What is the significance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery?

During the Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty, there was a man named Wang, who was the head of imperial academy, the highest institution of learning at that time. Once, he saw a Chinese medicine called keel, which was very strange, so he looked through the dregs. I didn't expect there to be a seemingly literal pattern on it. So he bought all the keels and found that each keel had a similar pattern. He is convinced that this is a kind of writing, and it is relatively perfect, which 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".

In the autumn of the 25th year of Guangxu reign in the late Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1899), he served as the king of imperial academy's wine supply in the Qing court in Beijing (1845- 1900) and got malaria. He sent someone to buy a dose of Chinese medicine at Darentang Chinese Medicine Shop at the food market outside Xuanwu Gate. A medicine that Wang happened to see was called keel. Keels are the bones of ancient vertebrates. How can there be carved symbols hundreds of thousands of years ago on this bone? This aroused his curiosity. Wang, who is famous for studying ancient stone carvings, carefully studied it and found that it is not an ordinary notch, but resembles ancient Chinese characters, but its shape is neither a brush (big seal) nor a seal (small seal). In order to find more keels for in-depth study, he sent someone to Darentang to buy all the carved keels in the drugstore at a high price of two taels of silver each. Later, it was searched by antique dealer Fan and others, and accumulated more than 500 pieces of/kloc-0.

Meaning: Oracle Bone Inscriptions led the descendants of the Yellow Emperor to the development process of writing, making graphic symbols express meaning without restricting their pronunciation. This has not only created a unified cultural consciousness for thousands of years, but also led to the weakness of Chinese language expansion. The richness of language objects and the deepening of understanding of language objects force pictographic rules to produce more words and sublimate pictographic rules (understanding), force the compilation of word dictionaries to be a method to mark the meaning of words and limit the ambiguity of words, and force Yanhuang School to become a place to learn the pronunciation of words (in contrast, based on the truth of word history, culture and tradition can be thoroughly cleaned up. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which records the historical activities of the Shang royal family, is the school equipment of the Shang Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions opened a window to observe people's life in the Yellow River valley 3000 years ago.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the earliest documentary record discovered by China. Now, Oracle Bone Inscriptions has become a remarkable world discipline, with more than 500 Chinese and foreign scholars engaged in research and published more than 3,000 monographs and papers. It is of great significance to history, philology and archaeology.

Sima Qian has an article "Yin Benji" in Historical Records, which records the lineage and history of Shang Dynasty in detail. In the past, many historians were skeptical about these records, because there were no written records and no physical materials to prove them.

At the beginning of this century, Luo Zhenyu found the names of the first man and the first king in Shang Dynasty in his Oracle bones, which confirmed that the small village where these Oracle bones came from was the location of Yin Ruins, and the history books said that it was "Huanshui South, on Yin Ruins".

After that, Wang Guowei, a scholar, made a detailed textual research on the ancient princes of Shang Dynasty seen in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and compared them with the records in Historical Records, which confirmed the credibility of Yin Benji in Historical Records. Yin Ruins was the first 10 king of Shang Dynasty. In BC 13 18, Pan Geng moved his capital from Yan (near Qufu, Shandong) to Yin (around Xiaotun Village). After the 8th generation 12 king, it was established here for 273 years. These research results have advanced the reliable history of China by one thousand years.

From the discovery and identification of a piece of Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Shang Dynasty to the affirmation of a dynasty more than 3000 years ago and 600 years ago. What an amazing discovery! In this way, some scholars in the 1920s believed that China's credible history began in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the trend of "suspecting the past" was completely denied.

A large number of Oracle bones unearthed in Yin Ruins reflect the prosperity of divination in Shang Dynasty. 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.

Since/kloc-0 was first discovered in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in 899, according to the statistics of Hu Houxuan, a scholar, * * has unearthed more than 54,600 pieces of Oracle bones, including 97,600 pieces in Chinese mainland, 30,200 pieces in Taiwan Province, 89 pieces in Hongkong and more than 27,900 pieces in China * * collection. In addition, so far, about 4500 words have been engraved on these Oracle bones, and about 2000 words have been read so far.

China's writing sprouted earlier. In the Neolithic pottery of Yangshao culture, various carving symbols were found, which became the embryonic form of China characters. After two or three thousand years of gestation and development, Chinese characters reached the stage of basic maturity in Shang Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions has a certain system, strict laws, exquisite descriptions and rich contents, which plays an important role in the study of ancient Chinese characters in China. In the past, the study of ancient Chinese characters was mainly based on inscriptions on Shang and Zhou bronzes, such as Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is 1500 years earlier than Shuo Wen Jie Zi, and it comes from the unearthed cultural relics directly excavated, so it has high credibility, which is of great value for studying the origin and development of Chinese characters, correcting the mistakes in Shuo Wen Jie Zi and solving the outstanding problems in bronze inscriptions.

Judging from the characters on Oracle bones, they already have the three elements of China's calligraphy, namely, writing, writing and composition. His brushwork lines are neat and thin, straight and thick, and his strokes are multi-folded, which has an influence on the pen and knife of seal cutting in later generations. Judging from the knot, the characters have changed. Although they are different in size, they are relatively balanced and symmetrical, showing a stable pattern. Judging from the composition, although influenced by the size and shape of bone chips, it still shows the carving skills and artistic characteristics of words. "oracle calligraphy" became popular among some calligraphers and calligraphy lovers, which proved its charm.