The majestic dream-eating monster has become the great enemy of the national treasure

What animal can you think of that looks a bit like a pig and a bit like an elephant?

Historically, this animal has been used as a substitute for the giant panda and a monster that eats dreams?! Did it offend someone?

April 27th is "World Tapir Day". Let us learn about the mysteries about it!

A great miscarriage of justice used as a substitute for the national treasure? ——The mystery of confusing giant pandas with tapirs

The "Western Mountains·Nanshan" in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" records that "there are many fierce leopards in Nanshan". We may subconsciously translate this sentence as "there are many fierce leopards in Nanshan", and many scholars in history, such as Guo Hongnong of the Jin Dynasty, also understood it this way.

But other scholars have given a more convincing explanation: the word "猛" is not used as an adjective to modify "豹", but as the name of an animal parallel to "豹". Similar cases include "Mengshi the beast in Shu" mentioned in "Han Shu Zhu" and "Mengshi beast" also mentioned in Ming Dynasty's "Shu Zhong Guangji".

Since "猛" is the name of an animal, what kind of animal is it? According to the explanation in Erya: Explanation of Beasts, "猛" is the transliteration of "貘" and "貊", and "貘" and "貊" are homophones with different shapes. In other words, Erya: Explanation of Beasts believes that: 猛＝貘＝貊

The Chinese character for "貘" in bronze inscriptions from the late Shang Dynasty (left) and the Chinese character for "貘" in seal script from the Qin Dynasty (right)

What kind of animal is "tapir"? In Erya·Shishou, Shanhaijing·Zhongshanjing, and Houhanshu·Ailaozhuan, there are descriptions of the appearance of "tapir" (same as "貊") in ancient books, and they are similar. In summary, they have the following characteristics:

1. A small head and short legs

2. The fur is black and white

3. I love eating bamboo when I eat rice

4. Looks like a bear but isn’t a bear

Needless to say, the cute and adorable panda is vividly depicted on paper - the national treasure giant panda. It seems that the word "tapir" was used to refer to the giant panda during the Warring States Period.

A giant panda painted by William Kunnet in 1927

What is puzzling is that although the description of the tapir in Er Ya Shi Shou is very similar to the giant panda, when Guo Pu of the Jin Dynasty drew a picture of it, he drew it like this...

This is not a giant panda! It is just a miniature elephant. From this point of view, this tapir does not seem to be a giant panda, but a real tapir that lives in America and Southeast Asia today, because real tapirs also have long noses.

Combined with the fact that the original text of "Er Ya" says that tapirs have the characteristics of "black and white", the only tapir species living in Asia today with black and white skin - the Malayan tapir, comes to our mind.

In the Tang Dynasty, the great poet Bai Juyi linked "tapir" with "long nose". In his "Tapir Screen Praise", he mentioned that tapirs have elephant trunks, ox tails, and tiger claws, and live in valleys in the south. When people sleep, covering themselves with its skin can prevent plague, and its pictures can also ward off evil spirits. Bai Juyi also said that whenever he had a headache, he would put a screen with a picture of a tapir next to him.

China's different understandings of "tapir" for thousands of years have caused considerable trouble to modern Western scholars, and even led to a particularly big misunderstanding.

In 1816, William Farquhar, a resident of Malacca, first recorded a black and white tapir with a long nose. In 1819, French zoologist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest named it "Malayan tapir" (Tapirus indicus), marking the first scientific introduction to the Malay tapir.

William Farquhar's watercolor painting of a Malayan tapir between 1819 and 1823 (Source: Natural History Collection)

Who would have thought that five years later, in 1824, French sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, while studying traditional Chinese texts, collected fragmentary descriptions of tapirs in China: black and white, elephant trunk, ox tail, tiger claws…

Eh? This thing? It looks a bit like the new species named "Malayan tapir" in our country a few years ago! Haha! I also made a new discovery: It turns out that there are tapirs in mysterious China!

So he called the "tapir" in traditional Chinese books Chinese tapir. By the end of the 19th century, Chinese tapir was mistakenly believed to be a scientific fact by Western scholars. Later, research confirmed that there were no existing tapirs in China, and this mistake was corrected.

On the other hand, in the 20th century, as the biological research on giant pandas became increasingly mature, the meaning of "tapir" gradually lost, and "tapir" became exclusive to tapirs.

Lithograph of "Tapir" by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (Source: Acta Asiatica, 1924)

Tapirs are old residents of China

Never be quick to laugh at someone!

Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat said, "It turns out that mysterious China also has tapirs!" If we look at this statement from the perspective of a paleontologist or archaeologist, and trace the history back a little further, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with what Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat said.

Tapirs have a very long history of living in China.

As early as the Tertiary Period, northern China was the main distribution area of ​​tapirs. Tapir fossils have been discovered in Yanqu, Shanxi and Linxia, ​​Gansu, while there are fewer in the south. Only the mandibular fossil of tapir has been unearthed in Zhaotong, Yunnan. This tapir was later named "Yunnan tapir" (Tapirus yunnanensis). It lived about two to three million years ago, belonging to the late Pliocene of the Tertiary Period.

By the Quaternary, Chinese tapirs were mainly distributed in the southern region, and they continued to occupy the lowlands and river valleys of southern China during the Pleistocene. If you were a southerner in the Paleolithic Age (about 3 million to 10,000 years ago), you might have thought that teasing tapirs was as common as teasing cats and dogs today.

Fossilized teeth of Yunnan tapir unearthed in Zhaotong (Source: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

The mountain tapir (Tapirus sanyuanensis) was found in the Early Pleistocene in Fanchang, Anhui Province, dating back to about 2.4 million to 2 million years ago (Source: Science Bulletin)

However, some paleontologists believe that there is no direct evolutionary relationship between China's Tertiary tapirs and Quaternary tapirs, and this is still a problem that needs to be solved urgently.

From this perspective, tapirs are indeed "old residents" of China. So when did they become extinct in China?

The view represented by Mr. Tong Haowen from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is that tapirs were a common group in the "giant panda-saber-toothed elephant" fauna in southern China and disappeared about 10,000 years ago.

However, the excavation of the Shang Dynasty ruins of Yinxu in Anyang, Henan, has brought this view to a "social end". Among the remains of the animal group unearthed in Yinxu, two pieces of tapir jaws were found. Based on the bone research, it was determined that the species was Malayan tapir. There are two shocking aspects of this discovery:

First, the Shang Dynasty ruins at Anyang Yinxu date back more than 3,000 years, which is too far away from the mainstream academic view that tapirs disappeared in China (about 10,000 years ago).

Second, since the Quaternary, the distribution area of ​​tapirs in my country has been in the southern region. The two mandibular fragments of Malayan tapirs unearthed from Yinxu have become the only Holocene tapir fossils found in the north so far. (The other two Holocene tapir fossil sites are in the south, see Table 1)

Table 1: Officially reported Holocene tapir fossil finds (archaeological records)

Reconstruction of the giant tapir (drawn by DiBgd)

From this, we can make two inferences:

1. In China, some tapirs survived the catastrophe 10,000 years ago and lingered until the Holocene, becoming a "rare species" at that time.

2. If tapirs survived as rare animals in China at that time, then did the Quaternary tapirs living in southern China break through their original distribution range and come to the north of the Qinling-Huaihe line?

In response to this question, French paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin and Chinese paleontologist Yang Zhongjian believe that the Malayan tapir fossils discovered at the Shang Dynasty site of Yinxu are evidence that the Shang Dynasty imported goods from the south, and they are "the last evidence of contact between Chinese humans and tapirs."

In other words, perhaps there were surviving tapirs in the south during the Shang Dynasty, but the Malayan tapirs found in the Yin Ruins in Anyang were most likely not native to the local area, but rather "imported products" from the south.

Since Yinxu, there has been no record of tapir fossils unearthed, but the image of tapirs seems to have not been forgotten by people after the Shang Dynasty. The Freer Gallery of Art in the United States has a bronze wine vessel from the Western Zhou Dynasty in China that was lost overseas. Its shape is called "five unlikes", which combines the characteristics of five animals: sheep, pig, elephant, rhino, and pangolin.

Western Zhou bronze tapir zun in the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art, USA

Coincidentally, as early as the 1970s, archaeologists discovered a bronze ware of similar shape in Tomb No. 2 of the Western Zhou Dynasty cemetery in Rujiazhuang, Baoji, Shaanxi Province. At that time, it was hastily named "Yangzun" by researchers.

In 1993, Mr. Ma Chengyuan, then director of the Shanghai Museum, observed this object carefully and compared it with the tapir in the zoo. He believed that its prototype was not a sheep but a tapir, so he renamed it "Tapir Zun".

Why did the image of tapir still exist after the Shang Dynasty? Perhaps it is because humans still remember it, or perhaps tapirs continued to exist in China after the Shang Dynasty.

Moreover, the tapirs described by later literati such as Bai Juyi and Yuan Mei have certain similarities with tapirs. Stephanie Studders, a scholar at the University of Manchester in the UK, believes that there have been rumors of tapir sightings in southern China from the Tang Dynasty to the early 20th century. This may be related to the fact that China's world trade was developed during the Tang Dynasty, and perhaps the Chinese had seen or heard about tapirs in their trade with other countries.

In view of the above controversy, there are still some speculations about the time when tapirs disappeared in China. For example, some people believe that tapirs disappeared in the 16th century and finally disappeared in Lingnan. But before more reliable fossil evidence appears, we can only put a big question mark.

A tapir-shaped urn unearthed from Tomb No. 2 of the Western Zhou Dynasty Cemetery in Rujiazhuang, referred to as a "sheep-shaped urn" in the briefing

Pokémon "Hypnotic Tapir" and "Dream-Inducing Tapir" - Japan's Dream-Eating Monsters

The image and culture of tapirs were also introduced to Japan, where they evolved into a kind of monster that "eats people's dreams". If you are a hardcore Pokemon player, you must remember that in the first generation of Pokemon, there were two brothers, "Sullip" (left) and "Sullip" (right). They were based on tapirs, and their official translations are "hypnotic tapir" and "dream-inducing tapir" respectively.

In the game setting, the two brothers can hypnotize, and they both like to feed on the dreams of humans and other Pokémon. The Hypnotist Tapir evolves into the Dream-Inducing Tapir. What is more special is that the Hypnotist Tapir only likes to eat good dreams and happy dreams, and hates to eat nightmares.

Japan's tapir culture also has a long history.

As early as the Muromachi period (1336-1573), tapir pictures and words were regarded as auspicious symbols. In the first month of each year, some Japanese people would put a picture of a treasure ship under their pillows and write the word "tapir" on the sails in the picture in order to have a good dream. In this way, even if they had a nightmare, they would be eaten by the tapir.

In the Edo period (1603-1868), it was still popular to draw tapirs on signs to symbolize good luck. Some people even drew tapirs on box pillows to make tapir-shaped "tapir pillows."

Tapir in the "Strange Birds and Beasts Scroll" of the Edo Period, Japan

Tapir painted by Ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai

In the Chinese game "Chinese Paladin 4", the "Fantasy Underworld" Dream Tapir Clan that fought against the Kunlun Qionghua Sect was inspired by the Dream Tapir. The daughter of the clan leader, who is also one of the protagonists, Liu Mengli, once said: Although our clan feeds on dreams, thousands of years ago, we were just ordinary monsters with ordinary spiritual power. Since we accidentally discovered this strange place, the spiritual power is abundant, especially these amethyst stones, which have made the cultivation of the clan members advance by leaps and bounds.

In fact, tapirs are docile herbivores and are not as scary as the eating nightmares in Japanese culture. Among the existing tapirs, in addition to the Malayan tapir, there are also the Central American tapir (Tapirus bairdii), the South American tapir (Tapirus terrestris), the mountain tapir (Tapirus pinchaque), etc. Although the skin on the neck of an adult tapir can effectively resist attacks from natural enemies such as crocodiles, pythons, and tigers, due to human hunting and deforestation, their habitats have been lost and their numbers have sharply decreased. They are all included in the "IUCN Red List of Endangered Species".

Fortunately, in 2013, a new species, the Kabomani tapir (Tapirus kabomani), was discovered in Brazil and Colombia. This is the first new odd-toed ungulate discovered by humans in nearly 100 years.

On the occasion of World Tapir Day, let us protect them well and not let their "end of the world" come.

Kabomani tapirs are active at night (Source: Cozzuol et al)

References:

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END

Written by

Archaeology, Master of History, Wuhan University, Shang and Zhou Dynasty Archaeology

Tadpole Musical Notation original article, please indicate the source when reprinting

Editor/Xiao Xitushuo