The diviner kneels in front of the king, holding the shoulder blade of an ox. It has been cleaned and polished, with a groove cut into it. He speaks aloud two sentences. "We will have a successful hunt today. We will not have a successful hunt today." Then, he presses a heated bronze point into the bone. As the temperature shifts, the bone cracks.
The diviner examines the cracks. He looks up to his king and smiles. "We will have a successful hunt today." The bone is handed to the Inscriber, who etches into the bone the date, the question, and the answer.
This is some of our earliest knowledge about civilizations in China: Oracle Bones from the Shang Dynasty.
There are two primary river basins in China: the Huang He, or Yellow River, and the Yangtze River. The Shang Dynasty grew from the An-yang River, north of the Yellow River (Huang He), and defines the period from 1600-1100 BC. The Oracle Bones, as described above, are one of the earlier written records of Chinese civilization, and due to their meticulous detail, provide some valuable insight into the culture of the dynasty and how that culture has grown, adapted, and shifted over the years.
It's interesting to note, that the inscriptions on oracle bones can be interpreted by modern scientists because the Chinese written language has actually stayed fairly constant across the millenia.
In another life, one where I had more attention to detail and tolerance for minutiae and repetition, I was probably an anthropologist. The demands of scientific rigor just don't suit me.
Zaijian (goodbye, literally "see again"),
-L
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