What are the characteristics of oracle bone writing

Oracle Bone Script is characterized by strong pictoriality, numerous strokes, thin lines, and many folded strokes.

Expanded:

Oracle Bone Script, also known as "Qiwen", "Oracle Bone Divination Rhetoric", "Yinxu Script" or "Turtle Bone Script". "It is the earliest mature writing system found in China so far, and is the source of Chinese characters and the root of Chinese traditional culture.

The remains of oracle bone inscriptions from the pre-Shang Dynasty were mainly found in Zhengzhou Mall, and the late Shang Dynasty was represented by Anyang Yinxu. Oracle bone is the main text of the late Shang Dynasty, archaeological discovery of a large number of bones, *** counting more than 100,000 pieces, the content of the main business royal family divination records, but also see more than the state tribes of the emblem of the name.

The oracle bones are about 4,000 single words, reflecting the basic composition of the written symbol system. Compared with the stereotypical ancient Chinese character symbol system established by the Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining and Analysing Characters), the oracle-bone inscriptions already possessed various types of Chinese character configurations, as well as the "four styles" in the traditional "six books," namely, pictograms, references, huiyi, and yin and yang.

In October 2017, the oracle bone inscriptions were inscribed on the Memory of the World Register. As of November 2022, the discovery of Chinese oracle bones totaled about 150,000 pieces, with more than 35,000 pieces excavated by scientific archaeology, and the number of individual characters has exceeded about 4,000 characters.

The royal family of the Shang Dynasty, from the national events, down to the private life, such as sacrifices, climate, harvest, conquest, hunting, disease, fertility, go out, etc., not to ask God for divination, in order to know the good and bad luck to decide to act. As a result, divination became a major event in the political life of the country, and the imperial court set up specialized institutions and divining officials.

The oracle bones with inscriptions were kept as national archives and piled up in vaults. Therefore, the divinations on the oracle bones became the first-hand materials for the study of the history of the Shang Dynasty, which reflected all aspects of social life from 1300 BC to 1000 BC.

The Book of Rites-The Book of Tables reads, "The people of Yin honored the gods, and led the people to serve the gods; the ghosts came first and then the rites." It is known that during the Yin-Shang period, the king, before dealing with matters large and small, used oracle bones for divination and prayed to the ghosts and gods, and afterwards, the matters asked for were inscribed on the oracle bones. After the death of the Shang, divination in the Zhou Dynasty gradually extinct, and its text is gradually unknown.