Chinese characters have a history of 3,000 years, counting from the earliest written materials we can see at present-Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty. Because Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a fairly mature writing system, we can infer that Chinese characters must have appeared as far back as 3,000 years ago. The development of Chinese characters can be divided into two main stages. From Oracle Bone Inscriptions to seal script is a stage; Judging from the official script of Qin and Han dynasties, there is still a stage. The former belongs to the category of ancient Chinese characters and the latter belongs to the category of modern Chinese characters. Generally speaking, there is not much change from official script to modern Chinese characters used now. Judging from the relationship between Chinese characters and Chinese, Chinese characters are a kind of morpheme words. As far as the structure of Chinese characters is concerned, Chinese characters are a writing system composed of ideographic, phonetic (pictographic and phonetic) and symbols that neither ideographic nor phonetic. According to legend, the inventor of writing is a saint named Cang Xie. According to the book Huai Nan Zi in the Han Dynasty, Cang Xie's composition is "rain beats millet, ghosts cry at night". This is a very special phenomenon, that is to say, when writing, it rains from the sky and ghosts cry at night. In our current words, it is such a feat of "earth-shattering, making the gods cry". This legend was created by Cang Xie, a historical administrator in the period of the Yellow Emperor. It has a history of 5000 years.
The appearance of characters has played an important role in human history. Among the elements of civilization, the appearance of characters is the most important symbol. Therefore, when China invented writing in ancient times has always been a concern. Legend has it that Cang Xie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor, invented Chinese characters. Although historical facts cannot be studied in detail, it reflects that Chinese characters have been around for a long time. In China's ancient books, there are records such as tying a rope and writing a piece of wood, which are commonly used in early notes. Unfortunately, these materials can't be kept for a long time, so the notes at that time are no longer known. However, in Xiaotun, Anyang, 50,000 pieces of Oracle bone inscriptions150,000 pieces were found, and the words carved on tortoise shell and ox blade were quite well preserved, with a total of 3,500 words. As far as the structure of Oracle characters is concerned, in addition to pictographs, more advanced word-making methods such as pictographs, knowing words and borrowing words have been widely used. It can be seen that the characters of the Shang Dynasty reached a fairly complete level more than 3,000 years ago, so there must be a longer development process before it. Archaeological findings prove that China's ancestors carved symbols on tortoise shells as early as seven or eight thousand years ago. There are dozens of symbols carved on pottery in Yangshao culture and Dawenkou culture five or six thousand years ago, some of which are similar to the characters seen in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, so some people think they are early characters. As for the bamboo script found on the pottery pots in the early Longshan culture, it can definitely be written, which fully shows that Chinese characters have a history of at least 4,000 years in China. The appearance of Chinese characters is not only the result of people's continuous accumulation and summary in long-term social life, so Cang Xie is probably a representative figure who summarized and sorted Chinese characters and made contributions to the formation of Chinese characters.