Oracle Bones of the Ancient Chinese Shang Dynasty

Did you know that people in China over 3,000 years ago consulted horoscopes just as we do today? Hello and welcome to World History Encyclopedia. My name is Kelly and today's video is all about Chinese oracle bones. We're going to delve into the Shang dynasty of ancient China where psychics interpreted heated bones to help people make decisions, which led to the development of Chinese writing. Don't forget the easiest way to support us is by giving this video a thumbs up, subscribing to our channel and hitting that bell icon for notifications so you don't miss out on any new uploads. World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization and you can find us on Patreon, a brilliant site where you can support our work and receive exclusive benefits in return. Your support helps us create videos twice a week so make sure to check it out via the pop-up in the top corner of the screen or via the Patreon link down below. During the Shang dynasty of China which dates between circa 1600 and 1046 BCE, the shoulder blades of oxen or the flat underside of a turtle shell known as a plastron were used for divination and were known as oracle bones or dragon bones. The bones were carved with symbols, the symbols eventually became words and it was from these that the Chinese script developed from. A psychic or fortune teller would carve symbols into the bones or turtle shell, then they would either apply a hot poker to the object or place it next to a fire until it cracked and from the direction of the crack their future would be predicted. Although some oracle bones have been found from the Zhou dynasty, most of them are dated to the Shang dynasty, the period of Chinese history when oracle bones were used most regularly. The oracle bones declined in use during the Zhou dynasty with the introduction of the I Ching, a fortune-telling book that was a different way for divining the future. In the late 1880s, villagers just outside of the city of modern-day Anyang, which was where the capital of the Shang dynasty was, they were working their fields and found both animal bones and turtle shells, but they didn't know that what they were looking at were oracle bones, so they crushed them and sold them as dragon bones which were used in traditional Chinese medicine. When Wang Yirong, the chancellor of the imperial academy, received some dragon bones in 1899, he along with his friend Liu Yi noted that the bones seemed to be covered in writing. Wang died the next year without finding out where the bones came from and although Liu published the first book on oracle bone inscriptions, he also never found out where they were from. In 1908, a scholar and philologist, Liu Chengyu, discovered they were coming from the fields outside of Anyang and when he traveled there he found thousands of them. He also found that the farmers unearthed them all the time and just scraped off the inscriptions so they'd look like dragon bones and then sell them to the people who dealt in such things for apothecaries. After Liu Chengyu published his finds and translated the inscriptions, far more scholars became interested in the oracle bones and so the farmers began to sell them instead to scholars, museums, collectors and universities. Consulting a psychic in the Shang dynasty was considered an important resource for decision making and anyone from your local farmer to your king could consult about their future. It was believed that these psychics were in touch with the spirit world of the ancestors and the gods and that they knew the future. Each psychic would have a specialty like money, love or work but they could still help answer questions about any topic. They would either buy the bones from a merchant who had already prepared them or they got the bones and personally cleaned them. The psychic would keep the bones in their shop and someone would come along and ask them, should I bring my oxen to market next month? And then the psychic would carve that question into the bone then heat it until it cracked. Then the psychic would interpret the crack and tell their client whether they should bring the oxen to market next month or not. The people of ancient China asked all sorts of questions like but about their love life, whether to travel, advice on financial decisions and even on making war. The process went like this, a diviner was asked a question, the diviner then recorded the rest in four steps. First the date the question was asked on, the name of the diviner and sometimes the name of the person asking would be written down. This was the preface. Then there was the charge which was the topic of the question like finance and then the specific question like should I take my oxen to the market next month? Then there was the prognostication which was the heating of the bone in order for it to crack and then be interpreted. And finally was the verification which was whether the prophecy ended up being true and what happened to the person who asked the question. So for example they took the oxen to the market the next month and made a large profit off them. Since the oracle bones were written or carved on with such detail, stories that were initially thought to be myths about the Shang dynasty such as people's wealth, occupations, trade goods and cultural values were able to be verified by scholars. Chinese writers in later dynasties referred to the Shang dynasty as a kind of golden age and the oracle bones showed modern day scholars that they had certainly a good reason to think that. Not only did the oracle bones give birth to the Chinese script but they also acted as primary sources for the people of Shang China. The symbols used on the oracle bones standardized certain characters to have specific meanings like a certain character would mean oxen and another meant market and so on. People in ancient China just like those of us today who consult horoscopes and psychics or simply worry what the future has in store for us wanted some assurance in an uncertain world and looked to the oracle bones to provide that. Since the poorer population couldn't afford to consult the psychics as often as the upper class we get more of an insight into the concerns of the Shang elite which extended to the king than the common people but we can infer from the questions asked by the rich what might have also been important to the poor along the lines of marriages, finances and everyday questions regarding one's future. From the surviving oracle bones we have primary evidence for just how prosperous the Shang dynasty was and how people, mostly the elite, spent their time. Since the oracle bones were dated we have exact details for events like when cities were built, astronomical events, when taxes were raised or paid, when animals and objects were sold and even when marriages were arranged. With the thousands of surviving oracle bones from ancient China we have just another example of how the people living some 3,000 years ago were really not so different from how we are today. What divination practices do people believe in your country and do you believe in divination? Let us know in the comments below. If you enjoyed this video make sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out on our new videos every Tuesday and Friday. This video was brought to you by World History Encyclopedia. For more great articles and interactive content head to our website via the link below. If you like my shirt you can find this design and a bunch more in our shop at worldhistory.store or you can find a link for it down below. 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