The earliest extant examples of Chinese writing are the inscriptions that appear on so-called oracle bones (animal bones and turtle shells) and on bronze vessels, the oldest of which date back to the ...

The text records the interpretation of the oracle and the date of its production. The oracle bones are so far the first preserved evidence of Chinese script in complete meaningful sentences. The ...

Narrator: One of the most exciting objects or artefacts we have from the Shang Dynasty are oracle bones. They are animal bones covered in ancient writing and were used to try to predict the future.

The surviving oracle bones are the earliest existing form of Chinese writing. Many of the roughly 5,000 characters in the "oracle bone script" are still used in modern Chinese (some versions of ...