1, Oracle Bone Inscriptions: carved on the bones of tortoise shells (mainly on the shoulder blades of cattle). It is the driest, most systematic and most mature Chinese character material we can see today. This kind of writing was discovered in the Guangxu period of the late Qing Dynasty (AD 1889) in the north and south of Xiaotun Village, Wuli Road, northwest of Anyang County, Henan Province.

2. Bronze inscriptions: Bronze inscriptions are words engraved on bronzes. The so-called bronze ware is a vessel made of copper and tin alloy. This kind of alloy is relatively strong and is called bronze ware because of its blue color. There are mainly musical instruments "Zhong", food containers "Yi, Zun and Jue", washing machines "Pan" and weapons "Ge and Ji".

3. Dayu: Dayu is for the later Xiaoyu. In a broad sense, Da Zhuan includes Xiao Zhuan, pre-Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and six-country scripts. The big seal script here refers to the Qin script that prevailed during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. With the eastward move to Luoyang, Qin occupied the hometown of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and at the same time inherited the writing of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which was developed on the basis of inheriting the bronze inscriptions. Because of its regionality, some of them are difficult to identify.

4. Xiao Zhuan: Xiao Zhuan is the first standardized font of Chinese characters. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, after Qin Shihuang was unified, he adopted the opinion of Prime Minister Li Si, carried out the reform of "the same characters" and unified the characters. This is the first major writing reform in the history of our country.

5. Official script: Official script is a popular font in Han Dynasty, so it is also called "Han Li". Lishu originated in the Qin Dynasty and was originally used only among disciples because of its name. The earliest official script was very close to Xiao Zhuan, but it was actually just a scribble writing of Xiao Zhuan.

The scribbled inscriptions handed down from generation to generation (imperial edicts in the twenty-sixth year of the first emperor and the first year of the first emperor) belong to this kind of early official script, so they are also called "Qin official script".

Extended data

Chinese characters are evolved from similar characters.

For example: day, month, mountain, deletion, book and canon-their initial glyphs are: day: a ○ plus a horizontal; Moon: Like an ear; Car: one person gets on the bus, followed by two cars; Pictograph is the earliest method to form Chinese characters, so the most primitive characters are created, such as "day", "month", "water" and "cow".

After gradual evolution, these hieroglyphs changed the shape of the original characters and became later square fonts. Some strokes were reduced, some strokes were added, and irregular fonts were changed into regular fonts.

Ideographic characters are easy to see the truth of word creation, but they can't express abstract meaning.

The ancients created another method of word formation-the method of knowing.

It is to use different symbols or borrow "pictographs" and add some symbols to express an abstract meaning.

Example: The word "Ming" means "the sun" and "the moon" brings light.

The word "Dan" is written, (meaning that the sun rises on the horizon.

No matter pictophonetic or knowing words, we can see the meaning of words from the shape, but we can't read the sound.

Therefore, the pictophonetic method was created to create Chinese characters.

Match the phonetic aspect of sound with the graphic aspect of meaning to form many new words.

Example: the word "dad" is a combination of the phonetic word "ba" and the ideographic word "dad"; The word "Ba" is a combination of "Ba" and "++".

In this way, more and more characters are created. According to statistics, pictophonetic characters account for about 90% of Chinese characters.

The formation and development of Chinese characters have become an important tool for people to exchange ideas and meet the needs of human social life.

Baidu encyclopedia-the origin and evolution of Chinese characters