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80-485: Out of an estimated 150,000 inscriptions that have been uncovered, the vast majority were unearthed at Yinxu , the site of the final Shang capital (modern-day Anyang , Henan). The most recent major discovery was the Huayuanzhuang cache found near the site in 1993. Of the 1,608 Huayuanzhang pieces, 579 bear inscriptions. Each of the last nine Shang kings are named in the inscriptions beginning with Wu Ding , whose accession

160-407: A Venetian blind turned 90 degrees, are present in oracle bone inscriptions. Since the ease of writing with a brush is even greater than that of writing with a stylus in wet clay, it is assumed that the style and structure of Shang graphs on bamboo were similar to those on bronzes, and also that the majority of writing occurred with a brush on such books. Additional support for this notion includes

240-680: A formal script, similar to but sometimes even more complex than the unattested daily Shang script on bamboo and wood books and other media, yet far more complex than the Shang script on the oracle bones . Western Zhou dynasty characters (as exemplified by bronze inscriptions of that time) basically continue from the Shang writing system; that is, early W. Zhou forms resemble Shang bronze forms (both such as clan names, and typical writing), without any clear or sudden distinction. They are, like their Shang predecessors in all media, often irregular in shape and size, and

320-419: A phono-semantic compound , and a rough meaning can be inferred based on the semantic component. For instance, an oracle bone character was recently found which consists of 礻 on the left and 升 on the right ([ 礻升 ] when converted from oracle bone forms to their modern printed equivalents). This character may reasonably be guessed to a compound with 示 'altar' as the semantic and 升 (modern reading sheng ) as

400-605: A different style—constitute the earliest corpus of Chinese writing, and are the direct ancestor of the Chinese family of scripts developed over the next three millennia. Their study is essential for the research of Chinese etymologies . It is also the direct ancestor of over a dozen East Asian writing systems. The length of inscriptions ranges from 10 to over 100 characters, but a few dozen is typical. The subjects of concern in inscriptions are broad, and include war, ritual sacrifice, and agriculture, as well as births, illnesses, and deaths in

480-460: A hundred or more on Zhou bronzes, with the longest up to around 500. In general, characters on ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions were arranged in vertical columns, written top to bottom, in a fashion thought to have been influenced by bamboo books, which are believed to have been the main medium for writing in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. The very narrow, vertical bamboo slats of these books were not suitable for writing wide characters, and so

560-469: A large set of biānzhōng bells from the tomb of Marquis Yĭ of the state of Zēng , unearthed in 1978. The total length of the inscriptions on this set was almost 2,800 characters. In the mid to late Warring States period, the average length of inscriptions decreased greatly. Many, especially on weapons, recorded only the date, maker and so on, in contrast with earlier narrative contents. Beginning at this time, such inscriptions were typically engraved onto

640-426: A number of graphs were rotated 90 degrees; this style then carried over to the Shang and Zhou oracle bones and bronzes. Examples: 馬 mǎ horse 虎 hǔ tiger 豕 shǐ swine 犬 quǎn dog 象 xiàng elephant 龜 guī turtle 為 wèi to lead 疾 jí illness 馬 虎 豕 犬 象 龜 為 疾 mǎ hǔ shǐ quǎn xiàng guī wèi jí horse tiger swine dog elephant turtle {to lead} illness Of

720-466: A royal hunt. There are relatively few oracle bone inscriptions dating after the conquest of the Shang by the Zhou dynasty ( c.  1046 BC ). From their initial discovery during the 1950s, only a handful of examples from this later period had been uncovered, and those that did were fragments consisting of only one or two characters. In August 1977, a cache containing thousands of Zhou-era oracle bones

800-576: A site called Běimĕng ( 北蒙 ), where it was then renamed to Yīn ( 殷 ). (Conversely, according to the Records of the Grand Historian of Sima Qian , Pan Geng moved the Shang capital from a location north of the Yellow River to Bo 亳 , the capital of Shang dynasty founder Tang , on the south side of the river—a location inconsistent with the location of Yin. ) Regardless, Yin was clearly established as

880-406: A small number of pottery, shell and bone, and jade and other stone items, and there is evidence that they also wrote on bamboo (or wooden) books just like those found from the late Zhou to Han periods, because the graphs for a writing brush ( 聿 yù , depicting a hand holding a writing brush) and bamboo book ( 冊 cè , a book of thin bamboo and wooden slips bound with horizontal strings, like

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960-546: Is a Chinese archeological site corresponding to Yin, the final capital of the Shang dynasty ( c.  1600  – c.  1046 BCE ). Located in present-day Anyang , Henan, Yin served as the capital during the Late Shang period ( c.  1250  – c.  1046 BCE ) which spanned the reigns of 12 Shang kings and saw the emergence of oracle bone script , the earliest known Chinese writing . Along with oracle bone script and other material evidence for

1040-703: Is a systematic and scientific inquiry into the inherent laws of the oracle bone script itself and uses it as a basis for glimpsing the history, society, and customs of the ancient world. The oracle bones should not be confused with orthography. It is generally agreed that the tradition of writing represented by oracle bone script existed prior to the first known examples, due to the attested script's mature state. Many characters had already undergone extensive simplifications and linearizations, and techniques of semantic extension and phonetic loaning had also clearly been used by authors for some time, perhaps centuries. However, no clearly identifiable examples of writing dating prior to

1120-412: Is located in northern Henan , near modern Anyang and the borders Henan shares with Hebei and Shanxi . Public access to the site is permitted. According to the 2nd century Shuowen Jiezi dictionary (說文解字), the Chinese character " 殷 " ( yīn ) originally referred to "vibrant music-making". Although frequently used throughout written history to refer to both the Shang dynasty and its final capital,

1200-564: Is some disagreement, though, as to when the move to Yin took place. Both the Book of Documents , (specifically, the "Pan Geng" chapter, which is believed to date from the late Spring and Autumn period ), and the Bamboo Annals state that Shang king Pan Geng moved the Shang capital to Yin. The Bamboo Annals state, more specifically, that during his reign Pan Geng moved the capital from Yān (奄; present-day Qufu , in present-day Shandong Province ), to

1280-496: Is the study of oracle bones and oracle bone script. It is a humanities discipline that focuses on the Chinese Upper Antiquity oracle characters. Oracle bone science can be divided into a narrow sense of oracle bone science and a broad sense of oracle bone science. In the narrow sense, the study of oracle bone script is limited to the study of oracle bone script itself, and it is a discipline of paleography . This includes

1360-784: Is variously dated between 1250 and 1200 BC. Oracle bone inscriptions corresponding to Wu Ding's reign have been radiocarbon dated to 1254–1197 BC (±10 years). Following the overthrow of the Shang by the Zhou dynasty in c.  1046 BC , divination using milfoil became more common; far fewer oracle bone inscriptions are dated to the Western Zhou. No Zhou-era sites with a comparable cache of inscriptions to Yinxu have been found; however, examples from this period appear to be more widespread, having been found near most major population centers. New sites have continued to be discovered since 2000. The oracle bone inscriptions—along with several roughly contemporaneous bronzeware inscriptions using

1440-573: The Eastern Zhou , gradually becoming what is now called (small) seal script during that period, without any clear dividing line (it is not the case, as is commonly believed, that small seal script was a sudden invention by Li Si in the Qin dynasty ). Meanwhile, the Qin vulgar writing evolved into early clerical (or proto-clerical) in the late Warring States to Qin dynasty period, which would then evolve further into

1520-546: The Houmuwu ding were cast by an elaborate section-mold process. A study of mitochondrial DNA (inherited in the maternal line) from Yinxu graves showed similarity with modern northern Han Chinese , but significant differences from southern Han Chinese. Citations Works cited Bronzeware script Chinese bronze inscriptions , also referred to as bronze script or bronzeware script , comprise Chinese writing made in several styles on ritual bronzes mainly during

1600-593: The Imperial Academy . One account of Wang's discovery was that he was suffering from malaria at the time and was prescribed Longgu (龍骨) ( dragon bones ) at a traditional Chinese pharmacy. He noticed strange carvings on these bones and concluded that these could be samples of an ancient form of Chinese writing. News of the discovery of the oracle bones created a market for them among antiques collectors, and led to multiple waves of illegal digs over several decades, with tens of thousands of pieces taken. The source of

1680-461: The Late Shang dynasty ( c.  1250  – c.  1046 BC ) and Western Zhou dynasty ( c.  1046  – 771 BC). Types of bronzes include zhong bells and ding tripodal cauldrons. Early inscriptions were almost always made with a stylus into a clay mold, from which the bronze itself was then cast. Additional inscriptions were often later engraved onto bronzes after casting. The bronze inscriptions are one of

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1760-539: The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project as follows: For most of Yinxu I, the site was a small settlement. The first large buildings appeared in the later part of the period, together with oracle bone inscriptions, large-scale human sacrifice and chariot burials. Dong also included kings Pan Geng , Xiao Xin and Xiao Yi in his oracle bone period I, but no inscriptions can be reliably assigned to pre-Wu Ding reigns. Some scholars assign these kings to

1840-582: The clerical script used in the Han through the Wei - Jin periods. Meanwhile, in the eastern states, vulgar forms had become popular sooner; they also differed more radically from and more completely displaced the traditional forms. These eastern scripts, which also varied somewhat by state or region, were later misunderstood by Xu Shen , author of the Han dynasty etymological dictionary Shuowen Jiezi , who thought they predated

1920-410: The "dragon bones" was eventually traced to the small village of Xiaotun , just outside Anyang . In 1910, noted scholar Luo Zhenyu affirmed that the area was the site of the last Shang dynasty capital. Canadian missionary and oracle bone analyst James Menzies also independently identified Anyang as the capital in 1910. In 1917 , Wang Guowei deciphered the oracle bone inscriptions of the names of

2000-493: The 12,000 inscribed bronzes extant today, roughly 3,000 date from the Shang dynasty, 6,000 from the Zhou dynasty, and the final 3,000 from the Qin and Han dynasties . Inscriptions on Shang bronzes are of a fairly uniform style, making it possible to discuss a "Shang bronze script", although great differences still exist between typical characters and certain instances of clan names or emblems. Like early period oracle bone script ,

2080-497: The 13th century BC have been discovered. Sets of inscribed symbols on pottery, jade, and bone that have been discovered at a variety of Neolithic archeological sites across China have not been demonstrated to have any direct or indirect ancestry to the Shang oracle bone script at Anyang. Along with the contemporary bronzeware script , the oracle bone script of the Late Shang period appears pictographic. The earliest oracle bone script appears even more so than examples from late in

2160-590: The American missionary Frank H. Chalfant (1862–1914) in his 1906 book Early Chinese Writing , which first appeared in Chinese books during the 1930s. In earlier decades, Chinese authors used a variety of names for the inscriptions based on the name of Yinxu , their purpose ( 卜 bǔ 'to divine'), or the method of inscription ( 契 qì 'to engrave'). A previously common term was 殷墟卜辭 ( Yīnxū bǔcí 'Yinxu divinatory texts'). Oraculology ( 甲骨学 ; 甲骨學 ; jiǎgǔxué )

2240-663: The Hougang site, remains of palaces and temples, royal cemeteries, oracle bone inscriptions, bronze and bone workshops and the discovery of the Huanbei site on the north bank of the Huan River . One of the largest and oldest sites of Chinese archaeology, excavations here have laid the foundation for work across the country. Four periods are recognized at the site based on pottery types. They correlate approximately with oracle bone periods assigned by Dong Zuobin , royal reigns and dates assigned by

2320-559: The River Classic , published during the Southern and Northern Dynasties period (420-589 CE). Thereafter, the once-great city of Yīn was relegated to legend along with its founding dynasty until its rediscovery in the final years of the Qing dynasty . Yinxu is well known for its oracle bones , which were first recognized as containing ancient Chinese writing in 1899 by Wang Yirong , director of

2400-491: The Shang capital by the time of Shang king Wu Ding . Wu Ding launched numerous military campaigns from this base against surrounding tribes, thus securing Shang rule and raising the dynasty to its historical zenith. According to the traditional accounts, later rulers became pleasure-seekers who took no interest in state affairs. King Zhòu , the last of the Shang dynasty kings, is particularly remembered for his ruthlessness and debauchery. His increasingly autocratic laws alienated

2480-443: The Shang dynasty, most graphs were already conventionalized in such a simplified fashion that the meanings of many of the pictographs are not immediately apparent. Without careful research to compare these to later forms, one would probably not know that these represented 豕 'swine' and 犬 'dog' respectively. As William G. Boltz notes, most of the oracle bone graphs are not depicted realistically enough for those who do not already know

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2560-435: The Shang kings and constructed a complete Shang genealogy. This closely matched that in the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian , confirming the historical authenticity of the legendary Shang dynasty and the archaeological importance of Yinxu. However, the oracle bone inscriptions record the name of the state as Dàyìshāng ( 大邑商 ) or Shāngyì ( 商邑 ). The first official archeological excavations at Yinxu were led by

2640-400: The Shang's existence, the site was forgotten for millennia. Its rediscovery in 1899 resulted from an investigation into oracle bones that were discovered being sold nearby. The rediscovery of Yinxu marked the beginning of decades of intensive excavation and study. It is one of China's oldest and largest archeological sites, and was selected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2006. Yinxu

2720-654: The Warring States Qin forms, and thus labeled them gǔwén (古文), or "ancient script". It has been anticipated that bronze script will some day be encoded in Unicode , very likely in Plane 3 (the Tertiary Ideographic Plane, or TIP); however, no codepoints have yet been allocated or officially proposed for it (unlike the seal and oracle bone scripts, which both have ranges of codepoints tentatively blocked out within

2800-488: The abundant Chinese ritual bronze artifacts extant today, about 12,000 have inscriptions. These have been periodically unearthed ever since their creation, and have been systematically collected and studied since at least the Song dynasty . The inscriptions tend to grow in length over time, from only one to six or so characters for the earlier Shang examples, to forty or so characters in the longest, late-Shang case, and frequently

2880-416: The addition of the 禾 component. Some characters are only attested in the oracle bone script, dropping out of later usage and usually being replaced by newer characters. An example is a fragment bearing character for 'spring' that has no known modern counterpart. In such cases, available context may be used to determine the possible meaning of the character. In other cases, the character may be assumed to be

2960-412: The already cast bronzes, rather than being written into the wet clay of piece-molds as had been the earlier practice. The engraving was often roughly and hastily executed. In Warring States period bronze inscriptions, trends from the late Spring and Autumn period continue, such as the use of artistically embellished scripts (e.g., Bird and Insect Scripts) on decorated bronze items. In daily writing, which

3040-532: The archeologist Li Ji of the Institute of History and Philosophy from 1928 - 37 . They uncovered the remains of a royal palace, several royal tombs, and more than 100,000 oracle bones that show the Shang had a well-structured script with a complete system of written signs. Since 1950 ongoing excavations by the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have uncovered evidence of stratification at

3120-567: The center of the shell or bone, then moving toward the edge such that the two sides mirror one another. Despite the pictorial nature of the oracle bone script, it was a fully functional and mature writing system by the time of the Shang dynasty, meaning it was able to record the Old Chinese language, and not merely fragments of ideas or words. This level of maturity clearly implies an earlier period of development of at least several hundred years. From their presumed origins as pictographs and signs, by

3200-428: The concurrent simplified, linearized and more rectilinear form of writing as seen on the oracle bones. A few Shang inscriptions have been found which were brush-written on pottery, stone, jade or bone artifacts, and there are also some bone engravings on non-divination matters written in a complex, highly pictographic style; the structure and style of the bronze inscriptions is consistent with these. The soft clay of

3280-417: The difficulty in decipherment is that components of certain oracle bone script characters may differ in later script forms. Such differences may be accounted for by character simplification and/or by later generations misunderstanding the original graph, which had evolved beyond recognition. For instance, the standard character 秋 'autumn' now appears with the components 禾 'plant stalk' and 火 'fire', whereas

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3360-403: The earliest evidence of written Chinese. Bronze and jade relics constitute evidence of the funeral customs of Yinxu, including human and animal sacrifice. A large number of handicrafts and workshops have been discovered at Yinxu. Patterns on utensils and bronzeware include those resembling animal faces, whorl patterns, and the taotie pattern. Large-scale bronzeware excavated at the site like

3440-441: The earliest scripts in the Chinese family of scripts , preceded by the oracle bone script . For the early Western Zhou to early Warring States period, the bulk of writing which has been unearthed has been in the form of bronze inscriptions. As a result, it is common to refer to the variety of scripts of this period as "bronze script", even though there is no single such script. The term usually includes bronze inscriptions of

3520-446: The excavation of Yinxu, the Chinese historical record began in the first year of the subsequent Zhou dynasty, but the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions confirmed the historicity of the Shang, which had come under question. The framework of early ancient Chinese history was reconstructed, making it possible to assess the credibility of traditional accounts of Shang history. The 150 000 oracle bones unearthed at Yinxu comprise much of

3600-463: The integration of theories, research methods and materials from various disciplines, such as paleography, history, archaeology, historical culture, historical literature, and cultural anthropology, to thoroughly study the historical and cultural background of the oracle bones and some of the patterns of the oracle bone divination. It is a diversified and specialized discipline. In the early days of oracle bone discovery, oracle bones were called qiwen , and

3680-935: The mid to late Spring and Autumn period, artistic derivative scripts with vertically elongated forms appeared on bronzes, especially in the eastern and southern states, and remained in use into the Warring States period (see detail of inscription from the Warring States Tomb of Marquis Yĭ of Zēng below left). In the same areas, in the late Spring and Autumn to early Warring States , scripts which embellished basic structures with decorative forms such as birds or worms also appeared. These are known as Bird Script ( niǎoshū 鳥書) and Worm Script ( chóngshū 蟲書), and collectively as Bird-worm scripts , ( niǎochóngshū 鳥蟲書; see Bronze sword of King Gōujiàn to right); however, these were primarily decorative forms for inscriptions on bronzes and other items, and not scripts in daily use. Some bronzes of

3760-438: The modern character xū 戌 (the 11th Earthly Branch ), while [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] are both hóu 侯 "marquis". This was true of normal as well as extra complex identificational graphs, such as the hǔ 虎 "tiger" clan emblem at right, which was turned 90 degrees clockwise on its bronze. These inscriptions are almost all cast (as opposed to engraved), and are relatively short and simple. Some were mainly to identify

3840-400: The name Yīn ( 殷 ) appears to have not been used in this way until the succeeding Zhou dynasty . In particular, the name does not appear in the oracle bones , which refer to the state as Shāng ( 商 ), and its final capital as Dàyì Shāng (大邑商 "Great Settlement Shang"). Among surviving ancient Chinese historical documents, Yin is described as the final capital of the Shang dynasty. There

3920-463: The name of a clan or other name, while typical inscriptions include the maker's clan name and the posthumous title of the ancestor who is commemorated by the making and use of the vessel. These inscriptions, especially those late period examples identifying a name, are typically executed in a script of highly pictographic flavor, which preserves the formal, complex Shang writing as would have primarily been written on bamboo or wood books, as opposed to

4000-538: The nearby Huanbei urban site, which was roughly contemporaneous with the early part of Yinxu I. Excavation at the latter site is complicated by the fact that it lies under Anyang airport, and no inscriptions have been found. At 30 square kilometers, Yinxu is the largest archaeological site in China. Excavations have uncovered over 80 rammed-earth foundation sites including palaces, shrines, tombs and workshops. From these remains archaeologists have been able to confirm that this

4080-436: The ninth, King Yì , this trend becomes more obvious. Some have used the problematic term " large seal " (大篆 dàzhuàn ) to refer to the script of this period. This term dates back to the Han dynasty , when (small) seal script and clerical script were both in use. It thus became necessary to distinguish between the two, as well as any earlier script forms which were still accessible in the form of books and inscriptions, so

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4160-480: The nobility until King Wu of the Zhou dynasty was able to gain the support to rise up and overthrow the Shang. The Zhou dynasty established their capital at Fenghao near modern-day Xi'an , and Yīn was abandoned to fall into ruin. These ruins were mentioned by Sima Qian in his Records of the Grand Historian , more precisely in the Battle of Julu , and described in some detail by Li Daoyuan in his Commentary to

4240-460: The oracle bone characters found that they were 23% pictographs, 2% simple indicatives, 32% associative compounds, 11% phonetic loans, 27% phono-semantic compounds, and 6% undetermined. Although it was a fully functional writing system, the oracle bone script was not fully standardized. By the early Western Zhou period, these traits had vanished, but in both periods, the script was not highly regular or standardized; variant forms of graphs abound, and

4320-413: The oracle bone form depicts an insect-like figure with antennae – either a cricket or a locust – with a variant depicting fire [REDACTED] below said figure. In this case, the modern character is a simplification of an archaic variant 𪛁 (or 𥤚 ) which is closer to the oracle bone script form – albeit with the insect figure being confused with the similar-looking character for 龜 'turtle' and

4400-501: The other tombs on the site, and in addition to the remains of the Queen the tomb was discovered to contain six dog skeletons, 16 human slave skeletons, and numerous grave goods of huge archaeological value. The tomb was thoroughly excavated and extensively restored and is now open to the public. The exhibition hall also features chariot pits where the earliest samples of animal-driven carts discovered by Chinese archaeology are on display. Before

4480-412: The period (thus some evolution did occur over the roughly 200-year period). Comparing the oracle bone script to both Shang and early Western Zhou period writing on bronzes, the oracle bone script is clearly greatly simplified, and rounded forms are often converted to rectilinear ones; this is thought to be due to the difficulty of engraving the bone's hard surface, compared with the ease of writing them in

4560-481: The period were incised in a rough, casual manner, with graph structures often differing somewhat from typical ones. It is thought that these reflected the popular (vulgar) writing of the time which coexisted with the formal script. Seals have been found from the Warring States period , mostly cast in bronze, and minted bronze coins from this period are also numerous. These form an additional, valuable resource for

4640-456: The phonetic. Though no modern character consists of these two components, it likely refers to a type of Shang dynasty ritual with a name similar to the pronunciation of 升 in Old Chinese. In the same collection of fragments, the character ⟨阝心⟩ was surmised to be a place name, since the semantic component 阜 means 'mound', 'hill', and the divination concerned the king traveling for

4720-676: The piece-molds used to produce the Shang to early Zhou bronzes was suitable for preserving most of the complexity of the brush-written characters on such books and other media, whereas the hard, bony surface of the oracle bones was difficult to engrave, spurring significant simplification and conversion to rectilinearity. Furthermore, some of the characters on the Shang bronzes may have been more complex than normal due to particularly conservative usage in this ritual medium, or when recording identificational inscriptions (clan or personal names); some scholars instead attribute this to purely decorative considerations. Shang bronze script may thus be considered

4800-456: The preceding Shang dynasty as well. However, there are great differences between the highly pictorial Shang emblem (aka "identificational") characters on bronzes (see "ox" clan insignia below), typical Shang bronze graphs, writing on bronzes from the middle of the Zhou dynasty, and that on late Zhou to Qin , Han and subsequent period bronzes. Furthermore, starting in the Spring and Autumn period ,

4880-405: The reorientation of some graphs, by rotating them 90 degrees, as if to better fit on tall, narrow slats. The style must have developed on books of bamboo or wood slats, and then carried over to the oracle bone script. Additionally, the layout of characters in columns from top to bottom is mostly carried over from bamboo books. In some instances, characters are instead written in rows in order to match

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4960-403: The result being a decrease in pictographic quality, as depicted in the chart below. Some flexibility in orientation of graphs (rotation and reversibility) continues in the Western Zhou, but this becomes increasingly scarce throughout the Zhou dynasty. The graphs start to become slightly more uniform in structure, size and arrangement by the time of the third Zhou sovereign, King Kāng , and after

5040-474: The royal family. As such, they provide invaluable insights into the character of late Shang society. The common Chinese term for oracle bone script is 甲骨文 ( jiǎgǔwén 'shell and bone script'), which is an abbreviation of 龜甲獸骨文字 ( guījiǎ shòugǔ wénzì 'turtle-shell and animal-bone script'). This term is a translation of the English phrase "inscriptions upon bone and tortoise shell", which had been coined by

5120-477: The same forms as in the late Western Zhou. However, regional forms then began to diverge stylistically as early as the Spring and Autumn period, with the forms in the state of Qin remaining more conservative. At this time, seals and minted coins, both probably primarily of bronze, were already in use, according to traditional documents, but none of the extant seals have yet been indisputably dated to that period. By

5200-573: The script to recognize what they stand for; although pictographic in origin, they are no longer pictographs in function. Boltz instead calls them zodiographs , emphasizing their function as representing concepts exclusively through words. Similarly, Qiu labels them semantographs . By the late Shang, oracle bone graphs had already evolved into mostly non-pictographic forms, including all the major types of Chinese characters now in use. Loangraphs, phono-semantic compounds, and associative compounds were already common. One structural and functional analysis of

5280-652: The script was slow, so it remained more similar to the typical late Western Zhou script as found on bronzes of that period and the Shizhoupian compendium of ca. 800 BC. As a result, it was not until around the middle of the Warring States period that popular (aka common or vulgar) writing gained momentum in Qin, and even then, the vulgar forms remained somewhat similar to traditional forms, changing primarily in terms of becoming more rectilinear. Traditional forms in Qin remained in use as well, so that two forms of writing coexisted. The traditional forms in Qin evolved slowly during

5360-623: The size and orientation of graphs is also irregular. A graph when inverted horizontally generally refers to the same word, and additional components are sometimes present without changing the meaning. These irregularities persisted until the standardization of the seal script during the Qin dynasty . There are over 30,000 distinct characters found from all the bone fragments so far, which may represent around 4,000 individual characters in their various forms. The majority of these still remain undeciphered, although scholars believe they can decipher between 1,500 and 2,000 of these characters. One reason for

5440-541: The structures and details often vary from one piece of writing to the next, and even within the same piece. Although most are not pictographs in function, the early Western Zhou bronze inscriptions have been described as more pictographic in flavor than those of subsequent periods. During the Western Zhou, many graphs begin to show signs of simplification and linearization (the changing of rounded elements into squared ones, solid elements into short line segments, and thick, variable-width lines into thin ones of uniform width), with

5520-518: The structures and orientations of individual graphs varied greatly in the Shang bronze inscriptions, such that one may find a particular character written differently each time rather than in a standardized way (see the many examples of "tiger" graph to the lower left). As in the oracle bone script, characters could be written facing left or right, turned 90 degrees, and sometimes even flipped vertically, generally with no change in meaning. For instance, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] both represent

5600-404: The study of Chinese bronze inscriptions. It is also from this period that the first surviving bamboo and silk manuscripts have been uncovered. In the early Warring States period, typical bronze inscriptions were similar in content and length to those in the late Western Zhou to Spring and Autumn period . One of the most famous sets of bronzes ever discovered dates to the early Warring States:

5680-490: The study of oracle bones was called qiology . In 1931, Zhou Yitong proposed for the first time that "oracle bone science" was an independent discipline. Wang Yuxin emphasized that oracle bones are precious cultural relics and historical materials left over from the ancient period, but their value for archaeological and historical research lies in orthography beyond script interpretation, which has become increasingly recognized by scholars as orthography develops. Oracle bone science

5760-485: The term is best avoided entirely. By the beginning of the Eastern Zhou , in the Spring and Autumn period , many graphs are fully linearized, as seen in the chart above; additionally, curved lines are straightened, and disconnected lines are often connected, with the result of greater convenience in writing, but a marked decrease in pictographic quality. In the Eastern Zhou, the various states initially continued using

5840-461: The terms " large seal " (大篆 dàzhuàn ) and "small seal" (小篆 xiǎozhuàn , aka 秦篆 Qín zhuàn ) came into being. However, since the term "large seal" is variously used to describe zhòuwén (籀文) examples from the ca. 800 BC Shizhoupian compendium, or inscriptions on both late W. Zhou bronze inscriptions and the Stone Drums of Qin , or all forms (including oracle bone script ) predating small seal,

5920-475: The text with divinatory cracks; in others, columns of text rotate 90 degrees mid-phrase. These are exceptions to the normal pattern of writing, and inscriptions were never read bottom to top. Columns of text in Chinese writing are traditionally laid out from right to left; this pattern is first found with the Shang-era bronze inscriptions. However, oracle bone inscriptions are often arranged with columns beginning near

6000-482: The wet clay of the molds the bronzes were cast from. The more detailed and more pictorial style of the bronze graphs is thought to be more representative of typical Shang writing using bamboo books than the oracle bone forms; this typical style continued to evolve into writing styles of the Western Zhou period, and then into the seal script within the state of Qin . It is known that the Shang people also wrote with brush and ink, as brush-written graphs have been found on

6080-424: The writing in each region gradually evolved in different directions, such that the script styles in the Warring States of Chu , Qin and the eastern regions, for instance, were strikingly divergent. In addition, artistic scripts also emerged in the late Spring and Autumn to early Warring States, such as Bird Script (鳥書 niǎoshū ), also called Bird Seal Script ( niǎozhuàn 鳥篆), and Worm Script ( chóngshū 蟲書). Of

6160-599: Was discovered at a site closely linked to the ancient Zhou heartland. Among thousands of pieces, 200–300 bore inscriptions. Among the major scholars making significant contributions to the study of the oracle bone writings, especially early on, were: A proposal to include the oracle bone script in Unicode is being prepared. Code points U+35400–U+36BFF in Unicode Plane 3 (the Tertiary Ideographic Plane) have been tentatively allocated. 丁未卜，王[礻升]叀父戊？ This

6240-503: Was not embellished in this manner, the typical script continued evolving in different directions in various regions, and this divergence was accelerated by both a lack of central political control as well as the spread of writing outside of the nobility. In the state of Qin, which was somewhat culturally isolated from the other states, and which was positioned on the old Zhou homeland, the script became more uniform and stylistically symmetrical, rather than changing much structurally. Change in

6320-496: Was the first time that the graph ⟨ 礻升 ⟩ had been attested attested in oracle bone inscriptions. Wang translated the sentence as: "Prognostication on the day dingwei : if the king performs the sheng sacrifice, will it benefit Ancestor Wu?" The newly found graph was tentatively assigned the same modern reading as the phonetic component 升 . Yinxu Yinxu ( Mandarin pronunciation: [ín.ɕý] ; Chinese : 殷墟 ; lit. 'Ruins of Yin')

6400-457: Was the spiritual and cultural center of the Shang dynasty. The best preserved of the Shang dynasty royal tombs unearthed at Yinxu is the Tomb of Fu Hao . The extraordinary Lady Hao was a military leader and the wife of Shang King Wu Ding . The tomb was discovered in 1976 by Zheng Zhenxiang and has been dated to 1250 BCE. It was completely undisturbed, having escaped the looting that had damaged

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