The invention of writing and the production of books are milestone events in human history.Engels pointed out in "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State": "Due to the invention of writing and its application to document records, the transition to the age of civilization occurs." Words originate from pictures.The ancient Chinese and the ancient Egyptians used pictures as a tool for exchanging ideas, imparting knowledge and experience very early on.When they were going to go hunting, they drew a bison and a man holding a bow and arrow, which meant hunting.So some people call this kind of picture pictorial text.Pictorial characters are drawn very realistically at first, until people get used to it, and only use simple lines to form a rough outline to know what it represents.Afterwards, the pictures gradually departed from the depiction of specific things and became abstract. After certain conventions, they became symbols representing certain concepts, which are pictographs.

Chinese characters have a long history.The so-called legend about the creation of Chinese characters by Fu Xi and Cang Jie, the official historian of the Yellow Emperor in ancient times, reflects the long history of Chinese characters. According to archaeological discoveries, the materials related to the origin of Chinese characters are, first, inscribed marks from the Yangshao, Liangzhu, Majiayao and Longshan culture periods in the late primitive society; and pictographic symbols from the Dawenkou Culture period in Shandong Province in the late primitive society.Paleographers believe that the carved images on the pottery unearthed in Dawenkou should be the ancestor of Chinese characters in our country.The Dawenkou site dates from about 3000 BC to 2500 BC.

Among the existing Chinese characters in my country, the oracle bone script unearthed from the Yin Ruins is the earliest, and it is a relatively mature Chinese character with more than 4,000 characters.The appearance of this kind of writing is about 3,500 years ago. From the appearance of oracle bone inscriptions to the present, Chinese characters have undergone several major developments and changes.In the creation of new characters, Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty pointed out six laws of the development of Chinese characters in his "Shuowen Jiezi", namely "Six Books". The "Six Books" are pictographic, referring to things, knowing, pictophonic, transcribing and borrowing.Pictograms, referring to things, and understanding are all meanings realized from the aspect of characters—the concepts represented by characters.Phonetic sounds, transfer notes, and borrowings gradually express meanings with sounds.Since the basic law of Chinese characters is based on form and meaning from form, they remain at the stage of ideographic characters and cannot be developed into phonetic characters.

There have also been several major changes in the form of Chinese characters.According to historical records, during the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (9th century B.C.), a collation was carried out, resulting in "Zi Shu", also known as "big seal script" or "ancient script".After Qin Shihuang unified China, Li Si organized again and unified the writing of the whole country, which is "seal script", also known as "xiaozhuan" or "Qin seal script".At the same time, the "Clerical Script", which is mainly used to write official documents, appeared with simple strokes and convenient writing, making Chinese characters a popular font.Liu Desheng of the Eastern Han Dynasty created "running script"; Zhong Yao of the Three Kingdoms created "regular script".This "regular script" font has been used until now and has become the standard handwriting.After the invention of printing, printed characters were gradually formed, also known as "Song typeface".In 1955, the Chinese government announced the simplification of Chinese characters, which was a reform of great significance in the history of Chinese writing, and had a positive impact on promoting the construction of Chinese culture.

Since words are the basic condition for the production of books, there would be no books without words.After the invention of writing, the emergence of books is just around the corner.