The origin of the Chinese dragon totem?

Originally, all tribes had their own totems, such as the Bear Clan in the Central Plains had a bear totem, and a tribe in the Southwest had a tiger totem. After the Yellow Emperor united China, he has been considering a problem: what is a good totem to use? At that time, he didn't come up with a result, so he called all the lords to come to Gutz Mountain to discuss.

Most of the generals proposed the "bear" totem, but the Yellow Emperor did not agree for fear of hurting the feelings of the various clans and tribes. He finally proposed a snake for the body, fish scales to protect the body of the snake, a lion's head for the head of the snake, a lion's tail for the tail of the snake, a deer's horn for the snake's horns, an eagle's claw for the snake's claws, and totaled to represent the various totems, and therefore harmonized as the "Dragon Totem". It can fly, can go into the water, can crawl, representing a variety of animal skills, but also represents the characteristics of a number of tribes, we heard, are very satisfied.

After the agreement, the Yellow Emperor chose the second day of the second month of the lunar calendar as the auspicious day of the zodiac, and held a ceremony at the top of Mount Gutz to raise the dragon flag. Since then, there has been a saying that the dragon is the heir to the throne. Because of the meaning of the dragon, which represents the ideals of each tribe, the dragon naturally became the exclusive name of successive emperors and kings, the emperor was honored as the True Dragon Son of Heaven, and the emperor's children and grandchildren were called the Dragon Son and the Dragon Grandchildren.

Dragon motifs have also been found in archaeological excavations, and dragons as totems did exist.In 1987, archaeologists unearthed a dragon motif composed of mussel shells in Xishuipo, west of Puyang County, Henan Province, and according to the chronology, the unearthed mussel-shelled dragons belonged to the period of the Yangshao culture as well.

Totems are symbols of groups and are intended to distinguish groups. The use of totems to explain myths, classical records and folklore can often be used to gain the effect of one against the other. A totem is an animal or natural object worshipped by primitive people and thus used as the emblem or symbol of the clan.

In ancient times, the Chinese land was full of swamps. People's productivity and weapons were very backward, people often suffered from beasts of prey, so they used beasts of prey as their totems to seek the blessing of the gods. In those days, there were wolves, bears and crocodiles, among which there were more tribes using crocodiles because there were many swamps and crocodiles often hurt people.