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Cang Jie	The chracters believed to have been written by Cang Jie

According to modern researchers, the ancestors of the Chinese people tied knots in rope to record events. Later, they adopted sharp weapons to inscribe signs, and developed the earliest form of Chinese characters. Archeologists have found inscribed signs on Neolithic pottery shards inBanpoVillage inShaanxi Province. These signs, dating back to some 6,000 years ago, were possibly the seeds of later Chinese characters.

Inscribed signs, a little younger than those found in Banpo Village, were also found on pottery along the lower reaches of theYellow River. There, archeologists found a sign with shapes of the moon and a five-peak mountain underneath a circle. Experts in ancient characters say the pictograph symbolizes the interval in which the moon disappears and the sun rises. Mythology researchers have another interpretation. Their understanding is that the moon shape symbolizes the red clouds as the sun rises, and thus the picture portrays asunriseover the sea.

Most of the signs inscribed on pottery were painted red, creating an imposing and mysterious impression. The hypothesis is that pictographs were used in sacrificial rituals dedicated to the sunrise or as prayers for good harvests. They were inscribed in an orderly way, and the strokes are full of strength. Similar signs and designs have been found in other regions in China, indicating they had become generally recognized. These are the earliest symbols, or pictographs, in China and are more than 5,000 years old.

InQinghai Provincein western China, pottery objects of approximately the same period and inscribed with images of birds, insects and animals have been unearthed. These, too, are regarded as pictographs. According to philologist Tang Lan, Chinese characters originated from pictures; the older the characters, the more they look like pictures. Since pictures have no fixed forms, the ancient Chinese characters were generally free in form.

Xu Shen, a philologist of theHan Dynasty(206B.C.--A.D.220), divided Chinese characters into six categories. Modern scholars have since reduced them to three types, of which the pictographic character is one. The picture signs are the embryos of bothcalligraphyand painting, which gave rise to the Chinese saying that calligraphy and painting have the same origin. At first, the pictographic characters differed from region to region. As time went by, however, they become more standardized, abstract and united, and the earliest Chinese written language, Jiaguwen (shell and bone writing) appeared.

Author: Jessie