they belong to the same category. These different kinds of cicadas belong to Homoptera Cicadellidae in modern taxonomy.

Another example is the beetle, which said in "Let the Insects Fly": "You can't fly, you can fly. Scorpion. Scorpion. Squid, mulberry All concerns, items. The Mayfly Canal is very short. Hey, father, keep the melon. " Put these names together, it is obvious that they belong to a category.

Dung beetles is now dung beetles, belonging to Coleoptera Scarabaeidae. Scorpion, also called scorpion, is a beetle larva. A kind of mulberry, probably the present mulberry, belongs to Coleoptera Cerambycidae.

Jules, like Mulberry, is a beetle. Mayflies belong to COLEOPTERA, a species of Scarabaeidae. They are called Diptera or Hemiptera. Owl, now scarab, belongs to COLEOPTERA. Cockroach, also known as Cucumis sativus, is an insect belonging to COLEOPTERA.

The ancients arranged these beetles together and listed them as a class, which showed that they had the concept of beetles. Beetles are now a general term for COLEOPTERA in taxonomy.

There are more than 70 kinds of animal names listed in "Releasing Fish", among which fish is the main species, followed by amphibians, reptiles, arthropods, flatworms and mollusks.

If arthropods, flatworms and molluscs are classified as insects according to the concept of "enough to be called insects" in Erya, then the animals contained in Free Fish are equivalent to fish, amphibians and reptiles in modern taxonomy and are called cold-blooded animals.

There are about 90 kinds of animals listed in Free Birds. Except bats and flying squirrels, all belong to birds, which are roughly equivalent to birds in modern taxonomy.

There are about 60 animal names listed in Stone Beast, all of which belong to mammals and are synonymous with mammals in modern taxonomy.

In the chapters of "releasing animals" and "releasing livestock", there are some genera, such as "fish", "mouse", "Xu", "horse", "cow", "sheep", "dog", "tapir" and "chicken". From the content of each genus, the definition of "genus" here is different from that in modern taxonomy.

For example, "horse" includes horses, wild horses, good horses and other animals. According to the change of coat color, there are as many as 40 motors with different names, generally domestic horses and wild horses, which is equivalent to the modern classification of horses.

For another example, "rat" contains 10 kinds of animals, most of which belong to rodents in modern classification. Others, such as "chicken", are basically synonymous with pheasants in modern taxonomy.

The names of animals and plants in Erya are arranged in a rough order. From its arrangement order, it is not difficult to see the ancient fine classification understanding.

On the basis of the ancient traditional classification of insects, fish, birds and animals, the ancients further divided animals into two categories: large animals and small insects, which is another development of ancient animal classification in China.

According to the relevant records in Li Zhoudi Guan, Guan Zi You Guan, Lu Shichun Qiu Shi Ji at the end of the Warring States Period and Huai Nan Zi Shi Ze Xun at the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the five kinds of animals contained in big animals are nothing more than feathers, hairs, scales, ostriches and nudes.

Feathers, the morphological characteristics of such animals are "body feathers". The description in Flower King Gong Ji is pointed mouth, open lips, small eyes, long neck, small body and low abdomen. So "feather" is actually a bird in the ancient traditional classification.

Mao, the ancients often referred to animals such as tigers, leopards and raccoons as hairy beasts because of their "hairy bodies". This animal is actually a beast in the traditional classification.

Fish scales and ostracods are different from ancient traditional fish. Scale is named for its "body scale". Generally refers to fish and reptiles. "Flower King Gong Ji" thinks that the head is small and the body is fat, which is an image description of "scale".

Introduction is another part of the traditional classification of fish, namely turtles. The body of this animal is wrapped in a bone shell, and the ancients called it an "intermediary animal".

As for gymnosperms, according to a large number of facts, it refers to humans, which is equivalent to primitive people in modern taxonomy. In the eyes of the ancients, there were no appendages such as feathers, hair, scales and media outside the human body, so it was called "naked", which means naked, that is, people.

The above five animals belong to vertebrates in modern taxonomy, so the meaning of "big beast" is naturally synonymous with the word "vertebrate" in modern taxonomy.

Distinguish the genus of insects from the external morphological structure, action mode and vocal parts of animals.

According to Wang Gongji, those who have bones on the outside, those who have bones on the inside, those who walk backwards, sideways, continuously, meander, and make sounds with their necks, mouths, wings, legs and breasts are all bugs.

Insects are actually insects in ancient traditional classification, which is equivalent to invertebrates in modern taxonomy. For example, mollusks with shells outside the body, insects with wings rubbing and making sounds, etc. This is a leap in the understanding of ancient traditional classification in China.

To sum up, three or four thousand years ago, China had an ancient traditional understanding of classification. With the distinction between grass, wood, insects, fish, birds and animals, animals are divided into two categories: big animals and small insects. This is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancient working people in China, and it is a precious legacy in the history of biology in China.