When did the Chinese writing originate?

For most ordinary people, the first thing that comes to mind is definitely Oracle.

Even many experts and scholars said that the oracle bone inscription was the earliest writing that could be found in China so far.

This statement cannot be miscalculated, but there must be enough prepositions.

The oracle bone script is the earliest systematic mature Chinese script that can be found at present.

The focus is on "systematization" and "maturity".

If there are no these two prepositions, in fact, there are far earlier words in Huaxia.

The highest degree of recognition and the most considered by the archaeological community to be the origin of Chinese writing is the Jiahu inscription unearthed from the Jiahu site.

The Jiahu site, better known to the public, is the earliest musical instrument unearthed in China, a bone flute.

But in the academic world, in fact, what is more shocking about the Jiahu site is the "Jiahu inscription" issued in the ruins!

The Jiahu site is about 9,000 to 7,500 years old and is a site from the late Neolithic period.

If you want to say that this is a civilization, it must not be counted, according to the archaeological discoveries of the Jiahu site, it can be basically determined that this is a gathering tribe of ancient ancestors.

The ancestors of the Jiahu site should have not developed into the form of a "state" and had not yet established a complete social class system.

However, they already have a primitive system of "characters".

In 1987, the HEN Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics excavated the oracle bone inscription symbol in the Jiahu site.

At the time, it was not possible to confirm that it was a text, because experts did not know whether it was a consciously carved symbol.

The discovery of the Jiahu inscription caused a great sensation at the time, and the academic community also paid attention to it, claiming that it was the earliest writing cone in China.

There are at least 17 Jiahu inscriptions, some believe to be 21 characters, with a structure composed of multiple strokes.

After carbon 14 detection, the Jiahu inscription is 7762 (±128) from this year, which is unearthed in China and the earliest text symbol found.

At the beginning, in fact, there was still a lot of controversy in the academic community about whether these inscriptions were written or not.

However, with the in-depth understanding of these inscriptions, it is found that the structure of the inscriptions is the same as the basic structure of Chinese characters, and there are many similarities with the Shang Dynasty oracle bone inscriptions 4,000 years later.

For example, the word "目" is basically the same as the "目" in the oracle bone inscription.

Before the advent of the Jiahu inscription, the world's earliest writing was generally believed to be ancient Egyptian papyrus, and its discovery overturned this perception at once.

Moreover, the Jiahu inscription was also found on the divination tools of human beings in ancient times, and it was generally worn on the body, which provided reference evidence for Chinese scholars to explore the origin of Chinese writing.

Perhaps, the reason for the earliest birth of Chinese writing is that it was used to communicate with the gods.

This point, not only in China, but also in the world, the birth of the world's earliest writing, scholars in many places, believe that it should be related to the sacrifice of gods.

In other words, the earliest meaning of writing was not actually used for inter-tribal communication.

After all, there are languages to communicate with people.

It's not for counting, but if it's just for counting, it's possible to create something like "mathematical notation" to use it.

That is, the earliest knotted rope counting method in China.

The meaning of the true birth of words is actually used to communicate with the gods and ancestors.

In order to communicate with the gods and ancestors, it is necessary to write down the things that you want to tell the gods and ancestors in a "written" way, and then "sacrifice" them to the ancestors.

Whether it is ancient Egypt or the Lianghe civilization, the birth of the earliest writing is related to sacrifice.

Coincidentally, the actual role of the Chinese oracle bone inscription is also used for sacrifice, engraved on the tortoise shell, and then through a special sacrificial ceremony, that is, the method of "burning", to obtain the response of the ancestors, that is, "traces of tortoise shell cracking", to carry out divination.

The Jiahu inscriptions found at the Jiahu site are actually on the divination tools of ancient humans.

This shows that the meaning of the appearance of the Jiahu inscription is actually used for sacrifice.

In other words, there is a high probability that these symbols are words, not meaningless symbols.

At the time of sacrifice, how can it be possible to sacrifice some meaningless symbols?

In ancient times, whether it was to worship ancestors or gods, they all had to beg the gods for help.

For example, begging the gods for rain, begging for good weather in the coming year, begging for more descendants of the tribe, and so on.

And these begging need "words" as a carrier to communicate.

The earliest Chinese script found on the Jiahu inscription is suspected to be the same as the oracle bone inscription of the merchant, and the method used is also the same.

This has to make scholars more recognize this kind of symbol as "writing".

It's just a pity that the number of characters engraved by Jiahu is too small, with a maximum of 21 symbols, which is far from enough evidence to support it as a kind of "writing".

After all, a script must at least be able to form sentences, and it must have enough characters to be considered a mature script.

For example, the oracle bone inscription is recorded on tens of thousands of turtle shells, and there are enough templates to collect, count, and translate into a systematic text.

Jiahu inscription does not meet this condition, there is only one isolation, saying that he is a text, there are not enough templates.

But to say that it is not a text, domestic scholars do not agree with this conclusion.

So much so that in the past few decades, there have been different opinions in the academic community about whether the earliest Chinese writing was born at the Jiahu site, and there is no conclusion.

In fact, if you ask ten archaeologists about whether the oracle bone inscription is the earliest written text in China, nine out of ten disagree with this statement.

Before the oracle bone inscription, there must have been an earlier writing system for the Chinese people.

Otherwise, Oracle would not have been born and matured so much after one or two hundred years of development.

Not to mention the oracle bone inscription, even the later Zhong Dingwen, the big seal, and the small seal, in the case of the existing mature writing system to learn from the evolution, it also takes hundreds of years of evolution to mature.

The Great Seal Characters of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period are very different from each other, and they have evolved over hundreds of years.

It is impossible for a merchant to evolve such a mature and systematic oracle out of thin air.

Before them, there must have been unsystematic, or systematic, but not widely disseminated enough words in circulation.

It's just that it's not recorded on a special carrier like "oracle bones" that it hasn't been preserved.

And the Jiahu inscription of the Jiahu ruins is undoubtedly a big proof!

However, unless more inscriptions can be found at the Jiahu site, this can truly raise the birth of Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty to the seventh millennium BC.

The text of the Jiahu site is currently in a research dilemma.

However, the Sanxingdui civilization is different.

Sanxingdui, as a brilliant culture of Shu at the same time as the Shang Dynasty, could not manage such a large area without the carrier of writing.

Moreover, the sacrificial culture of Sanxingdui people is also very strong, and the "communication" between the gods and ancestors also needs "words" as a carrier.

It's just that the "expressions" they communicate with the heavens are not placed together with the sacrificial offerings, not in the sacrificial pit, but used separately.

Later generations of people used paper to write expressions and then burned them to the heavens and ancestors, so naturally there was no way to preserve them.

And the Shu people, maybe they use things like bamboo slices and wooden slabs to write expressions, and then burn them to the heavens, so they can't be preserved either?

However, the fact that the sacrificial pit has not been found does not mean that the text cannot be found in the residential area!

With the excavation of the first few sacrificial pits in the superimposed residential areas, it may be possible to find the text in the residential areas, palace areas, or workshop areas of the Sanxingdui people!

Chen Han has high expectations for this!

(End of chapter)