The Origin of Chinese Characters in China

Study on the origin of Chinese characters;

1, how did Chinese characters come into being?

2. In what era and where.

Several theories about the origin of Chinese characters;

1, Chinese characters originated from the Eight Diagrams: Liu Intimate, "the ancestor of Chinese characters, about the Book of Changes and sixty-four hexagrams". However, the unearthed data show that the Eight Diagrams were formally formed after the Western Han Dynasty, so it has nothing to do with the origin of the Chinese character system. However, it has an influence on the origin of individual Chinese characters related to primitive divination, leaving traces on their glyphs.

2. Chinese characters begin with the knot: Zhu Zonglai, a modern scholar, "Writing begins with the knot". Knots have nothing to do with the origin of Chinese character system, and individual characters are formed by knots.

3. Chinese characters begin with pictures: Mr. Tang Lan pointed out in "China Philology" that "characters begin with pictures, and the original characters are recognizable pictures".

4. Characters originated from pictures and scribbles: Mr. Guo Moruo proposed in the article "Dialectical Development of Ancient Chinese Characters" that Chinese characters have two sources-pictures and scribbles, and the origin of characters has two systems: pictographic and referential.

5. Cangjie's word-making: The cultural information revealed by its legend is that the origin of Chinese characters was in the Yellow Emperor's era more than 5,000 years ago, and the original Chinese characters were created by witch history.

(The above content comes from the notes on the topic "Origin of Chinese Characters" in the specialized elective course "Philology")