While the origin of Chinese characters is obscured and debated, the earliest indisputable evidence of a written Chinese language is the Oracle Bone inscriptions, which collectively date between 1200-1045BC.
These ancient symbols were written on bones and turtle shells and demonstrate a highly developed writing system, which would, over several centuries, evolve into the written language of modern Chinese.
Rediscovering China's Ancient Orthography
In the late 19th Century, fragments of bones with symbols carved into them were discovered in the ancient capital Anyang, in China's Henan province. After several excavations, over 100,000 inscriptions on bones, shells, stone, bronze, and pottery have been collected.
The ancient language written on these artifacts offers us priceless information regarding the culture and lifestyle of the Shang Dynasty. It also provides us with an invaluable means of understanding how Chinese characters developed and changed through the millennia.
The Use of Oracle Bones
A unique custom of the Shang court was the practice of bone divination. In order to communicate with and seek advice from ancestors and gods, Chinese priests would use archaic Chinese characters to write questions on pieces of bone or shell. Heat or fire would then be applied to the bone or shell, which causes cracking.
A priest would interpret these cracks to determine the answer to the question written on the oracle bone. These questions could be as significant as deciding auspicious days to order an army to attack an enemy, and as minor as deciding how best to treat a toothache.
Oracle Bone and Modern Chinese Characters
The Chinese symbols written on Oracle Bones are quite different to the characters of modern-day Chinese. Unlike modern Chinese characters, a significant percentage of Oracle Bone characters were pictographic. If not pictographic, most Oracle Bone symbols would indicate meaning in a visual way. For example, the Oracle Bone character for 'above' was a short horizontal line written above a longer horizontal line, hinting at the meaning of 'above'.
As for modern characters, only around 3% of the 48,641 Chinese characters recorded in the 18th century Kang Xi dictionary are pictographic or visually indicative in the same way Oracle Bone characters are. This is not entirely surprising considering that over 3000 years of development separate the Oracle Bone characters from modern Chinese characters.
Another difference between these two Chinese scripts is that Oracle Bone characters were not standardized in terms of shape or even direction of writing. The size and shape of Oracle Bone characters could vary quite significantly, while modern Chinese characters always occupy even square spaces. Oracle Bone characters could also be written in any direction - up, down, left, right, and could even change direction mid-sentence.
Oracle Bone inscriptions have provided scholars with an important 'missing link' in understanding how Chinese characters developed. Over several centuries, Chinese characters were stylized, modified, invented, and evolved to constitute the current writing system of Chinese.
Sources
DeFrancis, John. 1984. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
DeFrancis, John. 1989. Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 89-121.
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