What is Oracle Bone Inscriptions? Why did people write on tortoise shell bones at that time?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions: It is an ancient script in China, also known as "Wen Qi", "Oracle Bone Inscriptions", "Yin Ruins" or "tortoise shell and animal bones". As an early form of Chinese characters, it is the oldest mature script of China Dynasty, which was first unearthed in Yin Ruins in Anyang City, Henan Province.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions wrote on the tortoise shell:

Most people in Shang dynasty were superstitious about ghosts and gods, and they had to ask questions about big and small issues. Some divination is about the weather, some is about the harvest of farming, some is about diseases and premature birth, and there are hunting, fighting, sacrifice and other important things to ask.

Divination is predicting bad luck. The method is to drill holes in tortoise shells or animal bones and bake them with fire, and predict the bad luck through the shape and direction of cracks after cracking, and engrave the prediction results on them for later verification. So write it on the tortoise shell.

Extended data:

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's record content:

(1) The processed and scraped tortoise shells and animal bones should be kept by special diviners. The fortune teller carved notes on their edges to explain the origin and storage of these Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which is called "note inscription";

(2) During divination, the diviner cauterizes the drill socket with the burning bauhinia wood pillar, so that the front end of the fracture is "divination". This kind of cracking is called "divination", which is the basis for inferring good or bad fortune in divination. In the early days of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, there were numbers engraved with divination order, also called "trillion order";

(3) The main part of Oracle Bone Inscriptions is Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which is the inscription that records the progress and results of divination after the divination. Most of them are engraved on the front of Oracle bones, and some are engraved on the back;

(4) Sixty branches are named after Tiangan (A, B, C, D, E, Ji, G, Xin, Man and Ghost) and Dizhi (Zi, Ugly, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai).

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