Ancient Scripts Carved on Bones Reveal China's Shang Dynasty

Ancient scripts and divination records carved on animal bones reveal the Shang Dynasty, which dates back more than 3,000 years, a dynasty that only existed in historical records before this discovery. How were these oracle bone inscriptions discovered? How did people in the Shang Dynasty perform divination? This is the story of this ancient script. In 1899, a senior official of the Qing Dynasty in China named Wang Yirong fell ill and went to a traditional Chinese pharmacy to buy herbal medicine. He found some traces of carvings on the herb called dragon bone. As a learned scholar, he realized this script was older than the earliest known Chinese characters. Since then, many scholars in China have begun to purchase such engraved bones and conduct research on them. A few years later, they finally learned from merchants that these bones came from Anyang City, Henan Province. A significant discovery was about to unfold right here. Beginning in 1928, over the next 10 years, the Chinese authorities launched large-scale archaeological excavations here. Archaeologists have discovered many palaces, buildings, and royal tomb ruins, and unearthed many bronze vessels and oracle bones with inscriptions. Based on this, archaeologists speculate that this place is in the capital of the late Shang Dynasty, from about the 14th century BC to the 11th century BC. The city gradually fell into ruins after the Shang Dynasty was replaced by the Zhou Dynasty. Therefore, it is now called Yinshu, which literally means Ruins of Yin. Before that, people had only read about this dynasty and this city in history books. This discovery proved the existence of this dynasty through physical evidence. In 1936, a large pile of oracle bones, totaling more than 16,000 pieces, was discovered in this pit. Why were these oracle bones buried underground? There is currently no clear answer. Of course, what we see now are replicas. The scary thing is that a skeleton was lying next to these oracle bones. Again, this is a replica. We don't know the identity of this person. In the nearly 100 years from 1928 to today, archaeologists have discovered about 150,000 oracle bones. We can see some of them in the local museum. For ordinary people, the inscriptions on these oracle bones are very unfamiliar and impossible to read. However, for experts, these words are similar to the inscriptions carved on bronze vessels from the Zhou dynasty 3,000 years ago, showing clear inheritance. Through these characters, scholars gained a general understanding of the Shang dynasty. People in the Shang dynasty 3,200 years ago had a limited understanding of the natural world and believed that everything was controlled by gods and deities. Therefore, members of the royal family performed divination on almost everything. The priest or wizard, as the person who presided over divination, was the medium of communication between humans and deities. The process of divination goes like this. First, they use tools to drill small holes in a turtle's plastron or cow's shoulder blade. They then burn the holes with burning sticks, and the priests will judge the pattern of the cracks as good or bad. Although, we don't know the details about how the priests make judgments. Finally, they will carve the contents and results of the divination on the oracle bones. By the way, the Chinese character Wu describes the pattern of cracked bones, and we still use this character today, which means divination. The royal family of the Shang dynasty required divination for almost everything, including the weather, hunting, agricultural harvests, wars, you name it. Among them, a divination is recorded in the middle of this famous oracle bone. One day, the king asked if there would be any accidents in 10 days. Divination results showed that it was possible. The next day, the king went out hunting. The axle of the chariot driven by an official broke. The horse was frightened and ran away, hitting the king's chariot and causing the king to fall. It seems that the divination did come true. Dating back 3200 years, this may be the earliest record of traffic accidents in China. Several other divinations were recorded on different parts of this oracle bone, which shows that the oracle bone was used repeatedly. After all, these bones were not easy to obtain at that time. On this oracle bone, someone was asking whether the tiger hunt could be successful. We don't know if they caught the tiger, as the final result was not recorded. About 5000 distinct characters have appeared on tens of thousands of oracle bones and earths, and one third have been interpreted. That's about 1500 characters. This may not sound like much, but to give you some perspective, today you can read without any problems if you know 3700 Chinese characters, and among them, there are only about 2500 500 commonly used characters. Therefore, by deciphering 1500 oracle bone characters, we can understand a lot of records. Excitingly, anyone who interprets a character with evidence can receive a reward of 100,000 RMB, about 14,000 US dollars. In addition to oracle bones, archaeologists have discovered many tombs and burial pits of Shang Dynasty kings, including many bronze vessels. Among them, a large bronze ware weighing more than 800 kg is particularly famous. We will talk about that big tomb where this bronze ware was found in the next episode.