According to (Xin), who was in charge of sorting out the imperial books at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, the author of Shan Hai Jing was Bo Yi who followed Dayu in water control. This statement had such a great influence that it was later derived that Dayu wrote Shan Hai Jing and Yi Jian wrote Shan Hai Jing. But these are actually taken for granted, there is no real evidence, and it will not be a fact.
First of all, The Classic of Mountains and Seas is divided into three parts, each of which is independent, but it was forcibly compiled together at the end of the Western Han Dynasty. These three books are Five Tibetan Mountains and Five Classics, Eight Classics of Overseas Internal Medicine and Five Classics of Great Wilderness. If we want to discuss the author and era of Shan Hai Jing, we should discuss it separately.
The Five Classics of the Great Wilderness should be the earliest among them. When will you arrive early? We can't say for sure. Anyway, there are many places in Oracle Bone Inscriptions that can be mutually verified with Wujingye. The most famous is Wang Guowei, a master of Chinese studies in the Republic of China. His Oracle Inscriptions on Yin Ruins, Imperial Examination for the First King and his Textual Research prove that Wang Hai in the Wild Five Classics is not fabricated out of thin air and can be found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions.
In addition, there are many early unearthed documents that can confirm the Five Classics of the Wild. This is undoubtedly an exciting news for fans of Shan Hai Jing. However, there are some traces that the Five Classics of the Great Northern Wilderness were rewritten by Han people, such as the late place name "Lingling, Changsha", which has been criticized for a long time, such as Tie.
Therefore, the writing process of the Five Classics of the Great Wilderness is likely to be quite long. After it was written, it was revised, and the original text was no longer known. The key point is that The Five Classics of the Wild and the Overseas Internal Classic were originally written according to the pictures, but now the words can be seen more or less, but the pictures are gone. All the statements about pictures are just people's guesses and "textual research". This is very regrettable.