Oracle bone inscriptions are a kind of writing engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones used by the working people in ancient China. It is a relatively mature character, which has a relationship with today's Chinese characters.
According to ancient books, the first way people used to remember events was to tie knots with ropes and carve symbols with knives. It was not until the Shang and Zhou dynasties that such oracle bone inscriptions appeared. In 1899, Wang Yirong, an ancient calligrapher in Beijing, accidentally found oracle bones with characters on the "keel" of traditional Chinese medicine due to illness. With the sensitivity of ancient calligraphers, Wang Yirong had a strong interest in "oracle bones". The oracle bones were unearthed in Xiaotun village, Anyang, Henan Province, which was originally the location of the state capital "Yin" in the late Shang Dynasty. After the demise of the Shang Dynasty, it became ruins. The oracle inscriptions of Yin Dynasty are the relics of Shang Dynasty. At present, the archaeological community has unearthed about 150000 pieces of Shang Dynasty oracle bones. Because oracle bone inscriptions are mostly divination words, we also call oracle bone inscriptions "Yin Ruins divination words" or "divination words". Since 1951, archaeologists have successively excavated a total of 302 written oracle bones belonging to the Western Zhou Dynasty in Shaanxi, Henan, Shanxi, Beijing and other provinces (cities), with a total number of 1041 words. Therefore, the full name of oracle bone inscriptions should be "Shang and Zhou oracle bone inscriptions".