The origin of homophonic jokes

Origin of Chinese characters: From the ancient legend of Cangjie's word-making to the discovery of Oracle Bone Inscriptions more than 65,438+000 years ago, China scholars have been trying to uncover the mystery of the origin of Chinese characters.

On the origin of Chinese characters, there are many sayings in China ancient literature, such as "knot rope theory", "gossip theory", "picture theory" and "calligraphy story theory". The legend that Cang Xie, the historian of the Yellow Emperor, created Chinese characters is also widely recorded in ancient books. Modern scholars believe that a systematic writing tool cannot be completely created by one person. If Cang Xie really exists, he should be a character organizer or publisher.

The earliest carved symbols were more than 8000 years ago.

In recent decades, China's archaeological community has released a series of unearthed materials about the origin of Chinese characters earlier than Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins. These materials mainly refer to the carved or painted symbols that appeared on pottery in the late primitive society and early historical society. In addition, they also include a few symbols carved on Oracle Bone Inscriptions, jade and stone tools. It can be said that they provide a new basis for explaining the origin of Chinese characters.

Through systematic investigation, this paper compares the carved symbols on pottery unearthed from 100 sites of archaeological culture in China. Wang, a doctoral supervisor at Zhengzhou University, believes that the earliest carved symbols in China appeared in the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan Province, with a history of more than 8,000 years.

As a professional worker, he tried to comprehensively sort out these original materials by scientific means, such as comprehensively using some basic methods and high-tech means such as archaeology, ancient Chinese character configuration, comparative philology, scientific archaeology, etc., to find out some clues about the occurrence and development of Chinese characters before Shang Dynasty.

However, the situation is not so simple. Except for the existing small-scale materials in Zhengzhou Shangcheng site and Xiaoshuangqiao site (in recent years, more than 10 cases of Zhu Shutao's early writings in Shang Dynasty have been found), other symbols before Shang Dynasty were scattered and lacked many rings. Most of them don't conform to the writing of Shang Dynasty. Some symbols have strong regional colors and complex backgrounds.

The Chinese character system was formally formed in the Central Plains.

Wang believes that the formal formation of the Chinese character system should be in the Central Plains. Chinese characters are a writing system with independent origin, independent of any foreign language. However, its origin is not single. After a long period of running-in, probably when the Xia Dynasty entered, our ancestors creatively invented the writing symbol system of recording language on the basis of extensively absorbing and using early symbols. At that time, the Chinese character system matured rapidly.

It is reported that according to the written materials unearthed from archaeological excavations, there were official written materials in China at least in the Xia Dynasty. For example, in recent years, archaeologists have found the word "Wen" in brush calligraphy on a flat pottery jar unearthed from the Taosi site in Xiangfen, Shanxi. These symbols belong to the basic configuration of the early writing system. Unfortunately, such unearthed written materials are still rare.

Characters first matured in Shang Dynasty.

As far as the written materials of Yin Shang Dynasty are known and seen at present, there are many kinds of written carriers. At that time, Chinese characters were written on simplified Chinese characters with a brush, and other main means were carved on Tao Zhu on tortoise shells, pottery, jade and bronzes. The written materials of Shang Dynasty are mainly composed of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronze ritual vessels used in Yin Ruins, which are the earliest mature written materials found in China so far.

The characters of Shang Dynasty reflected in Yin Ruins are not only characterized by a large number of characters and rich materials, but also formed their own characteristics and laws in word formation. The structural features of basic characters in Shang Dynasty can be divided into four categories: word formation based on the physical characteristics of human body and some people, labor creation and labor objects, and images of animals and livestock. Based on natural images, from the cultural connotation of the configuration, the objects chosen by these early mature glyphs are quite close to the social life of our ancestors and have strong realistic characteristics. At the same time, the content described by these glyphs involves all levels of people and nature, so they also have the characteristics of wide sources of configuration.