The earliest Chinese writing system that has been preserved to the present day is the oracle bone inscriptions, which dates back 3,000 years to China’s Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC). The ancient Chinese people believed that both nature and human affairs were governed by a kind of mystical force. As a result, divination was commonly used to forecast the auspiciousness of pending activities related to sacrificial worship, war, hunting, farming, marriage etc.

The oracle bone inscriptions refer to Chinese symbols that were inscribed o turtle shells and animal bones to record the subjects and results of divination. The oracles and shells were buried under the ruins of Yin, the late Shang capital. In 1899 AD, the scholar Wang Yirong fell ill at the site of the ruins, he noticed that there were some symbols etched on a medicine called “dragon bone” that he had purchased to cure his illness. He realized that these symbols might be those of an ancient script. Then the oracle bone inscriptions were discovered. Wang Yirong was later deemed “the father of the oracle script”. Xiaotun of Henan Province Anyang City, where inscribed bones and tortoise shells were excavated, became the World Cultural Heritage Site known as “Yinxu” (the ruins of Yin).