How did Oracle Bone Inscriptions find out?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery went through a complicated process. It is necessary to start with the experience of a farmer named Li Cheng. This ignorant farmer has a typical, ridiculous, absurd and full of cultural sadness about Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery. He is from Xiaotun Village, Anyang County, Henan Province. Li Cheng was the first person to transport "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" as a medicinal material to the city and send it out in order to make money, but it was also in his hands that countless Oracle characters were destroyed. Lord Gong? Sin? Only history can judge. This summer, he suffered from scabies, and the pain was unbearable. Sitting in the field, he accidentally picked up a piece of white bone engraved with "painting patterns", but he didn't know that he had picked up a historical and cultural treasure anyway! Li Cheng kneaded the bones into powder and put it on scabies. The pain and itching miraculously stopped. After several smears, scabies were cured. Li Cheng was overjoyed. He collected a large number of bone fragments of various shapes thrown away by villagers and sent them to pharmacies in nearby cities for sale. He told the shopkeeper, "This bone has special effects on scabies and trauma." The drugstore owner was dubious, took it and read the Pharmacopoeia for a long time, and finally understood that this white bone is the "keel" in Chinese medicine. Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica records that the keel is a fossil of ancient reptiles, which can generate muscle and prevent erosion. The pharmacy accepted these "keels", and Sung Jae Lee put a lot of copper coins in his wallet and went home happily. From then on, I started as a "specialist" selling "keel". Li cheng collected them and sold them to pharmacies. However, at that time, the trade of medicinal materials was backward, and the local consumption of "keel" was not large, so pharmacies were unwilling to accept it. When Li Cheng sent the collected "keel" to the pharmacy again, the shopkeeper was picky: all the "keel" engraved with "painting patterns" were not accepted. Li Cheng hit a wall this time, and he immediately came up with a clever countermeasure: he picked up a knife, scraped off all the "painted patterns" on the collected "keels" and sent them to pharmacies for sale. At this point, the pharmacy warehouse has been filled with "keel". This is the treasure house of human history and culture, but the drugstore owner has no idea! Also for the money, the boss decided not to buy a "keel". However, Li Cheng did not give up this opportunity to make money, nor did he stop collecting "keels". He smashed pieces of "keel"-pieces of cultural treasures into powder, then packaged them into small packages and sold them at various fairs and temple fairs to make money! Similarly, in order to make money, drugstore owners also resell the "keel" to various places. Soon, "keel" entered the major pharmacies in Beijing. In this way, one "keel" after another, either as medicinal materials or ground into powder, has become a "good medicine" for treating thousands of patients in Qian Qian.

There is also a famous antique dealer who has an indissoluble bond with Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery. His name is Fan, and he is from wei county. In the summer of Guangxu's 25th year, Wang, who lived in Xila Hutong, Dong 'an, Beijing 1 1, contracted malaria and could not be cured for a long time. An old Chinese doctor with profound medical skills wrote a prescription for Wang. There was a medicine named "keel" on the prescription, which immediately caught the attention of Wang. After his family came back from the drugstore, Wang personally checked and found the fragments of "keel" in Chinese medicine, some of which were engraved with strange veins. He went to the drugstore and told the drugstore owner that if a vendor sent a "keel", please introduce it for him. Soon, Fan, a famous antique dealer in Beijing, was introduced. This time, he brought twelve "keels". This is when he went to Anyang and Tangyin in Henan to buy bronzes, but he didn't buy them. When I heard the local people say that "keel" is a medicinal material, I just collected 12 tablets and thought, "It's not a waste to run away." Wang was very happy to see Oracle Bone Inscriptions. He carefully studied the simplex "symbol" on each Oracle bone, and his locked eyebrows loosened. He excitedly told the people present: This is an older China play than Zhong Dingwen! Fan suddenly realized that this medicine was a real antique. So the king bought the twelve Oracle bones at a high price of one tael per word. And gave Fan six hundred and twenty pieces of silver on the spot, instructing him to continue to buy a lot for himself. Immediately, he sent his family to major pharmacies in Beijing and bought all the carved Oracle bones with a large sum of money, so that he could pawn them softly and spare no expense. Before his heroic sacrifice, he collected 1500 pieces!

Wang began his "discovery" in the collection. He forgot to eat and sleep, stayed up all night, and studied word by word with a magnifying glass. Subsequently, one pictographic, weird, abstract and monotonous character symbol after another was deciphered, and the characters were connected into a language chain, and each chain immediately formed a clear cultural image. He compared the written records such as Historical Records, Biography of Turtle, Zhou Li and Spring Palace, and finally saw in his mind the scene of Yin Shang sacrificing to heaven, the divination rhetoric of praying for well-being, the political and economic records, and the conquest of Jin Ge and Ma Tie. ...

Autumn is crisp and the moon is like water. The palace is full of friends and celebrities. Wang distributed the carefully arranged tortoise shell bones to everyone for circulation. Then, he raised a glass with great interest and solemnly told all the distinguished guests present that the "painted symbol" engraved on the Oracle Bone Inscriptions was written in the middle and late Shang Dynasty, the oldest writing in China! Immediately, the Beijing cultural circle made a sensation, the China cultural circle was shocked, and the world academic circles paid attention to it!