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Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron which were used in pyromancy – a form of divination – during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – c. 1050 BCE) in ancient China. Scapulimancy is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, plastromancy if turtle plastrons were used. A recent count estimated that ...
The used oracle bones were deposited in pits at the Shang cult centre now known as Yinxu (near modern Anyang, Hebei) and forgotten for millennia. After Wang Yirong discovered in 1899 that ancient bone fragments on sale for medicinal purposes bore an early form of Chinese characters, there was great interest in
A chunk of long gu (fossil mammalian bone) Long gu are generally mammal fossils, petrified wood, or even oracle bones. [3] Animals which can be identified as long gu include rhinoceros, bears, hipparion, stegodon, hyena, mastodon, orangutan, porcupine, and giant panda. [4] [5] [6]
Oracle bone script fragment featuring a character for 'spring' in the top-left which has no known modern descendant. Some characters are only attested in the oracle bone script, dropping out of later usage and usually being replaced by newer characters. An example is a fragment bearing character for 'spring' that has no known modern counterpart.
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Oracle bones were first recognised for their true nature in 1898, and scholars have been labouring to decipher them ever since. They circulated among collectors and antique dealers, and to this day some 200,000 oracle bone fragments from the Xiaotun site in Anyang have been counted.
An example of Chinese bronze inscriptions on a bronze vessel – early Western Zhou (11th century BC). The earliest known examples of Chinese writing are oracle bone inscriptions made c. 1200 BC at Yin (near modern Anyang), the site of the final capital of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1046 BC).
Fu Hao is known to modern scholars mainly from inscriptions on Shang dynasty oracle bone artifacts unearthed at Yinxu. [11] From these inscriptions and from the presence of weapons in her tomb, it can be determined that Fu Hao was a general in charge of several military campaigns for the Shang dynasty.