On this later painted pottery of Xia and Shang dynasties, you can clearly see the traces of hand-painting.
It can be seen that our ancestors have long known to create art with tools like "pen".
The shape and manufacturing method of this tool are not yet available, and it may be the original prototype that has gradually developed into a "pen".
Before paper was invented and used for writing, people in China used various materials to write documents, archives, historical records, personal letters and communicate with each other.
These materials include animal bones, crustaceans, ivory, silk, bronze, iron, gold, silver, tin, stones, jade, clay and other minerals, as well as bamboo, wood and other plants.
It can be seen from the Oracle Bone Inscriptions and inscriptions unearthed in Yin Ruins in the late Shang Dynasty that people at that time carved various similar symbols or hieroglyphs on tortoise shells and animal bones with stone knives or copper cones. This is contained in ancient Chinese literature: "Bamboo slips were used in ancient times, and the pen was a knife cone.
"The early origin.
Hanshu records: "There are countless satirical words in Poems and Books, written on bamboo and silk."
According to Bao's Notes on Ancient and Modern Times, "In ancient times, dead wood was used as a tube, deer hair as a column and wool as a quilt.
Qin began to make pens with rabbit hair and bamboo tubes.
"The so-called Meng Tian pen is based on the legend that General Meng Tian dedicated a brush made of Zhongshan rabbit hair to Qin Shihuang and sealed it in Guancheng.
Perhaps before the Qin Dynasty, our ancestors had invented the writing brush, but Meng Tian made improvements or attributed the credit to him.
Among the Xixia cultural relics unearthed in Wuwei, Gansu Province in modern times, we also saw a bamboo pen, which was made of a hollow bamboo pole with one end tapered, similar to a foreign capillary pen, and used a nib dipped in colored juice to write or draw; It was behind the brush, but Xixia people also used it to create a splendid culture at that time.
The bamboo pen is in Gansu Museum.
1954, a wooden tomb of the Warring States period was excavated in Zuojiagongshan, the southern suburb of Changsha City, Hunan Province, and a complete set of writing tools was found. They are rabbit brush, copper shavings, bamboo chips and small bamboo tubes made of bamboo poles.
Among them, bamboo chips may be equivalent to the paper of later generations, bronze carvings are used to cut bamboo chips, and small bamboo tubes may be used to store ink and other items.
This kind of pen is different from the present writing brush. Instead of inserting rabbit hair into the pen tube, it surrounds one end of the pen tube, then wraps it with silk thread and seals it with paint.
1975, three bamboo brushes were unearthed from Qin TombNo. 1 1 in Yunmeng Shuihudi, Hubei Province.
It can be seen that during the Warring States period or its later period, the brush was very similar to the modern brush.
Archaeologists call this kind of pen the Warring States period pen.
By the Han Dynasty, pens had become very common.
193 1 year, woodwind instruments of the Han Dynasty were unearthed in Gujuyanhai, south of Suoguozhuo, Inner Mongolia.
With the invention of paper, the writing brush, as a widely used writing and painting tool in our country, has been handed down and played an indelible and far-reaching role in our cultural history.
Until now, it still coexists with China's traditional writing tools and various modern writing tools, and is also widely spread abroad; It is loved by people who love and study China's painting and calligraphy internationally.
Before pencils, fountain pens and other modern writing tools entered China, the writing brush was the main writing tool of our people.
Since the invention of the pen based on the quill pen from 65438 to the mid-1980s in 2009, the pen quickly replaced the traditional quill pen and became the main writing tool in the 20th century.
When foreign pencils, stone pens and dip pens began to enter China, the impact on the production of writing brushes was not significant, because they could not completely replace the use of writing brushes. However, when fountain pens entered China, the production of writing brushes declined gradually because of its convenience.
By around 1930, the brush output has been seriously threatened, which is unsustainable.
In the middle and late 1990s, computers, printers and the Internet became popular rapidly, which largely replaced the writing function of pens. The widespread use of ballpoint pens with better performance also occupied the market share of pens.