What was Oracle Bone Inscriptions originally used for?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions originally wrote it for prayer.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions originated in Shang Dynasty.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions originated in Shang Dynasty, which is the cultural product of Shang Dynasty. It was discovered in Yin Ruins in Anyang City, Henan Province, China, with a history of more than 3,600 years. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's original writing method was to carve words on hard tortoise shells or animal bones with a knife, hence the name Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the oldest writing in China, also known as Wen Qi, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Yin Ruins or tortoise shell and beast ancient writing. It is an early form of Chinese characters, and it is also a relatively mature character in Shang Dynasty in China, which provides valuable information for the origin of Chinese characters in China and even in the world.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is one of the three oldest writing systems in the world. It embodies the writing rules independently created by the ancient people in China, and has had a fundamental impact on the ancient culture of China for thousands of years. According to Ya, Oracle Bone Inscriptions appeared because the Shang rulers were superstitious about ghosts and gods and used tortoise shells or animal bones for divination, so the above words became Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

The original Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

People in Shang dynasty were good at divination, and used the "omen" (tiny vertical and horizontal cracks) that appeared when Oracle bones were burned to predict the good or bad luck in the future. The carapace includes the abdominal carapace and dorsal carapace of soft-shelled turtle, and the bones are mostly the shoulder blades and ribs of cattle. Oracle Bone Inscriptions was first discovered in Xiaotun Village, Anyang County, Henan Province, about 3000 years ago. After identification, it is an earlier character than seal script and seal script.

Before the 24th year of Guangxu reign (1898), when harvesting peanuts, local farmers accidentally picked up some tortoise shells and animal bones and sold them to pharmacies as Chinese medicine. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the epigraphist Wang He and the student Zhao Jun accidentally discovered ancient Chinese characters on the "keel" of a Chinese herbal medicine, and only after textual research did they know that this was the capital of Shang Dynasty.

However, according to later generations' research, Wang was not the first person to find Oracle bone inscriptions, and there were others such as Wang Xiang, Meng, Liu E, Duan Fang and Hu Shicha. At first, people who profited from antiquities monopolized Oracle Bone Inscriptions and deliberately described the unearthed place as Tangyin or Weihui. Scholars were misled by it.