File:Long-dragon.jpg

"dragon" in Chinese. See also 龍

The idea of the dragon had many variations. Some of the ancient snake worshipping tribes noted tornadoes occurring in spring and summer, looking to them like a divine serpent waking up from winter hibernation and rising to heaven, with its devastatingly powerful tail on the ground and its head in the clouds where wind, rain, thunder and lightning all occur, thus acquiring the idea of the dragon as the god for water and thunder. The ancient site associated with Shen-nong (Divine Cultivator), the town of Chen (Huai-yang today), whose ideogram was originally the same as that for lightning, and Shen-nong tribe probably started off as Shen-long or Divine Dragon tribe, evolving from the human-headed, snake- bodied Fuxi-Nuwa totem. In the beginning the dragons had no legs, as those unearthed in Zha-hai, Zhao-bao-gou and Weng-niu-te County all show, and such attachments as body scales, dear horns, fish tail, bird claws, etc were added later.