What is the origin of Chinese characters in China?

The use of characters is a great progress of human civilization. Chinese characters characterized by hieroglyphics are unique in the forest of human languages, and their advantages in writing and language are being recognized and accepted by people who use phonography. There is no consensus on when Chinese characters originated and who created them.

Historical Records, Xunzi, Lv Chunqiu, Han Feizi and other ancient documents all say that Chinese characters were created by Cang Xie and Juyong in the era of the Yellow Emperor. Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi tries to make a more euphemistic explanation, arguing that Fuxi's eight diagrams "hanging the constitution" inspire people to make different symbols according to different things. In Shennong era, "ruling the country by knot", but there were many ordinary things that could not be satisfied in the end. In the era of the Yellow Emperor, Cang Xie appeared. "Seeing the traces of birds and animals' hoof selection, we can see that it is different and different, and it is a book"; He also said that when Cang Xie made a book contract, "pictographic classification" meant words. Later, the pictograms and sounds brought out the best in each other. After a long period of evolution and development, it is summed up as six ways of forming Chinese characters, which are called "six books", namely "referring to things, pictographs, sounds and shapes, memorizing, transferring notes and debiting." Yuanming newspaper said that Cang Xie's observation of the stars, turtle prints, bird feathers, mountains and rivers and even palm prints was the basis of his writing. Before the establishment of modern philology, the theory about the origin of Chinese characters in Shuo Wen Jie Zi was undoubtedly the most authoritative. '

However, the Biography of Confucius in Shangshu and the Collection of Notes say that Fuxi made a contract to replace the knot, and literary works also rose in his time, obviously much earlier than the era of the Yellow Emperor.

Under the influence of the trend of suspecting the ancient times, Liu Jingbian put forward that Chinese characters are actually another viewpoint formulated by Confucius himself. Fortunately, this book was not widely circulated, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery quickly shattered this myth of Confucius; The appearance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's verse also shook the legend of the origin of the characters in Shuowen Jiezi, and raised various questions about the legendary "Six Books".

With the discovery of the symbol of Yangshao culture pottery souvenirs, many experts think it is a symbol with Chinese characters. According to archaeological findings, Longshan culture, Dawenkou culture, Liangzhu culture and Erlitou culture have unearthed a large number of pottery with memorabilia symbols, some of which are really very close to words. In particular, pottery symbols and other figures in Dawenkou culture are interpreted as gold, Xu, Huan, Huan Mountain or axe, stick, Dan and so on. So people think that China characters originated from pottery symbols. But to be fair, the existing pottery symbols are not close to Chinese characters, and there is nothing to interpret. It seems too early to conclude that Chinese characters originated from pottery symbols, but the discovery and interpretation of pottery symbols, after all, let people see the dawn of solving the problem of the origin of Chinese characters, and people hope to have more unearthed materials and more research results.