Oracle Bones Also Known As Jia Gu Wen

Oracle Bones Also Known As: Jia Gu Wen (in Chinese Pinyin)

What an Oracle Bone with Answers and Questions is. • Oracle bones are pieces of bone or turtle plastron having the answers to answers and questions during the late Shang Dynasty. • They were heated and cracked, then typically inscribed using a bronze pin in what is known as oracle bone script. • The oracle bones are the earliest known significant body of ancient Chinese writing, and contain important historical information.

About the Oracle Bones • Oracle bone inscriptions were the earliest Chinese writing scripts, are the ancient Chinese characters carved on tortoise shells and animal scapulas. • The oracle bone inscriptions were mainly used for divination and keeping records of events happened in the late Shang Dynasty, and for talking to their ancestors (in 1300 BC - 1046 BC).

How it worked. • Here's how it worked: • The king or emperor would ask a question. • The priest would carve the king's question on an oracle bone, which was just an animal bone or turtle shell. • Then, the priest would heat a bronze pin and hold the hot pin to the bone. • This created a pattern of cracks over the bone. • The priest would study the cracks to find the answer to the question.

Interesting Facts • They are called oracle bones because the writing deals with divination and is carved on bone -- ox scapula and tortoiseshell. • The oracle bones have taught scholars much about the Shang Dynasty. • About 150, 000 of these were found in An. Yang, in the northern province of Henan, China, beginning in 1899. • Archaeologists have found over 100, 000 oracle bones. • Since many questions were asked about daily life, we know something about this civilization. • Oracle bones say things like: "If we sacrifice 10 men or 5 oxen, will it rain tomorrow? "

Sources http: //china. mrdonn. org/oraclebo nes. html http: //chineseculture. about. com/l ibrary/weekly/aa_oracle 02 a. ht m http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Oracl e_bone