1. hieroglyphics: Ancient people created the most primitive hieroglyphics by imitating the shapes or characteristics of objects in nature. The shapes of these characters are highly similar to those of real objects, such as "day" and "month".
The picture shows hieroglyphics.
2. Indicative writing: The ancients gradually discovered that there is no necessary connection between the shape of an object and the meaning it represents. Therefore, they began to create some simple symbols to express abstract concepts, which are reference texts. This writing method directly expresses some abstract meanings through concrete symbols, such as "up" and "down".
3. Understanding word: On the basis of referring words, the ancients further developed the understanding word, that is, two or more components combined with each other to express a new meaning. These components are called "Fang" (radical) and "Yi". Among them, the edge represents a semantic component of the word, and the meaning is the actual meaning of the word. For example, the combination of "person" and "mouth" can mean "shouting"
4. Pictophonetic characters: The important development stage of Chinese characters is pictophonetic characters, which are composed of "phonetic side" and "pictophonetic side". Some of these words represent sound, while others represent semantics. They express meaning through shape, sound through sound, and meaning through the unity of shape and sound. For example, the word "tiger" is the form surface and the word "ancient" is the sound surface, thus forming two completely different Chinese characters: "tiger" and "ancient".
The above is a brief summary of the evolution of Chinese characters. The evolution of Chinese characters is long and colorful, and it is also an important witness to the development of culture and history.