Legend has it that Cang Xie created Chinese characters. Cang Xie inspired, classified, collected, arranged and utilized the footprints of birds and animals recorded in Shuo Wen Jie Zi, which played an important role in the creation of Chinese characters and was known as the "sage of word creation".

Changji's creation

Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the earliest known mature Chinese character, appeared in Shang Dynasty, and Zhong Dingwen appeared later. Although the number of words increased, it did not change much.

Due to the vast territory of the Zhou Dynasty and the long-term separatist regime, Chinese characters obviously showed abnormal characters among vassal States at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, especially during the Warring States Period. In order to consolidate the rule after the unification of Qin Dynasty, Qin Shihuang ordered Prime Ministers Lisi, CZ Zhao Gao and Taishi Hu Wujing to sort out the characters, and based on the big seal script of Qin State, made the small seal script as the national standard font.

Later, according to the popular fonts at that time, a simpler font official script was compiled, which was widely circulated throughout the country as a common word.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, regular script appeared and the evolution of Chinese characters was perfect. Not only that, the first calligraphy monograph "cursive script" appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

It used to be said that Chinese characters began in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, but in fact, Oracle Bone Inscriptions is already a mature writing. Before this, Chinese characters should have a development process from generation to maturity, so some people advocate pushing it to the end of summer.

Others think that we have our own opinions before promoting Zhixia. Guo Moruo pointed out in Dialectical Development of Ancient Chinese Characters: "When did Chinese characters originate? I think this can be seen from the age of Xi 'an banpo village site. " .

"Banpo site has a history of about 6,000 years." "Banpo site is a typical Yangshao culture in Neolithic age." "Banpo painted pottery often has some simple descriptions similar to words, which are quite different from the patterns on the utensils."

"Although the meaning of the description is not clear, it is undoubtedly a symbol with a literal nature." "It can definitely be said that it is the origin of China characters, or the Jie legacy of China's original characters."

Accordingly, Chinese civilization should be counted as nearly 6000 years. When did China's writing begin? When did the oldest writing appear? What do they mean? No agreement has been reached so far, and a lot of materials are needed to explain it.

The development of Chinese characters:

Chinese characters mainly come from recordable pictographs, which are the basis of the formation and development of Chinese character system. ? [ 1 1]? Later, it evolved for thousands of years, including Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, seal script, official script, regular script, cursive script and running script. Regular script has been widely used so far, but it has not been completely finalized.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions mainly refers to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins, which was written by the royal family on tortoise shells and animal bones in the late Shang Dynasty in China (14 ~ 1 1 century). About 654.38+05,000 pieces of Oracle bones were found, with more than 4500 words.

These Oracle Bone Inscriptions records are extremely rich in content, involving many aspects of social life in Shang Dynasty, including not only politics, military affairs, culture and social customs, but also astronomy, calendars, medicine and other science and technology.

Judging from about 1500 characters identified in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the methods of "pictographic, comprehending, pictophonetic, referring to things, transferring notes and borrowing words" have been developed, which shows the unique charm of China characters.

Documents based on tortoise shells and animal bones in Shang Dynasty and early Western Zhou Dynasty in China (about 16 BC-0/0 BC). Jinwen Jinwen refers to the words cast on bronzes in the Yin and Zhou Dynasties, also called Zhong Dingwen. Shang and Zhou Dynasties were the bronze age, with the tripod as the representative ritual vessel and the bell as the representative musical instrument. "Zhong Ding" was synonymous with bronze ware.

Therefore, Zhong Dingwen or inscriptions on bronze refers to inscriptions cast or carved on bronzes. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. China entered the Bronze Age in the Xia Dynasty, and the smelting of copper and the manufacture of bronzes were very developed.

Because copper was also called gold a week ago, the inscriptions on bronzes were called "bronze inscriptions" or "auspicious words"; This bronze ware was called "Zhong Dingwen" in the past because it had the largest number of characters on Zhong Ding.

The application time of bronze inscriptions is about 1200 years, from the early Shang Dynasty to the Qin Dynasty's destruction of the Six Kingdoms. According to Rong Geng's Jin Wen Bian, there are 3,722 inscriptions, of which 2,420 can be identified.

There are different words in the inscriptions on bronzes. The content of memory is also very different. Its main content is mostly to praise the achievements of ancestors and princes, but also to record major historical events. For example, the famous Mao has 497 words, covering a wide range, reflecting the social life at that time. Dazhuan Dazhuan is a Chinese character.

Legend has it that it was written by Zhou Xuanwang's uncle, so it is also called Wen Shu or Shu Shu. In the Qin dynasty, it was called Da Zhuan, which was different from Xiao Zhuan. Dazhuan originated in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and traveled in Qin during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The fonts are similar to those of Qin Zhuan, but the configurations of glyphs overlap.

Representing the present Shi Guwen, it was named after a book written by Tai Shihuan of Zhou Xuanwang. On the basis of the original text, he transformed it and got his name because it was engraved on the stone drum. It is the earliest stone carving text that has been circulated so far, and it is the ancestor of stone carving.

Extended data:

Introduction of Chinese characters:

Chinese characters (pinyin: hàn zì, phonetic notation: ㄢˋˋ), also known as Chinese characters, Chinese characters and square characters, are recorded symbols in Chinese and belong to morpheme syllables of ideographic characters. One of the oldest characters in the world has a history of more than 6000 years.

In form, it gradually changes from graphics to strokes, pictographs to symbols, and complex to simple; In the principle of word formation, from ideographic, ideographic to phonological. Except for a few Chinese characters (such as Zi, Zi, Zi, Chi and Zi), they are all one Chinese character and one syllable.

It should be noted that Japanese, Korean, Korean, Vietnamese and other countries were deeply influenced by China culture in history, and even borrowed Chinese characters from their languages.

Modern Chinese characters refer to capitalized Chinese characters, including traditional characters and simplified characters. Modern Chinese characters have developed from Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, calligraphy and seal script to official script, cursive script, regular script and running script.

Chinese characters were invented and improved by Han ancestors, which is an indispensable link to maintain the Han dialect area. The earliest recognizable Chinese characters in existence are Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty around 1300 BC and later inscriptions on bronze, then seal script and official script in Qin Dynasty, then official script prevailed in Han and Wei Dynasties, and official script was converted into block letters at the end of Han Dynasty, which prevailed in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and has been popular ever since.

Chinese characters have been used for the longest time in a row so far, and they are the only ones in all kinds of ghost writing systems in ancient times. Chinese characters have always been the main official characters of China's dynasties.

In ancient times, Chinese characters were not only used in China, but also served as the only international exchange characters in East Asia for a long time. Before the 20th century, Japanese, Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, Ryukyu and other countries were the official written standard characters, and all East Asian countries created their own Chinese characters to some extent.

In the non-Chinese character system, the Japanese themselves simplified Chinese characters and formulated new Japanese fonts, and South Korea also formulated an official Korean character specification. Vietnam, North Korea, Mongolia and other countries that used Chinese characters in history have now abandoned Chinese characters.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Chinese Characters