Judging from the shape of Chinese characters. How has China's culture changed in five thousand years?

In human society, language is the first carrier of information transmission, and communication between people depends on language, but language has one drawback, that is, immediacy. What I once said disappeared like a wild goose, so words appeared. As the second carrier of information transmission, writing is more "durable" than language, and the appearance of writing provides the possibility for long-term and long-distance information transmission.

As one of the four ancient civilizations in the world, Chinese characters have a long history, from Oracle Bone Inscriptions and the rudimentary bronze inscriptions to unified seal script, and then to official script, regular script, cursive script and running script with various styles and shapes. So, with what does the font of Chinese characters change? What is the connection between this special symbol and social customs?

First, realistic hieroglyphics, ancient pre-Qin characters with changeable styles.

Our ancestors, like the ancestors of all nationalities in the world, had no words at first and only relied on oral language. Later, with the continuous improvement of the language system, more and more information needs to be memorized, and the characters have evolved step by step.

1. Before the text appears, make a note to tie the rope.

At first, human wisdom was not enough to invent words, but some things in life still needed to be recorded, so he took the lead in inventing the "knot method" between language and words.

(Notes on Ancient Knoting Ropes)

The so-called "knotting notes" are recorded in the Book of Changes: "The ancient knotting is the rule, and later saints can use books easily." Simply put, tie a knot on the rope to help you remember. In ancient times, ancestors lived by gathering and hunting, and their lifestyle was very simple, but they still needed to record some things. For example, people's memory is limited by the weather and the changing rules of prey quantity. It is undoubtedly a qualitative leap to remember important events with the help of foreign objects.

Of course, the knot here is not just a simple knot on the rope, it is much more complicated, even more complicated than our modern writing. The color, material, thickness and warp and weft of knots have different meanings. For example, animal hair, bark, straw rope, hemp rope and other dozens of materials. "Zuo Zhuan Chun Qiu" says: "The ancients were silent, but they swore, and things were big and small ... this was enough to be kind to each other."

(Knot method)

For example, when this tribe hunted 30 sheep, it first painted the rope red to indicate success, then tied it with wool braids, with three knots indicating "three" and the last big knot indicating "ten". This simple way of recording conformed to the original lifestyle at that time.

2. With the development of social productive forces, pictures and characters appeared.

Later, China entered the slave society. In slave society, the mode of large-scale production and labor cooperation saved a lot of productivity, which could be used to do other things, such as developing handicrafts and commerce. In order to preserve the existing means of production, the previous knotting notes are not enough, so a new information carrier-pictures and words has emerged.

"History of Han Art and Literature" records: "Wang destroyed Confucius' House ... and gained ancient prose ... dozens of them are ancient characters. "These are legendary ancient Chinese characters, including Dragon Book written by Dong, Eight Ears Book written by Shennong, Shu Yun written by Huangdi and Couples Book. The strokes of these characters are called "tadpoles" because of their thick strokes and fine fonts. But these words only appear in a few strokes of history books, which have been lost for a long time, and there are no related words to test.

The earliest recognizable writing in China is "Bone Carving", which is a kind of picture writing carved on animal bones. The earliest characters of our ancestors were not composed of strokes, but some relatively vivid pictures. For example, "Mountain" simply draws the image of the mountain, and the common scenes in daily life are also simply drawn, which can be described as "painting and calligraphy are of the same origin".

In the early days, Oracle Bone Inscriptions mostly recorded social life, for example, expressing various actions of people and animals, and recording people, plants and various things in nature. This kind of picture text is relatively simple, more like a simple picture, without complicated deep meaning, and most of them directly reflect people's social activities. At that time, the social life was not as colorful as it is now, and the picture was relatively simple, generally showing picking, hunting, natural phenomena and so on.

When social life is becoming richer and richer, simple pictures are no longer enough to express the existing means of production and ideology and culture, so many cognitive words appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions later.

The so-called knowing characters are generally composed of two or more unique Chinese characters, such as drawing a person with a weapon in his hand, indicating "attack." During this period, Oracle Bone Inscriptions began to weaken in images and strengthen in symbols, more like some simple symbols, paving the way for the emergence of the next mature characters.

3. Yin Shang worshiped ghosts and gods, wrote for divination, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions appeared.

During Guangxu period, there was an epitaph named Wang. One day, he came to Anyang, Henan Province for medical advice. There is a medicine called "keel", which can cure all diseases. When Wang saw this medicine, he was keenly aware that it was a relic engraved with ancient characters, and the characters engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones could be seen again. This is Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

(Oracle Bone Inscriptions)

Oracle Bone Inscriptions unearthed in Yin Ruins is the earliest mature script in China, which records the divination notes in the late Shang Dynasty. In the heyday of slavery, the Shang Dynasty had three characteristics, namely, believing in history, drinking and worshiping ghosts and gods. In the Shang Dynasty, the worship of natural things was still popular, such as mountains, rivers, the sun, the moon and stars. At this time, people's exploration of nature is not enough to understand the laws of all things, so these eternal things have become the "emperor" belief of businessmen.

"Emperor" is the highest authority in merchant belief. It transcends all things, overlooks human beings, dominates all social order in the world and rules the god of nature, so human beings need to respect it absolutely.

Believing businessmen are keen on asking questions. Their divination objects include gods, earthly beings and ghosts. Generally speaking, it is the control of natural climate, the fortune of the world, the victory or defeat of war and the decline of political power. It is precisely because of businessmen's enthusiasm for divination that Oracle Bone Inscriptions came into being as a divination figure.

These symbols used for divination, which are engraved on processed tortoise shells and animal bones, are "notes and inscriptions" and are also the main part of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Because Oracle Bone Inscriptions is carved on the hard bone with a knife, his strokes are mostly straight lines with uniform thickness, and the font is tall and straight, solid and powerful, and the font is mainly rectangular, which is convenient for carving.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions, as an early writing, still bears some pictographic traces, and the font is a little immature and simple, but it is still the crystallization of the wisdom of our ancestors.

(Oracle Bone Inscriptions comparison table)

4. Words written on bronzes, and bronze inscriptions produced by sacrifices.

After Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions appeared again. During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the bronze casting technology in China was quite mature. For cooking and sacrifice, craftsmen at that time made a kind of container-Ding. As a sacrificial utensil, Ding has become the carrier of new characters, so inscriptions on bronze are also called "Zhong Dingwen".

The bronze inscriptions in Shang dynasty were few in number, generally only a few words. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the number of words increased significantly. Later, Mao Dinggong, which was unearthed in Zhou Xuanwang period, reached 497 words, covering a wide range of aspects, including politics, economy, military affairs, culture and sacrifice.

Among them, the bronze inscriptions in Shang dynasty are mostly graphic characters representing family emblems, so they are graphic and have different strokes, which look simple and natural, more like a pattern. By the end of the Shang Dynasty, there had been a long inscription, and at this time some fonts of the inscription had been standardized, such as "tripod".