CHINESE writing began as individual symbols thousands of years before the characters were brought together to create a true written language. Symbols that resemble Chinese characters appear on tortoise shells in graves dating back to 6500 BC at a site called Jiahu in Henan Province.
Specialists usually define a written language as representing a series of spoken words. The Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia are credited with developing the first written language about 3000 BC, with Chinese writing appearing over a thousand years later. The ancient Chinese symbols at Jiahu appear singly, so are not writing in the conventional sense, says Garman Harbottle, a chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, who specialises in the age and context of artefacts. Yet, Harbottle says, these Chinese symbols were used as signs for a long time and eventually evolved into a fully fledged system of writing.
Archaeologists from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei uncovered the shells while excavating 349 graves from the early Neolithic period, when agriculture was being developed. Twenty-four of the graves contained tortoise shells, nine of which were inscribed with recognisable symbols, as were two bone artefacts (Antiquity, vol 77, p 31). The symbols had been described previously in Chinese-language papers which were ignored in the West, Harbottle says.
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The oldest undisputed Chinese writing is a set of 5000 characters used during the Shang dynasty, which began about 1700 BC. However, the lead author of the Antiquity article describing the recent results, Xueqin Li, argues that some written characters had much earlier origins.
More than 50 painted characters have been found on pottery dating from the Longshan period between 3000 and 2000 BC. Somewhat less complex signs appear on pottery fragments from the Yangshao period between 5000 and 4000 BC. The Jiahu discoveries push the oldest traces of writing back even further. Some of those early symbols closely resemble characters from the Shang dynasty, Li believes, although the meanings may not have been the same. For example, the Jiahu symbols include a headless stick figure with one arm raised, which looks like the modern Chinese symbol for woman (see Graphic).
Like Egyptian hieroglyphics, ancient Chinese symbols were used in rituals. Western linguistic historians are careful to draw a line between the Jiahu symbols and true Chinese writing. “The invention of signs is the smallest part of a writing system,” says Princeton University archaeologist Robert Bagley. The crucial innovations are developing and agreeing upon a set of conventions. However, Harbottle says Chinese archaeologists disagree, and are “perfectly satisfied to call this writing”.