Native Americans and Characters Essay

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Oracle Bone Script and Modern Design

In today's domain of alphabetic scripts, the Chinese system of writing is a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. Rather than using a number of letters, the Chinese have come up with several thousand complicated characters or signs denoting words and morphemes. The Japanese, Korean and other similar writing systems, despite having a few characters in common with the Chinese characters, are able to work completely as solely phonetic scripts. Further, though the Chinese writing system isn't the lone-surviving logographic scripttoday, it is definitely the only such script that functions as the principal script for several hundred million individuals. The earliest recognizable Chinese writings can be traced back 3,500 years; however, there are several historians who contend that the script is actually much older. Irrespective of its true age, the language has undergone considerable evolution with time, but continues to maintain its archaic core, thus becoming one among the oldest continuously-utilized scripts worldwide.

The History of Oracle Bones Script

It is widely agreed that Chinese writing developed from ancient non-linguistic representational systems. Late Neolithic Era individuals (2500-2000 BC) began carving a number of pictograms or symbols onto jades and pottery. It is believed that those symbols were clan or family insignias declaring provenance or ownership of those articles. Although the pictograms aren't real Chinese letters, they somewhat resemble the initial Chinese characters. The sun-and-bird symbol was, at the very least, continually employed as a clan symbol during the Shang Dynasty's early days, on bronze articles. The dominant belief is: at some juncture, the signs stopped portraying illustrated articles and, instead, began portraying the words that described the articles. That is, they assumed linguistic value, thereby becoming logograms. But historians are unaware of when, precisely, this shift took place. It had, possibly, already occurred when the signs were engraved on pottery, thus implying that the objects have lettering on them. However, one cannot prove either assumption in any way. We may, at best, be able to state that the signs were the forerunners to the Chinese script (Lo, 2012).

Oracle bone writings represent the earliest existing documents in Chinese, engraved onto turtle plastron or oxen shoulder-blades, and documenting questions posed for resolution through divination at the Shang (-) court. The Shang Dynasty ruled over the central regions of China from 16-11 centuries BCE.

Divination through the analysis of animals' shoulder blades and cracks created in them upon heating was practiced by numerous cultures across historical eras. Shang-age Chinese polished shells or bones after carefully cutting them to shape on the front, and carved out hollows on their rear. When the rear hollows were heated, distinctive ├ shaped fissures emerged on the front, which mark the source of bu卜, the Chinese symbol for 'to divine'. Diviners read the fissures and carved their interpretation on the earlier-shined part of the shell/bone; these interpretations were the answers to the questions posed. A few engravings were even dyed red (Aylmer, 1981).

In Chinese culture, it is widely acknowledged that deceased forefathers hold the power of influencing the lives of their living descendants and hence, the Chinese recognize a corresponding need to engage in placatory sacrifice which is manifested in the form of ancestor worship; these customs and beliefs are entrenched in the Chinese culture. It was widely believed by the masses that Shang rulers' forefathers held prior knowledge of impending events and could also impact their outcomes. Victory against bordering tribes in retaliatory wars, in hunts and in harvesting the annual crop was all reliant on their royal forefathers'generosity. It was believed that if people suffered natural calamities and ill health, they had displayed impiety with regard to the deceased ancestors, a sin for which they received punishment in this form. Divination by causing fissures in shells/bones represented a technique to forecast the future. It assured the enquirer a favorable end result by determining the right target to appease (Chalfant, 1939).

The Japanese word for oracle bone engravings is koukotsubun (- -- ), which may be translated as "text (-, bun) written on bones (-, kotsu) and shells (-, kou); the Chinese term for it is "qi wen" or "engraved text "(from -, 'to engrave', and-, 'text'). Archeologists have, however, unearthed bones featuring brush-painted characters that weren't engraved at a later time. A Beijing-based official, Wang Yirong (- -- ), accidentally found Koukotsubun in the year 1899, when he fell sick and was prescribed a medicine whose ingredients included dragon bone (Chinese: -- (transliteration: long gu)), by a traditional Chinese medical practitioner.

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The dragon bone fragment he bought at a traditional apothecary was engraved all over with ancient etchings that resembled the Chinese script. His scientific temper led him to be intrigued by his find and ultimately, an extraordinary discovery resulted, in a little village bordering Anyang ( -- ) in Henan Province (- -- ).

Up until now, roughly150,000 fragments of shells and bones have been found, but not even half of the 4700 classified symbols have been decoded. The foremost carvings can be traced back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century BCE (Shang era, --, 1600 -- 1046 B.C.). Diviner-historians or "Zhen Ren" were court officials who chiefly composed the text on oracle bones; these individuals were charged with documenting key religious services and other events. Slightly-dented bones were, firstly, heated till a fissure formed in them. The fissures assumed the shape of divinatory signs; that is, divinatory signs were indicated in how the fissures separated the engraving. Later on, ink or cinnabar was used to rub off the writings. Those engravings helped confirma number of key and intriguing details with regard to Shang-age China's routine life and reports of major political events (Beyond calligraphy, 2016).

The Meaning of Some of the Pictographic Characters

The Ji and Xun pictogram-glyphs presented above belong to the same time and are physically linked. In this case, the two form a decipherable ancient Chinese, conventional, oracle-bone prediction. Briefly, they may be translated as: "The ten days to come will be auspicious." The above example forms a standard example of Chinese predictions from the oracle-bone age. The discovery of this sort of message within Rock Writings in North America suggests the existence of ancient Asiatic populations in America in around 1000 BC, as oracle-bone carving ceased to be employed at about this period. Only in 1899 AD did it surface again (as mentioned above, Wang Yirong discovered it in that year) and was subsequently interpreted by the Chinese. The decoding of these signs took long and even now, more than fifty percent of the unearthed oracle-bone signs remain to be decoded. Thus, it may be safe to state that such ancient and repainted glyphs (whose age has been verified by National Park Service experts) were created by ancient explorers from China just after the Shang kings' rule ended, when the writing system was lost to humanity for almost three millennia.

It is worth noting that Asians as well as Native Americans had sacred ten-day calendars. Michael Zeilik highlights this highly intriguing point in his treatise, The Ethno astronomy of Historic Pueblos, II Moon Watching, published in 1986. He writes that subarctic and arctic Asians also adopted a ten-day calendar similar to the one adopted by Native Americans.

The picture shown above translates Chinese pictogram-glyphs etched on a rock.

An important fact to be borne in mind is that the Chinese didn't standardize their ancient writing system. Thus, one can find substantial variations in ancient Chinese writings, since scribes drew pictograms in individual, distinctive styles (just like our signatures, which differ considerably but are largely understood by all).

The above picture may be described as follows: (Chinese is read in the right-left direction, which will be adopted for interpreting the picture): Firstly, the Geng symbol shows the day-date upon which this event occurred. The second pictogram-glyph (Jie) depicts an individual respectfully kneeling in front of a superior. The next pictogram is of Da ("Great," which signifies a high-ranking Chinese official, and the official portrayed in this picture is greatly decorated). The fourth pictogram represents the ancient symbol for dog (Quan). The last is the complicated ancient shape of Xian (the tripartite sign implying the offering of a traditional cult sacrifice).

Rock art students often misconstrue the above Chinese rooted picture -- they (understandably) believe it is a ladder. But, for the purpose of this paper, prior to labeling this pictogram photograph or petroglyph a "boat," there is a need to extend the sign by seeing its attached water lines. The right vertical line in the picture depicted above continues along the boulder's right edge, and while not seen in this picture, the line assumes a rather wavy shape and goes on 5-6 ft. further across the boulder's adjoining side.

Supplemented by 4 additional leg-lines, the above petroglyph discovered in North America comprises of line-strokes identical to those in the….....

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