How did Oracle Bone Inscriptions develop?

A simple Oracle Bone Inscriptions is shown in the following figure:

Oracle Bone Inscriptions mainly refers to the characters carved on tortoise shells or animal bones by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty in China. It is the earliest known written carrier of Shang Dynasty in China and East Asia.

2017165438+1On October 24th, Oracle Bone Inscriptions successfully passed the evaluation of the International Advisory Committee of UNESCO Memory of the World Project and was selected into the Memory of the World Register.

Study history

During the Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty, Wang, an antique dealer and engraver, offered wine to the highest institution of learning in imperial academy at that time (equivalent to the president). Once, he saw that Chinese medicine was called keel, and he felt very strange when he saw the words engraved on it. He turned over the dregs, but he didn't expect there was a seemingly literal pattern on it. So he bought all the keels and found that each keel had a similar pattern. He painted these strange patterns, and after a long period of research, he was convinced that it was a kind of writing, and it was relatively perfect, and it should be from the Yin and Shang Dynasties.

Later, people discovered the place where the keel was unearthed-Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan Province, where a large number of keels were unearthed. Because these keels are mainly Oracle Bone Inscriptions of turtles and mammals, people named them "Oracle Bone Inscriptions", and the subject of studying them is called "Oracle bones". This statement is now questioned.