When did Oracle Bone Inscriptions become a cultural heritage?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions mainly refers to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins, so it is considered as the cultural heritage of the "Yin Shang era". Also known as "Yin Ruins Characters" and "Yin Qi", it is the characters carved on tortoise shell and beast bones in Shang Dynasty. /kloc-At the end of 0/9, it was discovered in Yin Ruins in Xiaotun, Anyang, Henan Province, and inherited Wen Tao's word-making method.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions was carved (or written) by the royal family on tortoise shells and animal bones in China in the late Shang Dynasty (14 ~1century) for divination. After the demise of Shang Dynasty and the rise of Zhou Dynasty, Oracle Bone Inscriptions continued to use it for a period of time, which was the earliest and most systematic data for studying the origin of Chinese characters.

Extended data:

The reason why Oracle Bone Inscriptions appeared:

From state affairs to private life, such as sacrifice, climate, harvest, conquest, hunting, sick people, childbirth, going out, etc. The royal family and nobles all asked God for advice until they decided to stop. As a result, divination became a major event in the political life of the country, and the court set up special institutions and divination officials.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions with inscriptions is preserved as a national archive and piled in caves. Therefore, Oracle Bone Inscriptions became the first-hand material to study the history of Shang Dynasty, reflecting all aspects of social life from BC 1300 to BC 1000.

"Book of Rites" says: "Yin people respect God, lead civil gods, ghosts first, then rituals." It is known that in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, before dealing with big and small affairs, kings used Oracle bones for divination, praying for ghosts and gods, and then carved questions on Oracle bones afterwards. After the demise of Shang Dynasty, divination gradually disappeared in Zhou Dynasty, and its characters were gradually unknown.

Shang rulers are superstitious about whether there will be disasters, whether it will rain, whether there will be a good harvest of crops, whether there will be a victory in the war, what to sacrifice to ghosts and gods, and divination based on fertility, disease, dreaming and other things to understand the will of ghosts and gods and the quality of things.

The materials used for divination are mainly tortoise's bellybutton, carapace and cattle's scapula. Small pits are usually dug or drilled on the back of Oracle bones for divination. This kind of pit is called "drilling" by experts in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. In the process of divination, heat is applied to these pits, causing cracks on the surface of Oracle bones. This kind of crack is called "omen"

The word "Bu" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is like a symbol. People engaged in divination judge good or bad according to the various shapes of divination.

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia-Oracle Bone Inscriptions (China Ancient Chinese Characters)