What is the Yin Ruins in Anyang?

Yin Ruins are the ruins of the capital of China slave society in the late Shang Dynasty. They are located in Xiaotun Village in the northwest of Anyang City, Henan Province, including more than ten villages on both sides of Huan River, such as Hougang, Gaolouzhuang, Huayuanzhuang, Sipanmo and Xiao Min Village, with a total area of about 24 square kilometers and a history of more than 3,300 years.

It is famous at home and abroad for its large number of unearthed Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronzes.

In the 0/4th century BC, Pan Geng, the 20th king of Shang Dynasty, moved his capital from Qufu, Shandong Province to Yin, a city with beautiful scenery and fertile land. As the capital of Shang Dynasty, Yin experienced eight dynasties 12 kings, which lasted for 273 years.

Later generations called this period of history Yin Dynasty, and this place is also called Yin Capital.

After the Yin capital was abandoned by the Western Zhou Dynasty, it gradually became a ruin, so it was also called "Yin Ruins".

Yin ruins covers an area of about 24 square kilometers, 6 kilometers from east to west and 4 kilometers from north to south.

It is roughly divided into palace area, tomb area, General Cemetery area, handicraft workshop area, civilian residential area and slave residential area, and the urban layout is rigorous and reasonable.

From the scale and area of its city, the grandeur of its palaces and the exquisite quality, beauty, strangeness and quantity of unearthed cultural relics, it can be fully proved that it is not only the political, economic and cultural center of the whole country, but also the center of the East, and it is indeed a bustling metropolis.

The greatest contribution of archaeological excavation in Yin Ruins is the discovery of Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is Oracle Bone Inscriptions and a few notes written by Shang people on tortoise shells and animal bones.

Shang rulers were superstitious about ghosts and gods and always used to use divination to decide things. They should communicate with people and God through the media and be familiar with God's will.

Psychics will use bronze knives or jade knives to engrave the reasons and results of each divination on the Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

This is the Oracle Bone Inscriptions we see today.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the oldest systematic character discovered so far in China, and it already has the word-formation methods such as pictographic characters, fingering, knowing characters, pictophonetic characters, transliteration characters, borrowed characters and the basic forms of modern Chinese character structure.

Its content involves all aspects of social life in Shang Dynasty, and it can be called the earliest "file" in human history.

Since Oracle Bone Inscriptions was discovered in Yin Ruins at the end of 19, about160,000 pieces of Oracle bones have been unearthed.

At present, there are more than 4,000 words in * * * in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and scholars agree that there are more than 1000 words.

Scholars have been able to roughly understand the main contents of social history, politics, economy and culture of Shang Dynasty through these hundreds of thousands of Oracle bones and the recognized word 1000.

Although Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Oracle Bone Inscriptions are not strictly historical records, they are the most important and direct materials for the study of China ancient characters and the ancient history of China, especially the history of Shang Dynasty.

Anyang Yinxu Museum