When did the ancient Oracle bones begin?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is one of the Chinese characters, and it is also the oldest mature character in China. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is also called Wen Qi, tortoise shell or tortoise shell animal bone. After divination with tortoise shell and animal bones, Shang people used knives to engrave the divination time, the names of the diviners and the things they divined, and some even engraved the good and bad luck that came true a few days later. However, the specific situation varies with the stage of Oracle bones. Generally speaking, the inscriptions in Wuding period are the most complete and the most abundant in existence. Scholars call this kind of record Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and this kind of writing is Oracle Bone Inscriptions. A large number of Oracle bones with Oracle Bone Inscriptions were unearthed in Yin Ruins, all of which have the basic structure of Chinese characters. A large number of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and inscriptions not only recorded the political, economic, military, meteorological and divination situation at that time, but also marked the maturity of the writing. The picture shows Oracle Bone Inscriptions carved on the tortoise shell.

"Oracle Bone Inscriptions" is the ancestor of China script, and it is the oldest script used about 4,000 years ago (Shang Dynasty). Carved on tortoise shells or animal bones, it is a lost text. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery is a modern thing, only more than one hundred years, so the research time is not long.

Say Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Then talk about Yin Ruins:

Yin ruins

Yin Ruins, the ruins of China's capital in the late Shang Dynasty, straddle the north and south banks of Anyang River. There are many sites, such as the palace ancestral temple area, the tomb area, many ethnic settlements, family cemeteries, Oracle Bone Inscriptions pits, bronze casting sites, jade workshops, bone workshops and so on. This is the first ancient capital site confirmed by Oracle Bone Inscriptions and archaeological excavations in the history of China. It has a history of 3300 years.

Talking about the value of Yin Ruins, Liu Qingzhu, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that as a cultural heritage, there is an important feature, that is, the longer the age, the higher the historical value.

The earliest civilization in China, internationally recognized and undisputed, is the Shang Dynasty. Yin Ruins is not a simple building, it is a capital city. What is capital? The capital is the political center, economic center, military center and cultural etiquette center of a country. It is a microcosm of a kingdom, which is unmatched by any other heritage.

This is the unique contribution and position of Yin Ruins to Chinese civilization and even human civilization.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions lit up the splendid China.

If drilling wood for fire marks that human beings bid farewell to the barbaric era of eating animals and drinking blood, then the appearance of words means that human beings have stepped out of the era of tying ropes and keeping records. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery is a beacon to illuminate Chinese civilization.

Xu Guangde, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is not only a symbol of civilization, but also a symbol of culture. It also confirmed the authenticity of a series of documents, including Historical Records, and pushed forward the recorded history of Chinese civilization for nearly five centuries.

Among the four ancient writing systems in the world, only the ancient writing system of China, represented by Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins, has written a profound history of Chinese civilization after thousands of years.

At present, there are 4500 pieces of Oracle bones 150000 unearthed in Yin Ruins, of which about 1500 words have been released. Over the past 3000 years, although Oracle Bone Inscriptions has undergone changes in different writing forms, such as inscriptions on bronze, seal script, official script and regular script, the characters and basic grammar with the characteristics of form, sound and meaning have been preserved to this day, becoming the square characters still used by one fifth of the world's population today, which has had an important impact on the way of thinking and aesthetics of China people and laid the foundation for the emergence and development of China's calligraphy art.

Walking around China society, even if dialects are difficult to communicate, Chinese characters can be written on paper at a glance-is it near? Text root!

The bronze world is unique.

"A large number of bronzes were unearthed in Yin Ruins. Such exquisite bronzes are unique in the world. " Speaking of Yin Ruins, Du, director of the Shang and Zhou Office of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, commented.

Du said that 1978 archaeological excavation of Anyang Yin Ruins unearthed more than 4,000 bronze containers. Among these bronzes, Simuwu Dafang Ding is the largest bronze unearthed in Yin Ruins. In fact, some other evidence from Anyang proves that this is not the largest bronze ware in Yin Ruins. In 2003, archaeologists discovered a factory casting bronzes during archaeological excavation in Angang. There is an internal mold for casting bronzes at the factory site, which shows a round bronze. The diameter of this round bronze reaches 1.6 meters, which is much larger than that of Simuwu. In this way, if it is a round tripod, it is much more spectacular than the Simuwu tripod.

To cast bronzes of this size and shape, there must be a number of furnaces for melting bronzes working at the same time, and there are a large number of foundry workers. This kind of casting can't be interrupted, and all kinds of jobs can cooperate organically. It can be seen that the social organization at that time was already very strict.

The bronze processing industry in Yin Shang was so developed, but there were no high-grade copper mines and tin-lead mines necessary for smelting bronze around Anyang. Some scholars speculate that craftsmen at that time had learned to carry out rough smelting in the ore producing area, and then transported the processed crude copper, crude tin and crude lead here for proportioning smelting. At that time, copper mines were probably mined in the Yangtze River basins such as Jiangxi and Anhui, and tin-lead deposits were mainly in Jiangxi. Some scholars speculate that the frequent wars in Shang Dynasty may also be related to the competition for mineral resources.

Stone tools and jade articles in Shang Dynasty can also be described as dazzling, and jade articles unearthed in Yin Ruins reflect China's superb craftsmanship and artistic imagination in the Bronze Age. Scholars believe that most of the jade unearthed in Yin Ruins are Hetian jade in Xinjiang and Xiuyu jade in Liaoning! As you can imagine, as early as 3000 years ago in Shang Dynasty, there was already a "stone road" leading to Xinjiang. This is earlier than the "Silk Road" that began in the second century BC 1200 years!

More than 8,000 tombs are rare in the world.

"Yin Ruins is a very clear ancient capital of Shang Dynasty, and this evidence is very sufficient." Liu Qingzhu said that many things in Yin Ruins are the genes of the Chinese nation.

Liu Qingzhu said that more than 8,000 tombs, including royal tombs and a large number of clan tombs, have been discovered during the 70-year archaeological excavation of Yin Ruins. The types of tombs include tombs with rectangular vertical holes, tombs without tombs and tombs with sacrificial pits, which are rare in other cultural sites in the world. These tombs are strictly graded, and the size, shape, combination and quantity of funerary objects represent the different grades and identities of the tomb owners. The tombs in Yin Ruins are large in scale, with many martyrs and exquisite ritual vessels. There are 1928 funerary objects in Muhao Tomb, but there are few or no funerary objects for civilians and slaves.

Liu Qingzhu said, "Among the tombs in Yin Ruins, there are four tombs with kings' tombs. Why did Wang use four tombs? This is a metaphor' the ground is square, the underground is square, and all sides are under my control'. In other words, if the king is buried underground, he will also control all directions. "

Yin ruins buildings fill the archaeological gap.

In 200 1 year, archaeologists led by Dr. Tang Jigen, the stationmaster of Anyang Workstation, Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, discovered a shopping mall around the North with an area of more than 4.7 million square meters in the northeast of Yin Ruins, of which only the base address of 1 is 170 meters long and covers an area of 16000 square meters, which is not only the largest single building in Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties.

The base site of the palace building 1 found in Huanbei Shopping Mall is a huge zigzag palace building site excavated in the south of the north-south axis of the city after 1999 found more than 4 million square meters of Shang Dynasty wall site, and it is also the largest rammed earth building found in Shang Dynasty so far.

Dr. Tang Jigen said that the discovery of rammed earth buildings near Huanbei Shopping Mall and its central axis is of epoch-making significance in archaeological history. This is the site of Du Yi in Shang Dynasty discovered by archaeologists after years of on-the-spot investigation and analysis of a large number of ancient cultural relics and ancient landforms. It fills the gap between the early Shang culture represented by Erligang in Zhengzhou and the late Shang culture represented by Yin Ruins, thus perfecting the chronological framework of Shang Dynasty.

At present, archaeologists have discovered more than 1 10 palaces and ancestral temples. These buildings are arranged in groups, either as ancestral temples or as social altars, which have already taken shape in the planning of the China Palace building "front facing and rear sleeping, left ancestors and right societies".

The lunar calendar is used by the lunar calendar.

According to researcher Xu Guangde, the natural science and technology of Yin Ruins has reached the world advanced level in many fields. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's records show that the Yin people have been able to accurately record solar eclipses, lunar eclipses and astrology, and have an early understanding of astronomical phenomena such as supernovae. The lunar calendar adopts the combination of yin and yang, divides a year into 12 months, and solves the contradiction with the actual solar day of the Tropic of Cancer by adding leap months. These methods are still used in the current lunar calendar in China.

In mathematics, the Yin people had already had the concepts of one, ten, hundred, thousand and ten thousand, and adopted the decimal system.

In medicine, 10 many kinds of human diseases were recognized in the late Shang Dynasty. Besides drug treatment, acupuncture, massage and other treatment methods were adopted, which reached a high level.

Archaeological excavations show that the handicraft industry in Yin Ruins is unprecedentedly developed, with complete categories and extremely high technical level. Some major handicraft production departments, such as bronze smelting and casting, jade making, pottery making, bone making, automobile manufacturing and textile manufacturing, have reached a considerable scale. Among them, white pottery and primitive porcelain in this period occupy an important position in the history of China ceramics.

The Shang Dynasty wagons unearthed in Yin Ruins have used a large number of bronze components, two sets of two wheels on a single shaft, and the structure is exquisite and complex, which embodies the superb composite technology such as machinery and bronze casting.

The highly developed science and technology during the Yin Ruins made important contributions to the development of human science and technology.