Oracle bones

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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.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions