Archaeologists say the “oracle bones” from ancient China were used in magical attempts to predict the future.
- Name: Oracle Bones
- What it is: Tortoiseshells or the shoulder blades of oxen that were inscribed with ancient Chinese characters
- Where it is from China
- When it was made: 3,250 years ago
What it reveals about history:
Although there isn’t a single “oracle bone”—roughly 13,000 have been discovered—these artifacts provide insight into how writing evolved in ancient China.
Although the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty dominated most of northern China from approximately 1600 B.C., the oldest traditional Chinese dynasty for which there is archeological evidence, they date from the late Shang Dynasty (c. 1250 B.C. to c. 1050 B.C.).
Chinese academics claim that subsequent farmers frequently unearthed oracle bone relics throughout the ancient Shang domains, and many of them were resurrected during funeral rites in Anyang, the former Shang capital in the province of Henan, China.
The people who lived close to Anyang in the 19th century discovered what they believed to be “dragon bones” in the form of oracle bones. Many of these bones were crushed up for traditional medicine until they were valued by antique merchants.
Oracle bones were frequently fashioned from ox shoulder blades and tortoise shells, as the one in this picture. Archaeologists allege that a fortune teller would use a sharp tool to etch a question into the bone, then heat it until it broke. The fortune teller would then supposedly decipher the cracks.
Over 100,000 inscriptions are recorded because the bones and shells were reused until there was no more room.
The first known example of Chinese writing is found in the preserved oracle bones. Although certain characters are still poorly understood, many of the about 5,000 characters of the “oracle bone script” are still utilized in modern Chinese (some dialects of the language recognize tens of thousands of written characters). Scholars have utilized them to map out the Shang royal lineage and to perform divinations for the Shang royal family.
There have also been discovered oracle bones that predate the Shang Dynasty; in 2003, some researchers claimed to have discovered “Neolithic oracle bones” that date back up to 8,600 years.
Some of their characters were said to be similar to Shang characters in early accounts. Other academics, however, questioned the assertions, pointing out that it was improbable that any Shang characters had been in use more than 5,000 years before previously believed.