Areas using only Chinese characters in green; in conjunction with other scripts, dark green; maximum extent of historic usage, light green. (does not include other territories annexed by Japan in WW2)

The origins of Chinese characters begins circa 6500 B.C. with the creation of Neolithic proto-writing. The earliest form of Chinese characters arose from these symbols. Image File history File links 800px-Map-Chinese_Characters. ... Image File history File links 800px-Map-Chinese_Characters. ... 漢字 / 汉字 Chinese character in Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja, Hán Tá»±. Red in Simplified Chinese. ... Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Variant Chinese characters are Chinese characters that can be used interchangeably. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; also Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) refer to one of two standard Chinese character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language, officially simplified by the government of the Peoples Republic of China in an attempt to promote literacy. ... The second round of Chinese character simplification was officially promulgated on December 20, 1977 by the Peoples Republic of China, and replaced the existing (first round) simplified Chinese characters that were already in use. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji   ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. ... Look up KyÅ«jitai in Wiktionary, the free dictionary KyÅ«jitai (Shinjitai: 旧字体 KyÅ«jitai: 舊字體, meaning old character form) is the traditional form of the Japanese kanji used before 1947. ... Shinjitai (in Shinjitai: ; in KyÅ«jitai: æ–°å­—é«”; meaning new character form), are the forms of Kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the Tōyō Kanji List in 1946. ... Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. ... Gugyeol is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. ... Hyangchal (hangul: 향찰; hanja: 鄕札; revised: hyangchal; McCune-Reischauer: hyangchal) is an archaic writing system used in Korea. ... Chữ nôm (𡦂喃 lit. ... Hán tá»± (漢字, lit. ... The art of calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian civilizations that use Chinese characters. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Bronzeware script (金文 pinyin jin wen or 鐘鼎文 pinyin zhong1 ding3 wen2) is a family of scripts found on Chinese bronzes such as zhong (bells) and ding (tripods), since bronze artifacts with Chinese characters span many centuries and they have been found in many areas of China. ... 《尋隱者不遇》—賈島 松下問童子 言師採藥去 隻在此山中 雲深不知處 Seeking the Master but not Meeting by Jia Dao Beneath a pine I asked a little child. ... The clerical script (traditional Chinese 隷書, simplified Chinese 隶书) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still being used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements. ... Sheng Jiao Xu by Chu Suiliang: calligraphy of the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (楷書 Pinyin: kÇŽishÅ«) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (正楷), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and... Semi-cursive script (Chinese: 行書, Pinyin: XíngshÅ«, Japanese: gyōsho, Korean: haengseo) is a partially cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ... Chinese characters of Cursive Script in regular script (left) and cursive script (right). ... Since the Chinese language uses a logographic script — that is, a script where one or two characters corresponds roughly to one word or meaning — there are vastly more characters, or glyphs, than there are keys on a standard computer keyboard. ... An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and polishing tools. ... Writing systems evolved in the 4th millennium BC out of neolithic proto-writing. ... 漢字 / 汉字 Chinese character in Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja, Hán Tá»±. Red in Simplified Chinese. ...

Oracle bone script

Main article: Oracle bone script

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; pinyin: jiǎgǔwén; literally "shell-bone-script"). The oracle bone script is a well-developed writing system, attested from the late Shang Dynasty (1200-1050 B.C.)^[1][2][3] from Anyang, and from Zhengzhou, dated 1600 BC^{[citation needed]}. In addition, there are very few logographs found on pottery shards and cast in bronzes, known as the Bronze script (Chinese: 金文; pinyin: jīnwén), which is very similar to but more complex and pictorial than the Oracle Bone Script. Only about 1,400 of the 2,500 known Oracle Bone logographs can be identified with later Chinese characters and therefore easily read. However, it should be noted that these 1,400 logographs include most of the commonly used ones. Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), commonly called Pinyin, is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley. ... Anyang (Simplified Chinese: 安阳, Traditional Chinese: 安陽; pinyin: Ä€nyáng) is a prefecture-level city in Henan province, Peoples Republic of China. ... Zhengzhou (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), formerly called Zhengxian (traditional form: Chengchow) , is a prefecture-level city and the capital of Henan province, Peoples Republic of China. ... (Redirected from 1600 BC) Centuries: 18th century BC - 17th century BC - 16th century BC Decades: 1650s BC 1640s BC 1630s BC 1620s BC 1610s BC - 1600s BC - 1590s BC 1580s BC 1570s BC 1560s BC 1550s BC Events and trends Egypt: End of Fourteenth Dynasty The creation of one of... Bronzeware script (金文 pinyin jin wen or 鐘鼎文 pinyin zhong1 ding3 wen2) is a family of scripts found on Chinese bronzes such as zhong (bells) and ding (tripods), since bronze artifacts with Chinese characters span many centuries and they have been found in many areas of China. ... Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), commonly called Pinyin, is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ...

The legend of the creation of chinese characters

According to legend, though, Chinese characters were invented earlier by Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), a bureaucrat under the legendary emperor, Huangdi. The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu (today Shanxi) when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zi — Chinese characters. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of civilization, for good and for bad. Portrait of Cangjie showing his four eyes and eight pupils Cang Jie(Traditional Chinese: 倉頡; Simplified Chinese: 仓颉, Pinyin: cāng jié), is a legendary figure in ancient China, claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of the Chinese characters. ... Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor or Huang Di (Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , pinyin: huángdì) is a legendary Chinese sovereign and cultural hero who is said to be the ancestor of all Han Chinese. ...

Neolithic signs

Example of the Jiahu script

The earliest Neolithic signs come from Jiahu, a Neolithic site in the basin of the Yellow River in Henan province, dated to c. 6500 BC [1], known as the Jiahu Script. It has yielded turtle carapaces that were pitted and inscribed with symbols. By the discoveries at Jiahu reported here Neolithic sign use in China must now be extended backward another two millennia to c. 6500 cal BC. Sign use, however, should not be easily equated with writing, although it may represent a formative stage. In the words of the archaeologists who made the discovery: 9000 years old Jiahu playable Flutes. ... Henan (Chinese: 河南; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ho-nan), is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. ... Jiahu script refers the markings on prehistoric artifacts found in Jiahu, a neolithic culture found in Henan, China. ...

Here we present signs from the seventh millennium BC which seem to relate to later Chinese characters and may have been intended as words. We interpret these signs not as writing itself, but as features of a lengthy period of sign-use which led eventually to a fully-fledged system of writing...The present state of the archaeological record in China, which has never had the intensive archaeological examination of, for example, Egypt or Greece, does not permit us to say exactly in which period of the Neolithic the Chinese invented their writing. What did persist through these long periods was the idea of sign use. Although it is impossible at this point to trace any direct connection from the Jiahu signs to the Yinxu characters, we do propose that slow, culture-linked evolutionary processes, adopting the idea of sign use, took place in diverse settings around the Yellow River. We should not assume that there was a single path or pace for the development of a script.^[4]

Another early script possibly related to modern Chinese characters is the Banpo Script from Shaanxi province, dating from the 5th millennium BC. Some researchers believe it to be related to the Oracle bone script. This relation is contested, however, and evidence is scarce. The Banpo Script is a name sometimes given to the markings on prehistoric artifacts found in Banpo,Shaanxi 5000 BC to 4000 BC. Some believe the markings to be a writing system relating the Oracle bone script,Others doubt that the markings represent writing at all. ...   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ShÇŽnxÄ«; Wade-Giles: Shan-hsi; Postal map spelling: Shensi) is a north-central province of the Peoples Republic of China, and includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River as well as the Qinling Mountains across the... Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ...

Later excavations in eastern China's Anhui province and the Dadiwan culture sites in the eastern part of northwestern China's Gansu province uncovered pottery shards, dated to c. 5000 BC, inscribed with symbols [2][3]. It is unknown whether these symbols formed part of an organized system of writing, but many of them bear resemblance to what are accepted as early Chinese characters, and it is speculated that they may be ancestors to the latter. Anhui (Chinese: 安徽; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: An-hui; Postal System Pinyin: Ngan-hui, Anhwei or An-hwei) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... The Dadiwan culture (大地灣文化) (5800-5400 BC) was a Neolithic culture found primarily in Gansu and western Shaanxi, China. ... Gansu (Simplified Chinese: 甘肃; Traditional Chinese: 甘肅; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kan-su, Kansu, or Kan-suh) is a province located in the northwest of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Inscription-bearing artifacts from the Dawenkou culture culture site in Juxian County, Shandong, dating to c. 2800 BC, have also been found [4]. The Chengziyai site in Longshan township, Shandong has produced fragments of inscribed bones used to divine the future, dating to 2500 - 1900 BC, and symbols on pottery vessels from Dinggong are thought by some scholars to be an early form of writing. Symbols of a similar nature have also been found on pottery shards from the Liangzhu culture (Chinese: 良渚) of the lower Yangtze valley. Gui (鬹) from Dawenkou Culture The Dawenkou culture (大汶口文化) is a name given by archaeologists to a group of Neolithic communities who lived primarily in Shandong, but also appeared in Anhui, Henan and Jiangsu, China. ...   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Shan-tung) is a coastal province of eastern Peoples Republic of China. ... Longshan culture (龍山文化) was a late Neolithic culture centered around the central and lower Yellow River in China. ... The Liangzhu jade culture (3400-2250 BC) was the last Neolithic jade culture in the Yangtze River Delta of China and was spaced over a period of about 1300 years. ... Length 6,380 km Elevation of the source  ? m Average discharge 31,900 m³/s Area watershed 1,800,000 km² Origin Qinghai Province and Tibet Mouth East China Sea Basin countries China The Chang Jiang (Simplified Chinese: 长江; Traditional Chinese: 長江; pinyin: Cháng Jiāng...

Although the earliest forms of primitive Chinese writing are no more than individual symbols and therefore cannot be considered a true written script, the inscriptions found on bones (dated to 2500 - 1900 BC) used for the purposes of divination from the late Neolithic Longshan (Simplified Chinese: 龙山; Traditional Chinese: 龍山; pinyin: lóngshān) Culture (c. 3200 - 1900 BC) are thought by some to be a proto-written script, similar to the earliest forms of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It is possible that these inscriptions are ancestral to the later Oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty and therefore the modern Chinese script, since late Neolithic culture found in Longshan is widely accepted by historians and archaeologists to be ancestral to the Bronze Age Erlitou culture and the later Shang and Zhou Dynasties. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Traditional Chinese (Traditional Chinese: 正體字/繁體字, Simplified Chinese: 正体字/繁体字) refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), commonly called Pinyin, is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Mesopotamia refers to the region now occupied by modern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Southwest Iran. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ... The Erlitou culture (二里頭文化) (1900 BC to 1500 BC) is a name given by archaeologists to an Early Bronze Age society that existed in China. ... Shang Dynasty (Chinese: 商朝) or Yin Dynasty (殷代) (1600 BC - 1046 BC) followed the legendary Xia Dynasty and preceded the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC) in China. ... Zhou refers to Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC) or Zhou state Zhou Dynasty (690 AD - 705 AD) Zhou (political division) — Zhou is the name of a political/administrative division of China. ...

References

1. ^ William G. Boltz, Early Chinese Writing, World Archaeology, Vol. 17, No. 3, Early Writing Systems. (Feb., 1986), pp. 420-436 (436)
2. ^ David N. Keightley, Art, Ancestors, and the Origins of Writing in China, Representations, No. 56, Special Issue: The New Erudition. (Autumn, 1996), pp.68-95 (68)
3. ^ John DeFrancis: Visible Speech. The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems: Chinese
4. ^ Xueqin Li, Garman Harbottle, Juzhong Zhang, Changsui Wang: The earliest writing? Sign use in the seventh millennium BC at Jiahu, Henan Province, China. Antiquity 77, 295 (2003): 31-45 (31 and 41)