The Jiahu symbols () comprise a corpus of markings on

prehistoric Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...

artifacts found in

Jiahu Jiahu () was the site of a Neolithic settlement based in the central plain of ancient China, near the Yellow River. It is located between the floodplains of the Ni River to the north, and the Sha River to the south, north of modern Wuyang in ...

, a

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

site of Peiligang culture in

Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The Jiahu symbols are dated to around 6000 BC. The site was excavated in 1989. Although at first a total of 17 groups of symbols were identified, intensive scrutiny has found there to be only 11 definitely incised signs, of which 9 were incised on tortoise shells and an additional 2 on bone. The archaeologists who made the original finds believed the markings to be similar in form to some characters used in the much later

oracle bone script Oracle bone script is the oldest attested form of written Chinese, dating to the late 2nd millennium BC. Inscriptions were made by carving characters into oracle bones, usually either the shoulder bones of oxen or the plastrons of turtl ...

(e.g. similar markings of "eye", "sun; day"), but most doubt that the markings represent systematic writing. A 2003 report in '' Antiquity'' interpreted them "not as writing itself, but as features of a lengthy period of sign-use which led eventually to a fully-fledged system of writing". The earliest known body of writing in the oracle bone script dates much later to the reign of the late

Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou d ...

king Wu Ding, which started in about or 1200 BC.

Interpretation as writing

There is no consensus on the nature of the Jiahu signs. Some researchers assume this to be a very early writing system, based on the resemblance of few symbols to much later historic scripts and their placement (turtle shells and bones) hinting at the

divination Divination () is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a should proceed by reading signs, ...

practices of the Late Shang dynasty. Some shells exhibit holes similar to the ones used in the Shang oracle bones to insert heat sources, causing cracking interpreted by diviners. The opponents point to the signs being too primitive and inconsistent to be part of a writing system. There is also a possibility of some signs being a result of unintentional damage or used as workshop marks.

References

Sources

* {{cite book , last1=Demattè , first1=Paola , title=The Origins of Chinese Writing , date=2022 , publisher=

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, isbn=9780197635766 , pages=99–148 , chapter-url=https://academic.oup.com/book/44721/chapter/378848667 , doi=10.1093/oso/9780197635766.003.0005 , chapter=Early and Middle Neolithic Signs to the Fourth Millennium BCE Prehistoric China Proto-writing Undeciphered writing systems

Interpretation as writing

See also

References

Sources