The Oracle Bones and the Continuity of the Chinese Civilization

The Chinese civilization may not be the oldest in the world, but it is certainly the longest, lasting continuously for five thousand years until present day. Many factors contribute to its longevity, but the Chinese written language no doubt has a lot to do with it. Unlike phonetic writing systems where the words are written with alphabets and spelled more or less like how they sound, the Chinese language uses “characters,” which are pictorial representations of images or ideas. These characters transcend regional dialectic variance and the changing of times, and serve as a unifying force for the Chinese people. 

For example, the sun in Chinese is written as ?. Although the pronunciation of the word has changed over the centuries, or may be divergent across different regions, the sun symbol can be easily recognized. So while there are various forms of spoken Chinese, some of which are mutually unintelligible as German vs. Spanish, there is only one form of written Chinese. Try to imagine that all European language-speaking people decided to adopt the same written language, the French can continue to call the sun soleil, the Spaniards sol; everyone might not be able to understand each other’s speaking language, but all can communicate with each other through the written language.

The earliest known form of Chinese writing dates back 7,000 as symbols on potteries discovered at a Neolithic village near the current day city of Xi’an. A more mature form of Chinese writing appeared 4,800 years ago, carved on a few pieces of wine containers made of clay. However, only a few Chinese characters were discovered on these vessels. By 14th-11th BC, Chinese writings appeared on large quantities of tortoise shells and animal bones, called Oracle Bones, which were used for divination for the royal court on issues such as warfare, disaster, rain, the season and hunting expedition.