The evolution of Chinese characters can be divided into the following stages:
1. Oracle bone inscriptions: they are written on turtle shells and animal bones (mainly on the ox shoulder blades). It is the most complete and mature Chinese character material that we can see today. This kind of writing was discovered in the Guangxu period of the late Qing Dynasty (AD 1889), north of Xiaotun Village, Wuli Road, northwest of Anyang County, Henan Province, and south of the Huan River.
2. Bronze inscriptions: Bronze inscriptions are characters engraved on bronze vessels. The so-called bronze ware is a vessel made of copper and tin alloy. This alloy is stronger and is called bronze because of its bluish color. There are mainly musical instruments "bell", food utensils "Yi, Zun, Jue", washing utensils "pan", weapons "ge, halberd", etc.
3. Dazhuan: Dazhuan refers to the later Xiaozhuan. The broad seal script includes small seal script, the former oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and Six Kingdoms scripts. The big seal here refers to the Qin characters that were popular during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Because King Ping of Zhou moved east to Luoyang, Qin occupied the old place of the Western Zhou Dynasty and also inherited the writing of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which was developed from the inheritance of bronze inscriptions. Because of their regional nature, some are difficult to identify.
4. Xiaozhuan: Xiaozhuan is the first standardized font for Chinese characters. The "alien text" during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. After Qin Shihuang unified the country, he adopted the opinions of Prime Minister Li Si and implemented the reform of "scripts with the same characters" to unify the characters. This is the first major writing reform in the history of our country.
5. Official script: Official script was a popular font in the Han Dynasty, so it is also called "Han Li". Official script originated in the Qin Dynasty and was only used among disciples and officials at first, hence the name official script. The earliest official script is very close to Xiaozhuan, but is actually just a scrawled version of Xiaozhuan.
Among the handed down Qin Quanliang inscriptions (the edicts issued in the 26th year of the First Emperor and the first year of the Second Emperor), the more scrawled ones belong to this type of early official script, so they are also called "Qin Li". .
Extended information
Chinese characters evolved from similar characters in form.
For example: Sun·Moon·Shan·Delete·Book·Dian---their starting glyphs are: Sun: a ○ with a horizontal line; Month: like an ear; Car: one person on top and behind Two cars; --- Pictographic method This is the earliest method of forming Chinese characters, thus creating the most primitive characters, for example: "日" is written, "月" is written, water is written, ox is written, etc.
After gradual evolution, these pictographic characters later changed the shape of the original characters and became the later square fonts. Some strokes were reduced, and some strokes were added, from irregular to A regular font.
It is easier to see the rationale behind the creation of the ideographic glyphs, but they cannot express abstract meanings.
The ancients created another method of making characters - the knowing method.
It means using different symbols or borrowing "pictographs" and adding some symbols to express an abstract meaning.
Example: The word "明" is written, which means "sun" and "moon" bring light.
The word "Dan" is written, (meaning the sun rises above the horizon.
Both the pictographic and ideographic characters can reveal the meaning of the character from the glyph, but The sound cannot be read.
So the phonetic phonetic method was created to create characters.
Many new words were formed by combining the phonetic characters that represent the sounds. /p>
Example: The word "ba" is a combination of the phonetic word "ba" and the shape of the word "father"; the word "ba" is a combination of "ba" and "++" < /p>
In this way, more and more characters are being created. According to statistics, pictophonetic characters account for about 90% of Chinese characters.
The formation and development of Chinese characters have become an important tool for people to communicate ideas and adapted to human society. The needs of life
Baidu Encyclopedia-The Origin and Evolution of Chinese Characters