Introduction: A Long Exploration on the Eve of Writing
Chinese characters are the only independently originated writing system in the world that has continued to the present day and still possesses vitality, and their origin and early evolution are a key link in the formation of Chinese civilization. The time span of this article reaches back to the incised symbols of the Neolithic Age eight thousand years ago and extends down to the mature oracle-bone script system of the late Shang dynasty. The core question is: how did Chinese characters develop from scattered symbols into a writing system with a complete recording function? Taking the incised symbols on excavated pottery, jade, and bone artifacts as a starting point, the article analyzes one by one the symbol materials from sites such as Jiahu, Shuangdun, Dawenkou, Liangzhu, and Erlitou, and then focuses on the formative principles of oracle-bone script itself—the early practice of pictographic (xiangxing, 象形), indicative (zhishi, 指事), associative (huiyi, 会意), and phono-semantic (xingsheng, 形声) methods—and, in conjunction with the grammar and character usage phenomena of Shang dynasty divination inscriptions, argues that the Chinese character system was already highly mature in the Shang dynasty. At the same time, bronze inscriptions and jade-and-stone texts, as supplementary evidence, will present the actual functions of Chinese characters in the early state's power and religious life. Taking "formative evidence" as its thread, the full article sorts out the logic of evolution from symbols to writing, and introduces academic discussions on whether writing originated from a single source or multiple sources.
1. Discovery and Nature of Neolithic Incised Symbols
At the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan, dating back approximately 8,000 years, over a dozen symbols incised on turtle shells, bone implements, and stone tools have been unearthed. The shapes of a few of these symbols bear similarities to later oracle bone script characters such as “目” (mù, “eye”) and “日” (rì, “sun”). These incised symbols of the Jiahu type of the Peiligang culture represent the earliest materials discovered within China that may be related to the origin of writing. However, the mainstream scholarly view does not regard them as writing, because the symbols are few in number, appear in isolation, and lack repeated use and combinatorial regularity; they are more likely a means of recording events or marking identity. The significance of the Jiahu symbols lies in the fact that they demonstrate that by the middle Neolithic period, the ancestors of the middle and lower Yellow River region already possessed the cognitive ability to express specific meanings through abstract lines. The excavation report Wuyang Jiahu divides this group of symbols into three categories: simple horizontal or vertical incised lines; intersecting or zigzag lines; and pictographic forms resembling implements or the human eye. On one turtle plastron, a symbol shaped like “目” (mù, “eye”) is incised, almost identical in form to the oracle bone script character “目,” which is written vertically with the eye corner turned upward. This has sparked long-running discussion about the continuity between symbols and writing. Opponents, however, point out that similarity does not equal transmission; there remains a gap of several thousand years between the Jiahu symbols and Shang dynasty writing, with no intermediate links.
At the Shuangdun site in Bengbu, Anhui, dating from approximately 7,300 to 6,800 years ago, over 600 incised symbols have been unearthed, mostly located on the bottoms of pottery vessels, with content involving animals, plants, houses, implements, and geometric figures. The outstanding characteristic of the Shuangdun symbols is their large number and great variety, and some symbols appear repeatedly incised, showing a certain tendency toward conventionalization. Compared with Jiahu, the Shuangdun symbols are more complex in configuration, with phenomena such as multiple symbols on a single vessel and correspondence between symbols and vessel function—for example, certain symbols appear only on the bottoms of specific types of pottery bowls or basins. The excavation report Bengbu Shuangdun divides these symbols into three major categories—pictographic, indicative, and compound ideographic—and points out that symbols such as “猪” (zhū, “pig”), “鱼” (yú, “fish”), “网” (wǎng, “net”), and “房子” (fángzi, “house”) already possess relatively fixed forms of writing and belong to a nascent stage of “characters.” Whether they possessed a phonetic function, however, remains undetermined. Some scholars suggest that certain combinations among the Shuangdun symbols may express more complex meanings, but evidence of connected reading into sentences is lacking. The discovery of these symbols extended the exploration of the origin of Chinese characters from the Yellow River basin to the Huai River basin, demonstrating the possibility of multiple origins.
At the Dadiwan site in Qin’an, Gansu, dating from approximately 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, over a dozen kinds of painted symbols have been found on pottery, mostly painted on the inner walls of basin-shaped vessels in red alone, with common examples including “↑,” “十” (shí, “ten”), and “×.” These symbols share similarities with the incised symbols of the Banpo type of the Yangshao culture. On pottery unearthed at the Banpo site, incised symbols number over a hundred examples, with approximately 27 distinct forms according to statistics, mostly found on the black band patterns on the outer rim of round-bottomed basins. Most of these symbols are geometric lines, such as vertical strokes, horizontal strokes, diagonal crosses, and triangles, among which a few—such as the “丰” (fēng) shape—resemble certain oracle bone script characters. Guo Moruo, in his article “The Dialectical Development of Ancient Writing,” proposed that the Banpo incised symbols “are the origin of Chinese writing,” a view that sparked sustained debate. Most scholars now hold that the Banpo symbols belong to the predecessor of the “indicative” system, but had not yet established a fixed correspondence with words in language, and therefore should not be directly called writing. The repeated appearance and cross-site distribution of Banpo symbols suggest that they may have served some recording function, such as marking vessel ownership, use, or quantity produced.
At the Liuwan cemetery in Ledu, Qinghai, in the upper Yellow River region, a group of symbols painted with pigment on pottery of the Machang type of the Majiayao culture has also been discovered, numbering as many as 139 kinds according to statistics, with common examples including “+,” “-,” “○,” and “卐.” The Liuwan symbols overlap in form with the incised symbols of sites such as Banpo and Jiangzhai, indicating that across a vast territory, the ancestors shared a consensus on the use of certain abstract symbols. It is worth noting that a small number of Liuwan symbols have entered the margins of the category of writing—for example, some symbols appear repeatedly on multiple pottery vessels and in fixed positions, seemingly with specific meanings. But on the whole, these symbols still belong to “marks” rather than “writing,” because they cannot be connected into sentences that record language.
2. Dawenkou and Liangzhu: The Increasing Complexity of Symbols
In the Dawenkou culture, dating from roughly 6,300 to 4,500 years ago, symbols incised with combinations of "sun," "fire," and "mountain" were discovered on pottery zun vessels unearthed at sites such as Lingyang River in Ju County, Shandong, and Qianzhai in Zhucheng. The most representative of these is the "sun-fire-mountain" composite symbol, regarded as a prototype of primitive associative compounds (huiyi characters). This symbol consists of a circle at the top, a flame shape in the middle, and a mountain peak shape at the bottom; some scholars interpret it as an early form of the character "dan" (旦, "dawn") or "jiong" (炅, "blazing"). The sophistication of Dawenkou symbols lies in the fact that they are no longer depictions of a single object but combinations of multiple semantic components, possessing the structural characteristics of associative compounds. To date, approximately thirty or more incised symbols of the Dawenkou culture have been discovered, concentrated at over ten sites in southeastern Shandong, and mostly incised on the upper belly of large pottery zun vessels—vessels generally believed to be associated with sacrificial activities. This suggests that the use of symbols may have served religious or ritual functions rather than everyday record-keeping.
In the late Dawenkou culture period, the same symbol repeatedly appeared across different sites. For instance, the "sun-fire-mountain" symbol was unearthed at both the Lingyang River and Qianzhai sites, with essentially identical stroke sequences, indicating that the symbol had developed a fixed form of writing within the region. Some scholars classify Dawenkou symbols into two categories: "single-element" and "composite." Composite symbols are formed by combining two or more single elements—for example, the "sun-fire-mountain" symbol is composed of three single elements. This mode of combination is strikingly similar to the character-formation logic of associative compounds in oracle bone script, and thus Dawenkou symbols are regarded as an important link in the chain of Chinese character origins. It must be pointed out, however, that the total number of Dawenkou symbols remains very small, and no linear arrangements or syntactic structures have been found, making it impossible to prove that they could record language. Furthermore, the symbols on pottery zun vessels often correlate with tomb size and the quantity of burial goods, suggesting that the use of symbols may have been controlled by a small number of people and served as a symbol of power and knowledge.
In the Liangzhu culture, dating from roughly 5,300 to 4,300 years ago, various incised symbols have been found on pottery and jade artifacts at sites including the Liangzhu site cluster in Yuhang, Zhejiang; Fuquanshan in Qingpu, Shanghai; and Chenghu in Wu County, Jiangsu. The most striking among Liangzhu symbols is the "bird standing on a high platform" symbol incised on jade bi discs and jade cong tubes, as well as shapes on pottery resembling "yue" (戉, a battle-axe), "jin" (斤, an axe), "wu" (五, "five"), and "mu" (木, "wood"). On a black pottery jar unearthed at the Chenghu site, four symbols are incised, considered an attempt at connected reading, with interpretations such as "wu yue wu ou" (巫钺五偶), though this remains highly controversial. There is a missing link between the Liangzhu culture's symbol system and the later Maqiao culture and Shang dynasty writing, but the incised symbols on Liangzhu jade artifacts exhibit a high degree of standardization and repetitiveness, demonstrating the monopolistic use of symbols by the upper strata of Liangzhu society. Certain glyphs among Liangzhu symbols that are identical to those in oracle bone script and bronze inscriptions—such as the pictograph for "yue" (钺, a battle-axe)—suggest that the Lake Tai region may have participated in the early processes of Chinese character formation.
3. Symbols and Writing in Erlitou and the Early Shang Period
At the Erlitou site in Yanshi, Henan, dating from roughly 3,800 to 3,500 years ago, several dozen incised symbols on pottery have been unearthed, mostly carved on the rims or bellies of large-mouthed zun vessels, basins, and jars. The Erlitou symbols bear an evident relationship of inheritance to Yangshao culture symbols; among the common ones are "×," "十," "↑," and "丰." Some of these symbols are regarded by scholars as having a direct origin relationship with oracle bone script—for instance, a "目" (mù, "eye")-shaped symbol on Erlitou pottery is almost identical in form to its oracle bone script counterpart. Erlitou culture is considered to be late Xia dynasty or early Shang culture; the use of its symbols was broader in scope than in the Neolithic period, but they remained predominantly single characters, and no multi-character inscriptions forming sentences have been discovered. Incised symbols on bone implements and bronze objects have also been unearthed at Erlitou, indicating that the carriers of symbols had already become diversified. Some scholars have pointed out that incipient "phono-semantic" (xingsheng) compounds had already appeared among Erlitou symbols—for example, certain symbols added indicative strokes on the basis of pictographic forms—but this view still requires more material support. On the whole, the Erlitou period was a critical stage in the transition of Chinese characters from symbols to writing, and the standardization and systematicity of its symbols showed marked improvement over previous eras.
At the early Shang sites of the Zhengzhou Shang City and the Yanshi Shang City, pottery incised with symbols has been unearthed; among the pottery symbols from the Zhengzhou Erligang site are "目" (mù, "eye"), "矢" (shǐ, "arrow"), "网" (wǎng, "net"), and "刀" (dāo, "knife"), some of which are completely identical in form to oracle bone script. Symbols of the early Shang period remained primarily pottery incisions, but symbols carved on bone implements had already appeared. It is worth noting that among early Shang symbols, the proportion of pictographic symbols increased markedly while abstract symbols relatively decreased, which accords with the general principle of "pictography first" in the origin of writing. The repeated use and cross-site distribution of early Shang symbols indicate that they already possessed relatively fixed relationships of form, sound, and meaning, and may already have been constituent parts of a proto-writing system. However, no extended documents have been found from the early Shang, so its level of writing development can only be inferred from scattered symbols. This stage was the eve of the great explosion of oracle bone script; the systematization of writing was only finally completed in the late Shang period.
4. Oracle Bone Script: Structural Evidence of a Mature Writing System
In 1899, Wang Yirong discovered incised characters on oracle bones unearthed at Xiaotun Village in Anyang, Henan, and oracle bone script has since entered the academic field of vision. To date, approximately 150,000 oracle bones have been unearthed, containing roughly 4,500 individual characters, of which about 1,500 have been deciphered. Oracle bone script consists of records of royal divination from the late Shang dynasty, covering sacrifices, warfare, hunting, meteorology, and disease, and possessing a complete grammatical structure and a rich vocabulary. In terms of character formation, oracle bone script already possessed four of the traditional "six categories of Chinese characters" (liushu, 六书): pictographic (xiangxing, 象形), indicative (zhishi, 指事), associative compound (huiyi, 会意), and phono-semantic compound (xingsheng, 形声), with phono-semantic compounds already accounting for a certain proportion. According to Li Xiaoding's Collected Explanations of Oracle Bone Characters (Jiaguwen Ziji Shi, 《甲骨文字集释》), phono-semantic compounds account for approximately 27% of oracle bone script. Although this falls short of the proportion in the later Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters (Shuowen Jiezi, 《说文解字》), where phono-semantic compounds exceed 80%, it already demonstrates powerful productivity. Pictographic characters in oracle bone script, such as "horse" (ma, 马), "ox" (niu, 牛), "sheep" (yang, 羊), and "dog" (quan, 犬), outline animal features with lines, concise yet accurate; indicative characters such as "up" (shang, 上), "down" (xia, 下), "root" (ben, 本), and "tip" (mo, 末) mark spatial orientation or body parts with abstract symbols; associative compounds such as "martial" (wu, 武), "trustworthiness" (xin, 信), "rest" (xiu, 休), and "take" (qu, 取) combine two or more components to express new meanings. Oracle bone script was already capable of fully recording language and constitutes a mature writing system.
The forms of oracle bone characters were not yet fully fixed; the same character often had multiple variants. For example, the character for "chariot" (che, 车) had different forms depicting wheels, carriages, and shafts, while the character for "fish" (yu, 鱼) had horizontal and vertical orientations as well as simplified and complex variants. This phenomenon of variant forms reflects the mutations of characters in rapid use and also indicates that oracle bone script was in the process of standardization. The writing order of oracle bone script was mostly left-to-right and top-to-bottom, consistent with later Chinese characters. The structure of divination inscriptions typically included the preface (date of divination and name of the diviner), the charge (content of the inquiry), the prognostication (the Shang king's judgment), and the verification (subsequent outcome). This structured mode of recording required characters to possess sufficient expressive power, and oracle bone script was equal to the task. Furthermore, phonetic loan characters (jiajiezi, 假借字) had already appeared in oracle bone script, such as borrowing "lai" (来) for "mai" (麦, "wheat") and borrowing "ling" (令) for "ming" (命, "command"), indicating that written symbols were beginning to detach from concrete objects and develop in a phonetic direction. Oracle bone script is not the initial form of Chinese characters but a mature system formed after long accumulation, and behind it there must necessarily have been an earlier stage of writing development.
Compound characters in oracle bone script already distinguished between associative compounds and phono-semantic compounds. For instance, "good" (hao, 好) consists of "woman" (nü, 女) and "child" (zi, 子), and "herd" (mu, 牧) consists of "ox" (niu, 牛) and "tap" (pu, 攴), both being associative compounds; "river" (jiang, 江) and "river" (he, 河) consist of "water" (shui, 水) with "gong" (工) and "ke" (可) respectively, being phono-semantic compounds. The emergence of phono-semantic compounds was a milestone in the history of Chinese character development, enabling characters to combine a limited set of components into unlimited new characters to meet the needs of a growing vocabulary. The sources of phono-semantic compounds in oracle bone script were mainly threefold: first, adding a semantic component, such as the character for "phoenix" (feng, 凤) adding the sound "fan" (凡) to a pictographic base; second, adding a phonetic component, such as the character for "chicken" (ji, 鸡) adding the sound "xi" (奚) to a pictographic base; third, directly combining a semantic component with a phonetic component, such as "sacrifice" (si, 祀) consisting of "altar" (shi, 示) and "si" (巳). These formation methods were already employed with ease in oracle bone script, indicating that people of the late Shang dynasty had a profound understanding of the relationship between sound and meaning. The structural system of oracle bone script is key evidence of Chinese characters moving toward maturity; it inherited the incised symbols of the Neolithic period and gave rise to bronze inscriptions of the Western and Eastern Zhou and the scripts of the Warring States period.
5. Bronze Inscriptions and Jade-and-Stone Writing: The Functional Expansion of Early Writing
Shang dynasty bronze inscriptions (jinwen, 金文) are another important body of written material besides the oracle-bone inscriptions. Shang bronze inscriptions were mostly cast on the inner walls or bottoms of vessels, and their content was brief, generally recording only a clan emblem, the name of the vessel's maker, or the object of sacrifice, ranging from one or two characters to a dozen or more. The inscription on the "Simuwu" (司母戊) ding, for example, consists of only three characters, indicating that the vessel was made for sacrifices to Mu Wu. The glyph forms of Shang bronze inscriptions are basically identical to those of the oracle-bone script, but because they were produced by casting, the strokes are relatively thick and the style is plain and vigorous. The emergence of bronze inscriptions shows that writing was no longer used only for divination but also for marking bronze ritual vessels, closely tied to aristocratic status and sacrificial activities. In the late Shang period, bronze inscriptions gradually grew longer; the inscription on the Xiaochen Yu zun (小臣艅尊), for instance, contains 27 characters recording the Shang king's campaign against the Renfang (人方), and already possesses a narrative function. The complementarity of bronze and oracle-bone inscriptions presents a full picture of writing use in the Shang dynasty: oracle-bone script for divination, bronze inscriptions for sacrifice and commemoration, together constituting the written practice of the early state.
The Shang dynasty also left writing carved on jade and stone objects, such as the inscription "Lufang jie ru ge wu" (卢方皆入戈五, "the Lufang chief presented five ge-daggers") on a jade ge-dagger unearthed from the tomb of Fu Hao (妇好), which records tribute from a regional polity. Such writing was mostly related to the function of the object itself, either marking its origin or recording quantities. In addition, a small number of carved inscriptions appear on pottery and bone objects, such as the characters "wang" (王, "king") and "fu" (妇, "lady") on pottery unearthed at Xiaotun in Anyang. These scattered written materials show that the scope of writing use in the Shang dynasty was already quite broad, covering politics, economics, military affairs, religion, and other fields. Writing was no longer merely a symbol but an important tool of state administration and cultural transmission. In the late Shang period, the use of writing had broken through the confines of royal divination and expanded into the daily records of the aristocratic class, laying the foundation for the appearance of long bronze inscriptions in the Western Zhou period.
Western Zhou bronze inscriptions developed further on the Shang foundation, producing inscriptions hundreds of characters long, such as the 499-character inscription on the Mao Gong ding (毛公鼎), whose content concerns investiture, rewards, and litigation, in a style similar to the admonitory pronouncements (gaoming, 诰命) in the Book of Documents. The glyph forms of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions are more regular than those of the Shang, with rounded strokes and well-proportioned structures, forming the so-called "seal script" (zhuanshu, 篆书) style. The Shizhou pian (史籀篇) of the Western Zhou period is regarded as an early character primer; although the original text is lost, part of the zhouwen (籀文) script it contained is preserved in the Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字), demonstrating efforts at standardizing writing. From oracle-bone script to bronze inscriptions, the glyph forms of Chinese characters gradually moved from variability toward stability and from pictography toward symbolization, a process that spanned the Shang and Zhou dynasties and was finally completed under the Qin dynasty's policy of "writing in the same script" (shu tong wen, 书同文).
6. The Monogenesis versus Polygenesis Debate on the Origin of Chinese Characters
Regarding the origin of Chinese characters, two main positions exist in the scholarly world: the "monogenesis theory" and the "polygenesis theory." The monogenesis theory holds that Chinese characters originated from a single center in the Yellow River basin and then spread outward, ultimately forming a unified writing system. The basis for this view is that oracle-bone script was already a highly mature system with strong internal consistency, and could not have been pieced together from multiple sources in a short period of time. The polygenesis theory, by contrast, holds that the major cultural regions of the Neolithic period—such as Yangshao, Dawenkou, Liangzhu, and Longshan—each independently produced incised symbols, and that these symbols gradually merged through interaction, finally converging into oracle-bone script during the Shang dynasty. The symbols from sites such as Shuangdun, Liangzhu, and Dawenkou each have their own distinctive features, and it is difficult to claim that all of them derive from a single center. At present, most scholars lean toward the compromise position of "pluralistic fusion": in the course of its formation, Chinese writing absorbed symbolic elements from multiple regions, but ultimately achieved systematization in the royal domain of the Shang dynasty.
From the perspective of archaeological materials, the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River saw frequent cultural exchange between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago, and the pottery symbols of Longshan culture display consistency across multiple sites. As a broad-territory royal state, the Erlitou culture may have played an integrative role through its symbol system. Certain character forms in Shang oracle-bone script can be matched with similar early symbols from different regions—for example, "目" (mù, "eye") appears at Jiahu, "日火山" (rì huǒ shān, "sun, fire, mountain") at Dawenkou, and "戉" (yuè, a type of axe) at Liangzhu. This suggests that oracle-bone script may have been formed on the basis of absorbing symbols from various regions, through a long process of selection and standardization. However, the specific details of this process still await further archaeological discoveries to fill in. In any case, the origin of Chinese characters was not a single event but a complex process spanning several thousand years, whose final maturation is marked by oracle-bone script.
Conclusion
From the incised symbols on tortoise shells at Jiahu to the hundred thousand or so oracle bones from Yinxu, the origin of Chinese characters underwent a long gestation spanning five thousand years. The incised symbols of the Neolithic period, though scattered and unsystematic, already contained the seeds of pictographic (xiangxing 象形), indicative (zhishi 指事), and associative (huiyi 会意) principles; the complex symbols of Dawenkou and Liangzhu demonstrated the possibility of composite signification; during the Erlitou and early Shang periods, symbols gradually made the transition toward writing; and by the late Shang, the oracle-bone script (jiaguwen 甲骨文), with its more than 4,500 characters, complete grammar, and rich variety of formative methods, announced the maturity of the Chinese character system. This process was not a linear evolution but the result of pluralistic fusion and layer upon layer of accumulation, and the practical needs of writing in religion, politics, and daily life were the fundamental driving force behind its development.
After the oracle-bone script, Chinese characters passed through the stages of bronze inscriptions (jinwen 金文), seal script (zhuanshu 篆书), clerical script (lishu 隶书), and regular script (kaishu 楷书); although their forms changed repeatedly, their formative logic remained continuous. Today, research on the oracle-bone script has made new advances with the help of digital technology—for example, the "Yinqi Wenyuan" (殷契文渊) platform has enabled large-scale retrieval and rejoining of oracle-bone inscriptions. Yet gaps remain in the early links of the origin of Chinese characters, and in particular no direct evidence has been found for the critical threshold from symbol to writing. In the future, with deeper field archaeology and the application of interdisciplinary methods, the puzzle of the origin of Chinese characters may be further unraveled. As the vehicle of Chinese civilization, research into the origin of Chinese characters concerns not only writing itself but also the formation and identity of that civilization.