10 famous symbols and what they really mean – You won’t believe what BLUETOOTH stands for (With Pics)

9. The Yin-Yang

The Yin-Yang symbol is deeply rooted in Chinese philosophy and a key element in the Taoist religion in China. You can find this one everywhere in the world, from T-shirts, tattoos, the South Korean flag, and Taoist temples. Its meaning is as straightforward as it is complex, but we’ll try to be as concise as possible. The concept of yin and yang took off during the 3^rd century BC with an increased interest in philosophy. The two sides don’t represent the good and the bad, per se, but rather the two sides of the same coin. Yin can change into Yang and vice versa, with the little dots in the centers of each representing this potential; the seed of the opposite. Yin is the feminine side, shown with things like black, darkness, north, water, transformation, the moon, cold, softness, passivity, introspection, valleys, and it is what gives the spirit to everything.

Yang, on the other hand, stands for light, fire, mountains, warmth, the sun, action, movement, and offers form to all things. Taoism believes in the idea of embracing both of these aspects of life and “go with the flow” as it were, finding the balance in everything. To give you an example of yin and yang put into practice in China, we only need to look at some of the names they gave their settlements. Villages on the sunny side of valleys or mountains have names like Liuyang or Shiyang, whereas those located on the other side have names like Jiangyin.

An interesting fact about the Yin-Yang symbol is that China wasn’t the first place it actually appeared. The oldest example comes from a prehistoric culture located in Eastern Europe, over a territory now part of Moldova, southern Ukraine, and northeastern and central Romania. Known as the

Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, this society existed between 5,400 and 2,700 BC, and several pottery objects have been discovered with the Yin-Yang as well as the Swastika symbols on them. Now, since they didn’t have a written language, we can’t know whether they saw the symbol the same way as the Chinese, or whether it is a mere coincidence.