How old is chinese writing system

Later representations of abstract thoughts appeared and later still they were modified into phonetic characters. As time went on the characters themselves became more simplified and abstract so that today they are now symbols and bear little resemblance to the original objects they represented.

Markings that may be writing have been found on objects dated to B. Unusual black markings on pottery produced by the Dadiwans—a stone-age culture that resided in what is now Gansu Province beginning at least B. The first examples of what are universally recognized as Chinese characters—inscriptions on oracle bones and bronze vessels—were produced during the Shang Dynasty B. See Oracle Bones, Shang Dynasty.

Some different characters were already in use in the Shang dynasty B. Some of the earliest writing was done on perishable bamboo and wood. Much of this has been lost to time.

Jiahu is a rich but little known archeological site located near the village of Jiahu near the Yellow River in Henan Province in central China. About equidistant between Xian and Nanjing, the site was occupied from 9, to 7, years ago.

We found 17 groups of inscribed symbols on turtleshell, stone, bone, and pottery. Different symbols appeared on different kinds of objects. Were these the earliest Chinese characters, and what meaning did they have?

We found that there were nine incised symbols on tortoise shells, five on bone tools and three on pottery vessels. Underhill, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Among the objects in burials, only one has an incised symbol. Most of the skeletons in burials with inscribed turtleshells and bone tools were male.

Other stone tools and pottery vessels with inscriptions were discovered inside houses and in pits. The oracle bone inscriptions from Yinxu, the late Shang site at Anyang, is a fully developed writing system, and the Jiahu symbols are helpful for understanding the origins of that script.

There are some strong similarities. First, both types of incised marks were made by the same kind of sharp tool, and they were made on bone, including on turtleshells. Second, the purpose of the oracle bone script from Yinxu was to document the results of divination.

The Jiahu incised symbols must also have had some kind of relationship with divination. Therefore we believe that the incised symbols invented by the Jiahu people more than 8, years ago have some kind of relationship with the origins of the Shang oracle bone script and therefore could be relevant to the origin of Chinese characters.

Signs carved into 8,year-old tortoise shells found in Jiahu, China may be the earliest written words, say archaeologists. The archaeologists say they bear similarities to written characters used thousands of years later during the Shang dynasty, which lasted from B. The research was published in the journal Antiquity. Politics Covid U. News World Opinion Business. Share this —. Follow NBC News. By Didi Tang. They reflect the perfect fusion of idea and image.

Although cuneiform and hieroglyphics disappeared with the civilizations that produced them, Chinese has continued down to the present day, evolving into a beautifully aesthetic system of lines and dots the incorporates such calligraphic styles as seal, clerical, cursive, running, and standard script for visual appeal.

Using the brush to create them results in one of the world's most beautiful forms of writing. Words and the way they are written down also preserve many aspects of the culture that produced them by incorporating elements of time and space. The system of Chinese characters remains one of the most important threads that ties together its three thousand years of written history. Forms of ancient Chinese writing include: 1 oracle bone writing; 2 bronze writing bronze writing; and 3 writing on bamboo slips.

Some of the more famous examples of these are: 1 Small Seal Script from Mt. This first effort at understanding ancient characters laid the foundation for the study of bronze inscriptions from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Even the discovery of script on unearthed oracle bones from the late Shang relied on his text. Just as important, however, oracle bone script has also made corrections to the dictionary itself.

The study of ancient characters involves investigating the original appearance, addressing problems of pronunciation, and researching issues of meaning and grammar. In July , Chinese archaeologists announced they had discovered a new form of primitive writing in markings on stoneware excavated from the relic site in eastern China dating 5, years back, about 1, years earlier than the oldest known written Chinese language.

The inscriptions predate the oracles, writings on turtle shells dating back to the Shang Dynasty C. The inscriptions on artifacts found south of Shanghai are about 1, years older than the oldest written Chinese language. Chinese scholars are divided over whether the markings are words or something simpler, but they say the finding will shed light on the origins of Chinese language and culture.

The oldest writing in the world is believed to be from Mesopotamia, dating back slightly more than 5, years. Chinese characters are believed to have been developed independently. The pieces are among thousands of fragments of ceramic, stone, jade, wood, ivory and bone excavated from the site between and , lead archaeologist Xu Xinmin said.

The inscriptions have not been reviewed by experts outside the country, but a group of Chinese scholars on archaeology and ancient writing met last weekend in Zhejiang province to discuss the finding.

They agreed that the inscriptions are not enough to indicate a developed writing system, but Xu said they include evidence of words on two broken stone-ax pieces. One of the pieces has six word-like shapes strung together to resemble a short sentence. Each shape has two to five strokes. He said the markings should be considered hieroglyphics.

He said there are also stand-alone shapes with more strokes. Pottery pieces and stone vessels unearthed at the Zhuangqiaofen archaeological site in the eastern province of Zhejiang push "the origin of the written language back 1, years", the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.

Other specialists dismissed the significance of such a find. Xu Hong, an archaeology researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, expressed scepticism on links between the inscriptions and the development of Chinese script.

Xia Jingchun, a professor of Chinese language from Beijing Technology and Business University, also wrote on Weibo: "It's long been believed by experts that there were more ancient characters than the oracles, because the oracles were too mature, and older languages are supposed to be less developed.

Making an oracle bone Shang priests practiced an unusual form of divination that involved placing heated rods in grooves carved into specially-prepared ox scapulae shoulder bones and turtle plastrons the undesides of turtle shells. The ensuing cracks were read by fortunetellers for "auspicious" and "inauspicious signs" and messages from natural spirits and ancestors The predictions, often made by the king rather than the diviner, and answers were engraved on the bones.

Over , "oracle bones" have been found, mostly in storage pits in Xiaotun in Henan. Oracle bones appear to have held a high place in Shang culture and this would lead one to conclude that superstition and written language held very high places in the lives of the ancient Chinese. The oracle bones unearthed in Xiaotun also provided some of the earliest evidence of Chinese writing and the first examples of writing in East Asia. They recorded harvests, childbirths and wars, detailed accomplishments of kings, described human sacrifices, plagues, natural disasters, enemy tribes and the ailments of kings.

Some different Chinese charactersmost of them pictogramswere used during the Shang dynasty. Users of oracle bone divinations sought advice and predictions on matters such as raising of crops, the outcome of battles, illness, and childbirth. They also sought advise from the dead, the meaning of dreams, and suggestions on how many people to sacrifice. One inscription proposed sacrificing prisoners to an ancestor. Possibly after a divination was another inscription that recommended five prisoners.

The oracle bones were seen as a medium of communications between diviners and ancestors, with the latter regarded as the sources of the information. David N. The diviners wanted to capture this moment. For each ancestor there were multiple divinations. I think it was Father Geng who was causing the illness. Before the Qin Dynasty B. Even so, with over million native speakers , the standard Chinese recognized as Mandarin Chinese, is the most widespread Sino-Tibetan language among the languages of Asia, which became popular during the Manchu dynasty in Beijing more details below.

In terms of speaker populations, Chinese is a language of the Sino-Tibetan family spoken in China, Taiwan, Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia, as well as by lots of Chinese communities present worldwide. In fact, Chinese and Japanese are different languages. True, Japanese has borrowed many characters from old Chinese as the writing system was introduced from developed China to rural Japan many centuries ago.

Pronunciation is radically different, but it is possible for speakers of both languages to exchange some information and have a certain level of understanding if they write common characters. Why do they call it "Mandarin" when they mean Chinese?

A largely diffused adaptation as to the origin of the term "Mandarin" originates from the Hindi word "mantri" which means "counselor" or "minister of state", which was then passed to the Malaysian word "mantri".

This, or a similar word, was the word finally found by the Portuguese when they came in contact with China, adapted as "mandarim". From Portuguese, it was quickly assimilated into other European languages. This word made its way to the Portuguese vocabulary due to the Chinese- Portuguese trade relations in the early 17th century. Portuguese traders could only deal with Chinese officials from the Chinese imperial government.

Like this, the Chinese population was kept protected from the diffusion of foreign customs. It was thus that the language used by the officials who ruled was known as "Mandarin" in the West. A short history Chinese is certainly a language with ancient origins.