Master Archaeologist

Chapter 324 China must have an earlier writing system!
When did Chinese characters originate?
For most ordinary people, Oracle must be the first thing that comes to mind.

Many experts and scholars even said that oracle bone inscriptions are the earliest writing that can be found in China so far.

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

Oracle bone inscriptions are the earliest systematic and mature Chinese characters that can be found at present.

The emphasis is on "systematic" and "mature".

If there were no these two prepositions, there would have been earlier texts in Huaxiayuan.

The one with the highest degree of recognition and the most recognized by the archaeological community as the origin of Chinese characters is the Jiahu engraved talisman unearthed from the Jiahu site.

The Jiahu site, which is more known to the public, is the earliest Chinese musical instrument unearthed, a bone flute.

But in the academic world, what is actually more shocking about the Jiahu site is the "Jiahu engraved talisman" that appears to be written in the site!
The Jiahu site is about 9000 to 7500 years old, and it is a site of the late Neolithic period.

To say that this place is a civilization, it is definitely not counted. According to the archaeological discoveries of the Jiahu site, it is basically certain that this is a gathering tribe of ancient ancestors.

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

However, they already had the original "character" system.

In 1987, the Hen Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics unearthed the oracle bone inscription symbols in the Jiahu site.

At that time, it could not be confirmed as text, because experts did not know whether it was a consciously drawn symbol.

The discovery of Jiahu engraved characters caused a great sensation at the time, and the academic circles also paid close attention to it, claiming that this was the earliest Chinese character cone.

There are at least 17 engraved characters in Jiahu, and some believe that they are 21 characters, with a structure composed of multiple strokes.

After carbon 14 testing, the Jiahu engraved characters are 7762 (±128) from this age, which are unearthed in my country and are also the earliest text symbols discovered.

In the beginning, there was still a lot of controversy in the academic circles about whether these engraved symbols were characters.

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 oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty 4000 years later.

For example, the character "目" is basically the same as "目" in oracle bone inscriptions.

Before the appearance of Jiahu engraved characters, the earliest writing in the world was generally considered to be ancient Egyptian papyrus documents, and its discovery overturned this cognition at once.

Moreover, the Jiahu engraved talisman was also found on the divination tools used by humans in ancient times, usually worn on the body. It provides reference evidence for Chinese scholars to explore the origin of Chinese characters.

Perhaps, the reason why Chinese characters were first born was to communicate with the gods.

This point is not only in China, but in fact, the earliest writing in the world was born. Scholars from many places believe that it should be related to the sacrifice of gods.

In other words, the earliest meaning of words was not used for communication between tribes.

After all, there are languages ​​that people can use to communicate with each other.

It is not used for counting either. If it is only used for counting, it is completely possible to create something similar to "mathematical symbols" for use.

It is also the earliest knot counting method in China.

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

To communicate with the gods and ancestors, it is necessary to record the things you want to tell the gods and ancestors in "words", and then "sacrifice" to the ancestors.

Whether it is ancient Egypt or the Mesopotamia civilization, the birth of the earliest characters is related to sacrifices.

Coincidentally, the actual function of Chinese oracle bone inscriptions is also used for sacrifices, engraved on tortoise shells, and then through a special sacrificial ceremony, that is, the method of "burning", to obtain the response of the ancestors, that is, "the traces of the tortoise shell cracking" , for divination.

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

This shows that the meaning of the appearance of the Jiahu engraved talisman is actually used for sacrifices.

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

How could it be possible to sacrifice some meaningless symbols during the sacrifice?

In ancient times, whether humans sacrificed to their ancestors or gods, they all had to ask 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 beggings need "words" as a carrier to communicate.

The suspected earliest Chinese characters found on Jiahu inscriptions are not only in the same line as the merchant's oracle bone inscriptions, but also used the same method.

This has to make scholars more recognized that this symbol is a "text".

It's just a pity that the number of characters engraved on the Jiahu talisman is too small, with a maximum of 21 symbols, which is far from enough to support its use as a kind of "text".

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

For example, oracle bone inscriptions are recorded on tens of thousands of tortoise shells, and there are enough templates to collect, count, and translate them into systematic texts.

Jiahu engraved talisman does not meet this requirement, there is only one isolation, say it is a character, 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 circles about whether the earliest Chinese characters were born in the Jiahu site, and there is no conclusion.

In fact, if you ask ten archaeologists about whether oracle bone inscriptions are the earliest writing in China, nine of them will not agree with this statement.

Before the oracle bone inscriptions, the Chinese must have an earlier writing system.

Otherwise, it is impossible for Oracle to be so mature after 200 years of development.

Not to mention oracle bone inscriptions, even the later Zhongdingwen, Dazhuan, and Xiaozhuan required hundreds of years of evolution to mature under the circumstances of the mature writing system borrowed and evolved.

The big seal characters of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period are very different from each other, and it is only after hundreds of years of evolution.

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

Before them, there must have been unsystematic, or already systematic, but not widely circulated texts in Huaxia.

Only because it was not recorded on a special carrier such as "Oracle Bone", it was not preserved.

And the Jiahu engraved talisman at the Jiahu site is undoubtedly a great proof!
However, unless more inscriptions can be found at the Jiahu site, this can really increase the birth of Chinese characters from the Shang Dynasty to 7000 BC.

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

However, Sanxingdui civilization is different.

Sanxingdui, as a brilliant culture in Shu that was at the same time as the Shang Dynasty, had to manage such a large area without the carrier of writing.

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

It's just that the "expression" they communicated with heaven was not put together with the sacrificial offerings, not in the sacrificial pit, but used alone.

People in the later generations write the inscriptions on paper, and then burn them to the gods and ancestors, so naturally there is no way to preserve them.

As for the people of Shu, maybe they used things like bamboo slices and wooden tablets to write their inscriptions, and then burned them to show to the heavens, wouldn't they also be unable to preserve them?
However, the fact that the sacrificial pit was not found does not mean that the characters cannot be found in the residential area!

As the first few sacrificial pits started to excavate deeper overlapping residential areas, it may be possible to find texts in the residential areas, palace areas, or workshop areas of Sanxingdui people!

Chen Han has high expectations for this!

(End of this chapter)