How was the evolution of Oracle Bone Inscriptions discovered?

The formation system of Chinese characters is the Shang Dynasty in16th century BC. Archaeology confirmed that in the early Shang Dynasty, Chinese civilization had developed to a fairly high level, and one of its main features was the appearance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is an ancient writing carved on tortoise shells and animal bones. In Shang Dynasty, the king had to do divination before doing anything, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions was the tool of divination.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions should be treated before use. Remove the flesh and blood from the Oracle bones first, and then saw them flat. Then, use a knife to drill a notch on the inside of the nail or the back of the animal bone. The arrangement of these gaps is orderly. A fortune teller or wizard engraves his name, the date of divination and the questions to be asked on the Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and then burns the hole in the Oracle Bone Inscriptions with a torch. The cracks that appear when these depressions are heated are called "signs". The wizard analyzes the trend of these cracks, obtains the result of divination, and engraves the divination on the Oracle bone. After the divination came true, these Oracle bones engraved with Oracle Bone Inscriptions became official files and were preserved.

At present, archaeologists have unearthed more than 1.6 million pieces of Oracle bones. Some are complete, and some are just fragments without written records. According to statistics, there are more than 4,000 words on all these Oracle bones, of which about 3,000 words have been verified by scholars, and among these 3,000 words, scholars have interpreted more than 1000 words. The rest are either unreadable or scholars are seriously divided. Nevertheless, through this word 1000, people can already have a general understanding of the politics, economy and culture of the Shang Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a mature and systematic writing, which laid the foundation for the development of Chinese characters in later generations. Since then, Chinese characters have gone through various forms, such as inscriptions on bronze, seal script, official script and regular script, and have been in use ever since.