The 3,000-year history of calligraphy begins in the Pre-Qin period:
Origin:
The appearance of early calligraphy can be seen from the unearthed cultural relics of the Pre-Qin period. The oracle bone inscriptions unearthed at the Yin Ruins are the oldest existing writings, which are the writings engraved on the bones of tortoise shells. Bone inscriptions have a symmetrical and stable pattern and already possess the three elements of calligraphy, namely the use of pens, knotting of characters, and composition.
Development:
The big seal script, small seal script, official script and regular script are divided into four stages according to the standard and a theory of three stages of Chinese character development is proposed. That is, the first stage is the picture writing stage; the second stage is the phonetic writing stage based on ideographs and phonetic characters as the main body; the third stage is based on phonograms as the main body, but also retains some ideographs and phonetic characters. Phonographic stage of phonetic characters.