There are those Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Also known as "Yin Ruins Characters", "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" and "Yin Qi", it is the characters carved on tortoise shell and beast bones in Shang Dynasty.

65438+ was discovered in the ruins of Yindu City at the end of 2009, and it is the earliest Chinese character sample discovered so far.

A total of * * * 65,438+millions of China Oracle bones contain more than 5,000 different characters and figures, of which about 65,438+0,000 characters have been recognized.

There are about 27% pictophonetic characters in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which shows that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a fairly mature writing system.

Characteristics of Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Oracle Bone Inscriptions used a knife as a writing tool and tortoise shell bones as a carrier material, belonging to the early stage of Chinese characters, so it has the following characteristics:

1, the stroke lines are thin, mostly straight lines, and the folding pen is often engraved with two knives, with almost no bending;

2. The shape is slender, and the straight pen is longer than the horizontal pen, which is related to the difficulty of holding the knife;

3. The physical structure changes with the number of strokes, and the size is not uniform;

4. There are a large number of variant characters, especially pictographs, and there are often many ways to write a word;

5. The positions of the radicals in the combined words can be interchanged, indicating that the physical structure at that time was not fixed.

China's civilization stretches for thousands of years, so the underground remains are very rich. Since modern archaeology was introduced to China from the west in the 20th century, China has made many important archaeological discoveries.

In Anyang City, Henan Province, in the middle of China, there is a capital site with an area of about 24 square kilometers, which is the world-famous Yin Ruins. According to records, Pan Geng, king of Shang Dynasty, moved his capital from Qufu, Shandong Province in the 4th century BC/KLOC, and has been the political, cultural and economic center of Shang Dynasty for nearly 300 years. BC 1046, Zhou Wuwang defeated Zhou Wang, the last emperor of Shang Dynasty, and the Shang Dynasty perished, and this place was reduced to ruins. Because Shang Dynasty was also called Yin Dynasty, it was called "Yin Ruins".

The discovery and excavation of Yin Ruins is the most important archaeological discovery in China in the 20th century. Since the first excavation in 1928, a large number of cultural relics including Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronzes have been unearthed here, among which the discovery of Oracle Bone Inscriptions is one of the major events in the world archaeological history.

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. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a tool for divination.

Before using Oracle Bone Inscriptions, we should deal with them first. Remove the flesh and blood from the Oracle bones and then saw them flat. Then, use a knife to drill a gap on the inner surface of the tortoise shell or the reverse side 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. These nicks are cracked by heat, and this kind of crack is called "sign". The wizard analyzes the trend of these cracks, obtains the result of divination, and engraves on the Oracle bones whether divination is effective or not. After the divination came true, these Oracle bones engraved with Oracle Bone Inscriptions became official files and were preserved.

At present, more than 654.38+0.6 million pieces of Oracle bones have been unearthed in Yin Ruins. Some are complete, and some are just fragments without written records. According to statistics, there are more than 4,000 words in all these Oracle Bone Inscriptions, of which about 3,000 words have been studied by scholars. Among these 3,000 words, scholars have interpreted more than 1000 words. The rest are either unreadable or scholars are seriously divided. Nevertheless, through these more than 1000 words, people can still have a general understanding of the politics, economy and culture of the Shang Dynasty.

The earliest Oracle Bone Inscriptions monograph was 19 13' s Liu E's "Tieyun Hidden Turtle".

The study of Oracle inscriptions published by Guo Moruo, a famous historian and writer, on 1929 is another important monograph. At present, there are professors Qiu Xigui of Peking University and Li Xueqin of China Institute of History as the authorities of Oracle Bone Inscriptions studies in China.

In addition to the Shang Oracle bones found in Yin Ruins, the earlier Western Zhou Oracle bones have also been found in archaeology in recent years, but there are few documents about these Oracle bones, so they are not as important as Shang Oracle bones. The significance of the excavation of Yin Ruins is not limited to Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery. Over the past 70 years, archaeologists have discovered more than 50 palaces and ancestral temple sites, 12 imperial tombs, thousands of tombs of nobles and civilians, 1000 sacrificial pits, 5 handicraft workshops, more than 30 chariots and horses pits, and a large number of bronzes, jade articles, pottery and bones. These have all been shown to people.