oracle bones

oracle bones bones used for divination by the Chinese during the Shang dynasty (traditionally c.1766 BC-c.1122 BC). Along with contemporary inscriptions on bronze vessels, these records of divination, which were incised on the shoulder blades of animals (mainly oxen) and on turtle shells, contain the earliest form of Chinese writing. In addition to being an important source for understanding the development of written Chinese, they tell a great deal about Shang society. Questions asked by the diviners concerned such matters as sacrifices, weather, war, hunting, travel, and luck. The bones were heated to produce cracks from which "yes" or "no" answers were somehow derived. A small number of oracle bones have the answer and the eventual outcome inscribed. Discovered in the ruins of the Shang capital of Anyang in the late 19th cent., they were first sold as so-called dragon bones to be ground up for use in Chinese medicinal compounds and only received the attention of scholars in the 1920s.

Oracle bones. Usually the scapula and split leg bones of cattle which the Chinese of the Shang dynasty used for divination purposes. Priests wrote out on the bones questions which the king or aristocrats wished to have put to the gods. They are by far the oldest examples of the Chinese writing system and furnish the only reliable information on the religion and social culture of the first Chinese dynasty known to archaeology. A number of gods are mentioned, most notably the high god Shang-ti and the gods of wind and of millet, of various heavenly bodies, of mountains and rivers. But the most important personages questioned in the Shang oracle bones were the ancestors.