Chapter 9 Section 8 The Earliest Systematic Writing in Ancient China

Characters are the main sign that the development of human society has entered the civilization era, and it is also one of the most important contents of ancient Chinese bronze culture.During the Shang Dynasty, the ancient Chinese society had entered the age of civilization for hundreds of years, and the Chinese characters at this time had basically developed and matured.The characters of the Shang Dynasty can be regarded as oracle bone inscriptions as a typical representative.Oracle bone inscriptions were discovered for the first time in 1898 in Yinxu, Anyang, and more than 100,000 pieces have been unearthed so far.Among them, 17,096 pieces of oracle bones were unearthed in Pit YH127 in Xiaotunbeidi, which was excavated in 1936, which is the largest number of oracle bones unearthed since the excavation of Yin Ruins.Especially in 1973, more than 7,000 oracle bones were unearthed in Xiaotun South, of which 4,589 were inscribed with oracle inscriptions, and the stratigraphic relationship is clear, which has high academic value. In 1991, a pit (H3) of oracle bones was discovered in Huayuanzhuangdong, with a total of 1583 pieces, including nearly 300 complete tortoise shells with oracle inscriptions, and more than 200 characters in one version, which is an important discovery.

Oracle bone inscriptions, also known as oracle bone inscriptions, are mainly inscriptions carved on turtle plastrons, carapaces, or scapulas of cattle after divination in the late Shang Dynasty.There are about 4,500 characters in oracle bone inscriptions, and less than 1/3 of them have been recognized so far.Oracle bone inscriptions not only have pictographic, knowing, referring to things and other characters, but also pictophonetic characters have accounted for a large proportion, which shows that oracle bone inscriptions are basically developed and mature.The contents involved in oracle bone inscriptions are very extensive. There are records about the year of agricultural production (pray for a good harvest), records about astronomical and calendar phenomena such as solar eclipses and lunar eclipses, records about the conquest of earth and people, and other records. Regarding the records of the lineage of the Shang kings, there are records of the killing of human animals when the kings of Shang sacrificed to their ancestors, and records about field hunting, diseases, etc., which provide us with a lot of precious first-hand information for studying the history of the Shang Dynasty today.It must be pointed out that the appearance of oracle bone inscriptions is also closely related to the use of bronze tools. In 1952, archaeologists discovered a bronze drill in the middle of the Shang Dynasty in Erligang, Zhengzhou, Henan. The drilled holes coincided exactly, indicating that this was a tool used for drilling divination bones.

In addition to oracle bone inscriptions, as mentioned above, there are also inscriptions cast on bronze wares of the Shang Dynasty, which we call bronze inscriptions, or gold inscriptions for short, and its basic structure is consistent with oracle bone inscriptions.By the end of the Shang Dynasty, some bronze wares had inscriptions as long as 50 characters, which also provided important information for the study of the history of the Shang Dynasty.In addition, a small amount of inscribed or written characters have also been found on jade, stone or pottery.It is particularly worth mentioning that characters written in ink or Zhushu have been found on pottery, stone tools, etc., and the brush strokes are clear, which is a strong proof that brushes were used for writing at that time.