Experts weigh on on oracle-bone inscriptions

Chinese oracle-bone inscriptions, which date back over 3,000 years, are among the three earliest written characters in human history, the other two being cuneiform invented by Sumerians and Egyptian hieroglyphics invented by ancient Egyptians. The other two have long since perished in history, with Chinese oracle-bone inscriptions being the only one that evolved into modern written characters today.

As the “ancestor” of modern Chinese characters, oracle-bone inscriptions had already been turning from hieroglyphics to structure-based characters, and laid the structural foundation of the latter. In simpler words, the later forms of Chinese characters are mostly “improvements” made on the basis of oracle-bone inscriptions.

That’s what makes it especially valuable: As the only written language that survived over 3,000 years, oracle-bone inscriptions carry within it the constant, never-broken culture of China.

That’s also why I — and most domestic archeologists — think it is a positive and proper move to include Chinese oracle-bone inscriptions in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Inside the characters carved on the bones and turtle shells are the memories of ancient China, and they are worth all of humanity’s efforts to memorize.

Yin Jie, associate researcher on archeological studies at Nanjing University