#oracle bone script

The oracle bone script for "vegetable" (cai) comes from the image of a hand, harvesting some vegetables from the ground :D

Unfortunately I was not able to acquire tickets to the Shaanxi History Museum/陕西历史博物馆, which is one of my biggest regrets from this entire trip, because Shaanxi History Museum is the provincial-level museum, it has a lot more artifacts. Xi’an is the capital city of Shaanxi Province, so it has both the city-level museum and the provincial-level museum; the one I posted about previously, Xi’an museum, is just the city-level museum.

But fortunately Xi’an has a quite a few history museums, which makes sense considering the city’s very long history, so on we go to the Shaanxi Archaeology Museum:

For the longest time I also thought archaeology was a very European thing, but actually? It did also exist in ancient China. The word guxue/古学 (lit. “Antiquity Studies”) existed as early as Eastern Han dynasty (25 - 220 AD), and by Song dynasty (960 - 1279 AD), kaoguxue/考古学/archaeology was pretty well known. Sidenote: the word 考古学 may not mean exactly the same thing as archaeology in Song dynasty, but today it just means archaeology. Below is the Song-era kaoguxue work named 《考古图》 (this book on display was printed in Qing dynasty, judging by the cover):

Compare the above with the notes of a modern archaeologist:

A collection of interesting Neolithic era pottery artifacts with various faces on them. Some are from Yangshao culture/仰韶文化 (5000 - 2700 BC). I swear you can make reaction pics out of these lol

They even have these refrigerator magnet souvenirs lol

Is that a pottery piggy on the right? This piggy looks oddly familiar…

Which reminds me of this other pottery pig found near the Sanxingdui/三星堆 site (Picture from Douyin user 姜丝炒土豆丝). Looks very familiar indeed lol

A pottery drum reminiscent of an udu drum. The one in the front is a replica that visitors can try out

Left: a pottery artifact with a frog face on it. Right: a pottery tiger I think? Not sure.

Shang dynasty (1600 - 1046 BC) jade dragon:

Carved stone bricks from the neolithic site of Shimao/石峁 (~2000 BC). These were originally found in the outer walls of the site, which is why they are presented this way:

Mouth harp artifacts from Shimao culture (top one is a modern one, for comparison). There’s also a map on the many variations of mouth harps from cultures around the world, which is really cool:

Fragments of bone flutes. These were flutes fashioned from crane bones, the most famous of which were the intact flutes unearthed from the Jiahu/贾湖 site dating back to 7000 - 5700 BC, and they were still playable (first link is the 1999 Nature article regarding this discovery, second link goes to a recording of a modern musician playing the song 小白菜 on one of these bone flutes)

A Western Zhou dynasty (1046 – 771 BC) bone hairpin. There were quite a few hairpins in the exhibition, but this is my fav:

And now comes the really cool stuff: oracle/divination bones. Oracle/divination bones were animal bones that ancient Chinese people (mostly of Shang-era) used for divination. These bones have holes drilled into them in a pattern and have oracle bone script/jiaguwen/甲骨文 carved into them (the carved text consists of questions presented to the gods), and then they were heated slowly over a fire until the bone starts to crack. A priest or priestess would then interpret these cracks, as they were seen as answers from the gods, and record the answer on the bone. Sometimes these bones were used purely as records for important events:

Since oracle bone script is the oldest form of Chinese written language, it is possible to decipher the text carved onto these bones:

I carved a little oracle bone stamp!

Stamp before and after use:

Oracle Bone, Shang Dynasty, October 8, 2016

Oracle Bone, Shang Dynasty, Reign of Zu Geng, c. 1191-1181 B.C.E. (Shanghai Museum, China) Speakers: Dr. Kristen Chiem and Dr. Beth Harris.

The vast majority (around 80%) of Chinese characters are made up of a radical (the general meaning) and a phonetic.

Radical 女 nǚ (woman) and phonetic 馬 mǎ (horse) = 媽 mā, mother (your mum sounds like a horse).

But a small minority are pictograms, that is to say a picture of the thing they represent.

Pictograms are the earliest characters, thousands of years old, but many are still used every day.

If you look at the oracle bone script for rat, tiger and elephant you'll see they are clearly pictures of the animal they signify.

But if you look at the modern versions, you'll notice something odd, they're all rotated 90 degrees onto their sides.

Why? Why are all these characters written with the animals balancing on their tails?

Well, it's for a straight-forward, practical reason.

For a couple thousand years before paper was invented writing materials were limited. We had silk (expensive), bronze (expensive and impractical), and oracle bones (religious use only).

And one more...

That was cheap, plentiful, durable, and easy to erase and rewrite characters. The wonder that is...

Bamboo!

It was cut into strips, and tied into books. Long thin strips of bamboo contributed to the Chinese custom of writing vertically, from top to bottom (and right to left).

But it also meant that it's much easier to write some characters length-ways so that they easily fit onto the strip.

Writing Systems: Crash Course Linguistics #16

All societies have spoken or signed language, but not all languages have a written form. Since writing developed in different ways in different places, writing systems differ greatly around the world. In this final episode of Crash Course Linguistics, we’ll learn about writing systems, also called orthographies, the different components that make up a writing system, the development of different writing systems over time, and more!

Pictographic evolution timeline

Forms condensed on the first textile represent petroglyphs and pre-civilization traces of human notifications. Mainly based on petroglyphs I managed to document in Altai Republic. Second textile refers to early civilization symbolism such as first ideographic and pictographic alphabets (early cuneiform and early pictographic form of Kanji alphabet). The third textile drifts through the medieval influences of aesthetics flowing from standardization of typography (black lettering order) and alchemical symbolism. It also refers to early gang-graffiti culture from Chicago which on iconographic layer bases on the middle age heritage symbolism, such us "gothic" fonts and alchemical signs, blended with 20th century pop-cultural elements. The last textile refers to contemporary pictograms such as warning symbols, logos and a whole picture lettering of late capitalism. Work is also a timeline picturing the development of the intention and domination of man on the planet, from relatively innocent hunting records to modern pictograms, that informs about radioactivity and toxicity of human activities.

Spray bleached cotton 4 x (4x5 m) 2019 Pictures by Jakub Certowicz / edited by me