In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has released a series of unearthed materials that are earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin Ruins and related to the origin of Chinese characters. These materials mainly refer to the engraved or painted symbols that appeared on pottery in the late primitive society and early historical society. They also include a small amount of symbols engraved on oracle bones, jades, stone tools, etc. It can be said that they all provide new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.
By systematically examining and comparing the engraved symbols on pottery shards unearthed from more than 100 sites of 19 archaeological cultures across China, Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, believes that the earliest engraved symbols in China are Appeared at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan, it has a history of more than 8,000 years.
As a professional worker, he tried to further analyze these original materials through scientific means, such as the comprehensive use of some basic methods such as archeology, ancient writing morphology, comparative philology, technological archeology, and high-tech means. After a comprehensive sorting, some clues about the occurrence and development of Chinese characters before the writing of the Shang Dynasty were revealed.
However, the situation is not that simple. In addition to the existing small materials from the Zhengzhou Shangcheng site and the Xiaoshuangqiao site (more than 10 examples of early Shang Dynasty Zhu Shu and pottery inscriptions have been discovered at this site in recent years), they can be directly compared with the Yin Ruins inscriptions. Compared with the sequence, other symbols from before the Shang Dynasty are scattered and scattered, with many missing links from each other, and most of the symbols are inconsistent with the characters of the Shang Dynasty. There are also some symbols with strong regional colors and complex backgrounds.
The Chinese character system was formally formed in the Central Plains region
Wang Yunzhi believes that the formal formation of the Chinese character system should be in the Central Plains region. Chinese characters are a writing system with independent origin. It does not depend on any foreign writing system for its existence. However, its origin is not single. It has gone through multiple and long-term adjustments. About the time of entering the Xia Dynasty, the ancestors began to write Chinese characters. Based on the extensive experience of absorbing and using early symbols, he creatively invented a text symbol system for recording language. At that time, the Chinese character system matured relatively quickly.
It is reported that judging from the written materials unearthed from archaeological excavations, China already had formal writing at least during the Yu and Xia Dynasties. For example, in recent years, archaeologists have discovered the word "文" written in calligraphy on a flat pottery pot from the Tao Temple site in Xiangfen, Shanxi. These symbols all belong to the basic configuration of early writing systems. Unfortunately, such unearthed writing information is still scarce.
Writing first matured in the Shang Dynasty
As far as the Yin and Shang written materials currently known and seen, there are many categories of writing carriers. In addition to writing on slips with brushes, the other main means of writing at that time were inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones, pottery, jade, and pottery casting on bronzes. The written materials of the Shang Dynasty are mainly based on the oracle bones and bronze ritual vessels used for divination in the Yin Ruins. It is the earliest mature writing discovered in China so far.
The characters of the Shang Dynasty reflected in the Yinxu period are not only reflected in the large number of characters and rich materials, but also in the way of character creation that has formed its own characteristics and rules. The structural characteristics of the basic characters of the Shang Dynasty can be divided into four categories: taking the physical characteristics of the human body and a certain part of the human body as the basis for character construction; taking the creations and objects of labor as the basis for character construction; taking the images of animals and livestock as the basis for character construction; take natural objects as the basis for character construction. From the perspective of the cultural connotation of the configuration, we can see that the objects chosen by these earlier and mature glyphs are quite close to the social life of our ancestors and have strong realistic characteristics. At the same time, the content described by these glyphs involves all aspects of human and nature, so it also has the characteristics of a wide range of sources of configuration.
There are various legends about the origin of Chinese characters. Ancient Chinese books all say that characters were created by Cangjie. It is said that Cangjie saw a god with a strange appearance, and his face looked like a painting with words on it. Cangjie then traced his image and created words.
Some ancient books say that after Cangjie created writing, millet fell from the sky and ghosts and gods cried every night because of leaked secrets. There is also a legend that Cangjie observed the footprints of birds and animals imprinted on the soil, which inspired him to invent writing. All these legends are unreliable. Writing is slowly enriched and developed by the working people based on the needs of real life and through long-term social practice.
From the autumn of 1954 to the summer of 1957, Chinese archaeologists excavated the Banpo site (today's north of Banpo Village in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an City) many times and discovered that the Banpo people lived for a long time as early as around 6000 years ago. In his life and production practice, he created literal symbols and artistic works such as paintings, sculptures, and decorations. Most of the Banpo people's engraved symbols are preserved on painted pottery, which can be regarded as original Chinese characters.
In recent years, China has discovered a batch of tombs (more than 4,500 years ago) at a site of the late Dawenkou culture in Lingyang River, Ju County, Shandong Province, and a large number of cultural relics have been unearthed. Some pottery statues are each engraved with an image and text, and *** discovered more than 10 single characters. These characters are depicted according to the shapes of real objects, so they are called "pictographs". The structure of the font is very similar to the pictographic characters on the oracle bone inscriptions, but it is more than 1,000 years earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions. Therefore, "pictographic characters" are the earliest characters in China, and they already have the characteristics of characters.
There are three main methods of forming Chinese characters:
Pictographic method
This is the earliest method of forming Chinese characters, thus creating the most primitive writing, 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, changing from irregular to regular fonts.
Understand meaning
It is easier to see the rationale behind the creation of pictographic characters, but they cannot express abstract meanings. The ancients created another method of making characters - the method of understanding meaning. That is to use different symbols or borrow "pictographs" and add some symbols to express an abstract meaning. Example: The word "明" is written as , which means "sun" and "moon" bring light. The word "Dan" is written, (meaning the sun rises above the horizon.
Pitophonetic method
Both pictographic characters and ideographic characters can tell the meaning of the character from the glyph, but The sound cannot be read.
Therefore, the pictophonetic method was created to create characters. Many new words can be formed by matching the phonetic adverbs that represent sounds with the morphological adverbs that represent meanings. For example: the character "ba" is a combination of the phonetic character "ba" and the graphic character "father"; the character "ba" is formed from the combination of "ba" and " ". In this way, more and more characters are 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 exchange ideas and adapted to the needs of human social life.
There are various legends about the origin of Chinese characters. Ancient Chinese books all say that characters were created by Cangjie. It is said that Cangjie saw a god with a strange appearance, and his face looked like a painting with words on it. Cangjie then traced his image and created words. Some ancient books say that after Cangjie created writing, millet fell from the sky and ghosts and gods cried every night because of leaked secrets. There is also a legend that Cangjie observed the footprints of birds and animals imprinted on the soil, which inspired him to invent writing. All these legends are unreliable. Writing is slowly enriched and developed by the working people based on the needs of real life and through long-term social practice.
From the autumn of 1954 to the summer of 1957, Chinese archaeologists excavated the Banpo site (today's north of Banpo Village in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an City) many times and discovered that the Banpo people lived for a long time as early as around 6000 years ago. In his life and production practice, he created literal symbols and artistic works such as paintings, sculptures, and decorations. Most of the Banpo people's engraved symbols are preserved on painted pottery, which can be regarded as original Chinese characters.
In recent years, China has discovered a batch of tombs (more than 4,500 years ago) at a site of the late Dawenkou culture in Lingyang River, Ju County, Shandong Province, and a large number of cultural relics have been unearthed. Some pottery statues are each engraved with an image and text, and *** discovered more than 10 single characters. These characters are depicted according to the shapes of real objects, so they are called "pictographs". The structure of the font is very similar to the pictographic characters on the oracle bone inscriptions, but it is more than 1,000 years earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions. Therefore, "pictographic characters" are the earliest characters in China, and they already have the characteristics of characters.
There are three main methods of forming Chinese characters:
Pictographic method
This is the earliest method of forming Chinese characters, thus creating the most primitive writing, 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, changing from irregular to regular fonts.
Understand meaning
It is easier to see the rationale behind the creation of pictographic characters, but they cannot express abstract meanings. The ancients created another method of making characters - the method of understanding meaning. That is to use different symbols or borrow "pictographs" and add some symbols to express an abstract meaning. Example: The word "明" is written as , which means "sun" and "moon" bring light. The word "Dan" is written, (meaning the sun rises above the horizon.
Pitophonetic method
Both pictographic characters and ideographic characters can tell the meaning of the character from the glyph, but The sound cannot be read, so the phonetic method was invented to create words. Many new words are formed by matching the phonetic part that expresses the sound and the phonetic part that expresses the meaning. For example: the word "ba" is the phonetic word "ba". The combination of the phonological character "father"; the character "ba" is formed by combining "ba" and " ". In this way, more and more characters are created. According to statistics, pictophonetic characters account for about 90% of the formation and development of Chinese characters. , has become an important tool for people to communicate their thoughts, and has adapted to the needs of human social life.
The origin of Chinese characters
From the ancient legend of Cangjie’s creation of characters to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions more than 100 years ago, the history of Chinese characters has continued throughout the ages. Chinese scholars have been working hard to uncover the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters.
There are various theories about the origin of Chinese characters in ancient Chinese documents, such as "knots", "gossip", "pictures" and "scripts". etc. Ancient books also generally record the legend of the creation of characters by Cangjie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor. Modern scholars believe that a systematic writing tool cannot be completely created by one person. If Cangjie is indeed the person, he should be the organizer or promulgator of the characters.
The earliest carved symbols are more than 8,000 years ago
In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has released a series of unearthed materials that are earlier than the Yin Ruins oracle bone inscriptions and related to the origin of Chinese characters. The data mainly refers to the carved or painted symbols that appeared on pottery in the late primitive society and the early historical society. It also includes a small number of symbols engraved on oracle bones, jades, stone tools, etc. It can be said that they are all the same for interpreting Chinese characters. The origin provides new evidence.
By systematically examining and comparing the inscribed symbols on pottery shards unearthed from more than 100 sites of 19 archaeological cultures across China, Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, believes that , China's earliest engraved symbols appeared at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan, which has a history of more than 8,000 years.
As a professional worker, he tried to use scientific methods such as comprehensive use of archeology and ancient character structure. Using some basic methods such as morphology, comparative philology, technological archeology, and high-tech means, we further comprehensively sorted out these original materials, and thus sorted out some clues about the occurrence and development of Chinese characters before the writing of the Shang Dynasty.
However, the situation is not that simple. In addition to the existing small materials from the Zhengzhou Shangcheng site and the Xiaoshuangqiao site (more than 10 examples of early Shang Dynasty Zhu Shu and pottery inscriptions have been discovered at this site in recent years), they can be directly compared with the Yin Ruins inscriptions. In addition, other symbols from before the Shang Dynasty are scattered and scattered, with many missing links from each other, and most of the symbols are inconsistent with the characters of the Shang Dynasty. There are also some symbols with strong regional colors and complex backgrounds.
The Chinese character system was formally formed in the Central Plains region
Wang Yunzhi believes that the formal formation of the Chinese character system should be in the Central Plains region. Chinese characters are a writing system with independent origin. It does not depend on any foreign characters for its existence. However, its origin is not single. It has gone through multiple and long-term development. About the time of entering the Xia Dynasty, the ancestors began to write Chinese characters. Based on the extensive experience of absorbing and using early symbols, he creatively invented a text symbol system for recording language. At that time, the Chinese character system matured relatively quickly.
It is reported that judging from the written materials unearthed from archaeological excavations, China already had formal writing at least during the Yu and Xia Dynasties. For example, in recent years, archaeologists have discovered the word "文" written in calligraphy on a flat pottery pot from the Tao Temple site in Xiangfen, Shanxi. These symbols all belong to the basic configuration of early writing systems. Unfortunately, such unearthed writing information is still scarce.
Writing first matured in the Shang Dynasty
As far as the Yin and Shang written materials currently known and seen, there are many categories of writing carriers. In addition to writing on slips with brushes, the other main means of writing at that time were inscriptions on turtle shells and animal bones, pottery, jade, and pottery casting on bronzes. The written materials of the Shang Dynasty are mainly carried by the oracle bones and bronze ritual vessels used for divination in the Yin Ruins. It is the earliest mature writing discovered in China so far.
The characters of the Shang Dynasty reflected in the Yinxu period are not only reflected in the large number of characters and rich materials, but also in the way of character creation that has formed its own characteristics and rules. The structural characteristics of the basic characters of the Shang Dynasty can be divided into four categories: taking the physical characteristics of the human body and a certain part of the human body as the basis for character construction; taking the creations and objects of labor as the basis for character construction; taking the images of animals and livestock as the basis for character construction; take natural objects as the basis for character construction. From the perspective of the cultural connotation of the configuration, we can see that the objects chosen by these earlier and more mature glyphs are quite close to the social life of our ancestors, and have strong realistic characteristics. At the same time, the content described by these glyphs involves all aspects of human and nature, so it also has the characteristics of a wide range of sources of configuration.
The origin of Chinese characters:
From the ancient legend of Cangjie’s creation of characters to the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions more than 100 years ago, Chinese scholars of all ages have been committed to uncovering the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters.
As for the origin of Chinese characters, there are various theories in ancient Chinese documents, such as "knot ropes", "gossip", "pictures", "book deeds", etc. Ancient books also generally record that the Yellow Emperor historian Cangjie made word legend. Modern scholars believe that a systematic writing tool cannot be completely created by one person. If Cangjie does exist, he should be the organizer or promulgator of writing.
The earliest carved symbols are more than 8,000 years ago
In recent decades, the Chinese archaeological community has released a series of unearthed materials that are earlier than the Yin Ruins oracle bone inscriptions and related to the origin of Chinese characters. These materials mainly refer to the engraved or painted symbols that appeared on pottery in the late primitive society and early historical society. They also include a small amount of symbols engraved on oracle bones, jades, stone tools, etc. It can be said that they all provide new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.
By systematically examining and comparing the engraved symbols on pottery shards unearthed from more than 100 sites of 19 archaeological cultures across China, Wang Yunzhi, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, believes that the earliest engraved symbols in China are Appeared at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan, it has a history of more than 8,000 years.
As a professional worker, he tried to further analyze these original materials through scientific means, such as the comprehensive use of some basic methods such as archeology, ancient writing morphology, comparative philology, technological archeology, and high-tech means. After a comprehensive sorting, some clues about the occurrence and development of Chinese characters before the writing of the Shang Dynasty were revealed.
However, the situation is not that simple. In addition to the existing small materials from the Zhengzhou Shangcheng site and the Xiaoshuangqiao site (more than 10 examples of early Shang Dynasty Zhu Shu and pottery inscriptions have been discovered at this site in recent years), they can be directly compared with the Yin Ruins inscriptions. Compared with the sequence, other symbols from before the Shang Dynasty are scattered and scattered, with many missing links from each other, and most of the symbols are inconsistent with the characters of the Shang Dynasty. There are also some symbols with strong regional colors and complex backgrounds.
The Chinese character system was formally formed in the Central Plains region
Wang Yunzhi believes that the formal formation of the Chinese character system should be in the Central Plains region. Chinese characters are a writing system with independent origin. It does not depend on any foreign characters for its existence. However, its origin is not single. It has gone through multiple and long-term development. About the time of entering the Xia Dynasty, the ancestors began to write Chinese characters. Based on the extensive experience of absorbing and using early symbols, he creatively invented a text symbol system for recording language. At that time, the Chinese character system matured relatively quickly.
It is reported that judging from the written materials unearthed from archaeological excavations, China already had formal writing at least during the Yu and Xia Dynasties. For example, in recent years, archaeologists have discovered the word "文" written in calligraphy on a flat pottery pot from the Tao Temple site in Xiangfen, Shanxi. These symbols all belong to the basic configuration of early writing systems. Unfortunately, such unearthed writing information is still scarce.
Writing first matured in the Shang Dynasty
As far as the Yin and Shang written materials currently known and seen, there are many categories of writing carriers. In addition to writing on slips with brushes, the other main means of writing at that time were inscriptions on turtle shells and animal bones, pottery, jade, and pottery casting on bronzes. The written materials of the Shang Dynasty are mainly carried by the oracle bones and bronze ritual vessels used for divination in the Yin Ruins. It is the earliest mature writing discovered in China so far.
The ancestor of writing - Cangjie
The legend of Cangjie's creation of characters
Cangjie was the left historian of the Yellow Emperor in Xuanyuan. The creator of my country's original hieroglyphics and one of the originators of my country's official system and surnames. He was born in Yangwu Village, Baishui on March 28 of the lunar calendar and died at the age of 110. Cangjie, who lived alone in a deep ditch, "observed the circular curves of Kuixing and observed the traces of hooves and claws of birds and beasts" and created characters that represented all things in the world. Huangdi later found out that Cangjie was the first to create writing. He was so moved that he gave him the surname Cang. It means "one person is superior to the king, and one king is superior to others". Later, God knew about this and rewarded Cangjie with a rain of millet. This is the origin of the Grain Rain Festival in the world. Local farmers worship Cangjie during Guyu Festival! Legend has it that he looked up at the sky, observed all things, and created the "Bird Trace Book" that shocked the world. He can be called the ancestor of humanities. After Cangjie's death, local people built a temple at his tomb and named the village "Shiguan Village".
There is a folk legend in Baishui about Cangjie’s creation of characters: In ancient times, people used knotting methods to record historical events. Cangjie was the historian of the Yellow Emperor. Due to the strange shape of the knotted ropes recording historical facts, it was difficult to identify them over time. Once, Cangjie provided historical facts to the Yellow Emperor based on the historical records recorded in these knotted ropes. This caused the Yellow Emperor to fail in the border negotiations with Emperor Yan. Afterwards, Cangjie resigned in shame and traveled around the world, visiting and recording history and events. Three years later, he returned to his hometown of Yangwu Village, Baishui, and lived alone in a deep ditch to "observe the circular curves of Kuixing and observe the traces of hooves and claws of birds and beasts." He sorted out various materials and created various symbols representing all things in the world. He gave these symbols a name, called words.
There are various legends about the origin of Chinese characters. Ancient Chinese books all say that characters were created by Cangjie. It is said that Cangjie saw a god with a strange appearance, and his face looked like a painting with words on it. Cangjie then traced his image and created words. Some ancient books say that after Cangjie created writing, millet fell from the sky and ghosts and gods cried every night because of leaked secrets. There is also a legend that Cangjie observed the footprints of birds and animals imprinted on the soil, which inspired him to invent writing. All these legends are unreliable. Writing is slowly enriched and developed by the working people based on the needs of real life and through long-term social practice.
From the autumn of 1954 to the summer of 1957, Chinese archaeologists excavated the Banpo site (today's north of Banpo Village in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an City) many times and discovered that the Banpo people lived for a long time as early as around 6000 years ago. In his life and production practice, he created literal symbols and artistic works such as paintings, sculptures, and decorations. Most of the Banpo people's engraved symbols are preserved on painted pottery, which can be regarded as original Chinese characters.
In recent years, China has discovered a batch of tombs (more than 4,500 years ago) at a site of the late Dawenkou culture in Lingyang River, Ju County, Shandong Province, and a large number of cultural relics have been unearthed. Some pottery statues are each engraved with an image and text, and *** discovered more than 10 single characters. These characters are depicted according to the shapes of real objects, so they are called "pictographs". The structure of the font is very similar to the pictographic characters on the oracle bone inscriptions, but it is more than 1,000 years earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions. Therefore, "pictographic characters" are the earliest characters in China, and they already have the characteristics of characters.
The evolution of writing
Almost every one of us has had this question, what was the original writing like? How did it develop step by step to where it is today? Okay, let’s talk about the evolution of words.
In 1959, some pottery was unearthed in Dawenkou, Shandong Province, with some symbols engraved on it, which can be regarded as the prototype of early writing (about 4300 BC). But what we have seen so far is the oracle bone inscriptions from the Yin and Shang Dynasties that have begun to take shape and are relatively complete. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, many tortoise shells and animal bones were discovered in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan Province. They were engraved with characters, which aroused great interest in the academic community, and this kind of writing was called oracle bone inscriptions.
With the development of society, fonts are constantly evolving. The bronze inscriptions from the Yin and Shang Dynasties to before the unification of the Qin Dynasty were developed on the basis of oracle bone inscriptions. Bronze inscriptions are the general name for bronze inscriptions. Most of the ancient bronzes were bells and tripods, so they are also called bells and tripods. The strokes of bronze inscriptions are also much richer than those of oracle bone inscriptions. They are well-proportioned in size, have inscriptions, and have a certain degree of decoration.
We have studied history and we all know that during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the princes fought and fought for each other, which also resulted in different languages ??and different characters. It was not until Qin Shihuang unified the six kingdoms that the characters were unified into Xiaozhuan. . In the past, oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions were called large seal scripts. The handed down "Langye Terrace Carved Stones" and "Taishan Carved Stones" are all representative works of small seal scripts. Although Xiaozhuan is standardized and looks beautiful, it is not easy to write and unsatisfactory when applied. People's hope for writing, a tool for spreading thoughts and recording language, is to be as convenient as possible, so a new font, official script, was created based on Xiaozhuan. According to legend, the founder of official script was Cheng Miao. He offended Qin Shihuang and was sent to prison. He spent ten years in prison to sort out a new set of easy-to-use fonts, which were called official script by later generations. Qin Shihuang was very happy. Not only did he pardon his crime, he also made him a censor.
In the Han Dynasty, official script gradually matured and occupied a dominant position. At this time, due to the improvement of people's aesthetic awareness, official script was written quite beautifully, leaving many famous steles, such as "Zhang Qian Stele" and "Shimen Monument". Masterpieces of different styles such as "Ode to Cao Quan" and "Cao Quan Stele" are still the best examples for learning official script.
The official script further evolved into regular script, which is the font we use today. It is richer and more complete than the official script. Zhong Yao during the Three Kingdoms period was a person who made great contributions to the processing and organization of regular script.
In the Tang Dynasty, culture was highly developed and calligraphy reached its peak. A large number of famous writers who were good at writing regular script appeared. Such as Ouyang Xun, Yu Shinan, Chu Suiliang, Yan Zhenqing, Liu Gongquan, etc.
Let’s talk about cursive writing. Cursive script did not appear after the appearance of regular script. "Grass" means preliminary and hasty. No matter which font is written sloppily, it is considered cursive. As a specialized font, it was only available in the Han Dynasty. It was not until the end of the Han Dynasty that cursive script became very popular, first as Zhangcao, then as Jincao, and finally as Kuangcao and Xiaocao. There are many types of cursive script, which are not suitable for beginners to learn, so I won’t go into details here.
Finally, let’s talk about running script. This is a font between regular script and cursive script. It was produced at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The real prosperous period was the Eastern Jin Dynasty. The masterpiece "Lanting Preface" by Wang Xizhi, known as the sage of calligraphy, is running script. Because running script is more practical, writing is more convenient than regular script, and it is not as difficult to read as cursive script, so it is still the most commonly used font today.
The evolution of Chinese characters has generally gone through several stages, including oracle bone inscriptions - large seal script - small seal script - official script - cursive script - regular script - running script. This is in line with the development of characters from complex to simple, from irregular to standardized. Oracle bone inscriptions, large seal script and small seal script can be collectively referred to as seal script. Then, seal script, official script, regular script, running script, and cursive script constitute the five types of Chinese calligraphy. With the development of Chinese characters today, regular script and running script are still used, but seal script, official script, cursive script, especially seal script are no longer used in daily life, and only exist as an art of calligraphy.
There are various legends about the origin of Chinese characters. Ancient Chinese books all say that characters were created by Cangjie. It is said that Cangjie saw a god with a strange appearance, and his face looked like a painting with words on it. Cangjie then traced his image and created words. Some ancient books say that after Cangjie created writing, millet fell from the sky and ghosts and gods cried every night because of leaked secrets. There is also a legend that Cangjie observed the footprints of birds and animals imprinted on the soil, which inspired him to invent writing. All these legends are unreliable. Writing is slowly enriched and developed by the working people based on the needs of real life and through long-term social practice.
From the autumn of 1954 to the summer of 1957, Chinese archaeologists excavated the Banpo site (today's north of Banpo Village in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an City) many times and discovered that the Banpo people lived for a long time as early as around 6000 years ago. In his life and production practice, he created literal symbols and artistic works such as paintings, sculptures, and decorations. Most of the Banpo people's engraved symbols are preserved on painted pottery, which can be regarded as original Chinese characters.
In recent years, China has discovered a batch of tombs (more than 4,500 years ago) at a site of the late Dawenkou culture in Lingyang River, Ju County, Shandong Province, and a large number of cultural relics have been unearthed. Some pottery statues are each engraved with an image and text, and *** discovered more than 10 single characters. These characters are depicted according to the shapes of real objects, so they are called "pictographs". The structure of the font is very similar to the pictographic characters on the oracle bone inscriptions, but it is more than 1,000 years earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions.
Therefore, "pictographic characters" are the earliest characters in China, and they already have the characteristics of characters.