Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Life Week Issue 40, 2019

June 12, 1936 is a landmark date in the history of Chinese archaeology. On this day, the Institute of History and Language of Academia Sinica made a major breakthrough in the excavation of the Yin Dynasty ruins in Anyang when thousands of oracle bones were discovered. This is the first time a large number of oracle bone inscriptions had been unearthed through scientific archaeology since the inscriptions on bones of the Shang Dynasty were discovered in 1899.

Oracle inscriptions are the earliest mature writing system found in China so far, this irrefutable evidence renders the Yin Dynasty ruins the earliest civilization site in historical records. Almost in the same period, the discovery of the Palaeolithic Peking Man Site in Zhoukoudian in Beijing settles the question of the origin of Chinese people. The findings about the initiation of the Chinese civilization and the origin of Chinese people prompted people to think more of a bigger question: the essence of China.

Since the late Qing Dynasty as China was forced to fling open its doors, Western sinologists had also developed interest in this question, and put forward various interpretations. Despite personal links between Chinese and foreign scholars, Chinese intellectuals had reached a consensus concerning the significant issue about the definition of China and its people, all agreeing that this ultimate definitive question should be addressed by the Chinese themselves.