From the ancient legend of Cangjie's word-making to the discovery of Oracle Bone Inscriptions more than 65,438,000 years ago, China scholars have been trying to uncover the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters. There are always different opinions about the origin of Chinese characters, among which the most influential ones are: knot rope theory, gossip theory, seal cutting theory, Cangjie word-making theory, description theory and picture theory.
Judging from the unearthed written materials of archaeological excavations, China had a formal written language at least in the Xia Dynasty. For example, archaeologists once found the word "Wen" for writing brush and bamboo script on a flat pottery jar unearthed from Taosi site in Xiangfen, Shanxi. These symbols belong to the basic configuration in the early writing system, but unfortunately such unearthed writing materials are still rare.
About 6000 years ago, there were more than 50 kinds of carved symbols on the outer wall of pottery in Yangshao cultural sites such as Banpo site. They are well-planned, regular and have the characteristics of simplified Chinese characters, which may be the bud of Chinese characters.
Extended data
Legend has it that Cang Xie created Chinese characters. Cang Xie inspired, classified, collected, arranged and utilized the footprints of birds and animals recorded in Shuo Wen Jie Zi, which played an important role in the creation of Chinese characters and was known as the "sage of word creation".
Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the earliest known mature Chinese character, appeared in Shang Dynasty, and Zhong Dingwen appeared later. Although the number of words increased, it did not change much.
Due to the vast territory of the Zhou Dynasty and the long-term separatist regime, Chinese characters obviously showed abnormal characters among vassal States at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, especially during the Warring States Period.
In order to consolidate the rule after the unification of Qin Dynasty, Qin Shihuang ordered Prime Ministers Lisi, CZ Zhao Gao and Taishi Hu Wujing to sort out the characters, and based on the big seal script of Qin State, made the small seal script as the national standard font. Later, according to the popular fonts at that time, a simpler font official script was compiled, which was widely circulated throughout the country as a common word.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, regular script appeared and the evolution of Chinese characters was perfect. Not only that, the first calligraphy monograph "cursive script" appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Chinese Characters