https://www.shorthistory.org/images/Shang-oracle-bones.jpg
Before this week I had no knowledge of the Shang Dynasty, and I especially didn’t think to guess that oracle-bones even existed. I assumed that, through most of human history, paper was the most reliable record-keeping tool. You would believe that documenting/archiving would be made as effortless as possible; however, this was not the case during the Shang Dynasty.
I learned a lot about oracle bones: that oracle bones were used as record-keeping and, when cracked, as a tool for divination. Because oracle bones took a long time to prepare, burn, and record and were very difficult to make, only those skilled enough would make them. People who were able to make them were often seen as very intelligent and were in high demand. This, weirdly, later paved way for a social system of labor.
Nonetheless, there are still many questions about oracle-bones that remain unanswered despite the hundreds of thousands of records at our disposal. I, personally, want to know what the thought process was when people chose to carve records into the bones of certain animals; I would assume they would choose the most sturdy material, but there might be more to the inscription process than we think. I also want to know how historians identify the animals the bones come from.
Things I Learned this Week:
- Archaeologists were able to recover over 150,000 oracle-bone fragments
- Most of the oracle-bone inscriptions were meant to portray a king’s thoughts/ political agendas. Kings also used various bones as a medium to pray.
- While oracle-bones were meant as a form of record-keeping, they held quite a bit of power over regular civilians (as they were easily swayed by a king’s declaration).
Bibliography
Keightley, David. “Chapter 1: The Oracle Bone Inscriptions of the Late Shang Dynasty”. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600, edited by W. deBary et al. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1999.
Keightley, David. “Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China”. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
