Where did China's Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches method of timing come from?

As early as 2697 B.C., during the founding of China's first ancestor, the Yellow Emperor, he ordered the Daxu Clan to explore the qi of heaven and earth and to investigate the five elements.

Some scholars have explored the unique phenomenon that the characters in the ten heavenly stems have been used in names from the lineage of emperors in the Xia Dynasty of ancient China and the names of all the emperors in the Tang Dynasty of the Shang Dynasty and below. Zheng Wenguang in the book "Chinese astronomy" that the ten heavenly stems originated from the ancient Chinese Xi and "born ten days" of the myths and legends, is the concept of the decimal law in the time reflected in the chronology, should be generated in the primitive society of the fishing and hunting era; "twelve Earthly Branches" are By Chang Xi "birth month ten two" myths and legends evolved, produced before the Yin Shang, and then gradually evolved into twelve eons. Therefore, Zheng Wenguang deduced that "the twelve branches of the earth were created by the Xia people." In his History of Chinese Astronomy, Chen Zungui pointed out that "in the Xia Dynasty, more than 4,000 years ago, there may have been a stem and branch". Du Shiran and others in the compilation of the "Chinese science and technology history" book, claiming that the Xia dynasty has ten days dry solar calendar, the Shang dynasty in the Xia dynasty on the basis of the solar calendar, and further use of the stem and branch of the calendar, so that the ten heavenly stems and twelve earth dominated the formation of the sixty cycle of the solar calendar together.

About the end of the Warring States period, based on the material accumulated by the historians of various countries for a long time compiled by the history of the book "Shiben" said: "Rongcheng for the calendar, the big radius for the Azi", "Shangshu justice" explains that: "the two are the Yellow Emperor's ministers, cover since the Yellow Emperor, the beginning of Azi chronicle of the day, every sixty days and the Azi A week". It seems that the stem and branch is the creation of the big radius, the big radius "take the five elements of the situation, accounting for the construction of the bucket machine, the beginning of the A and B to the name of the day, known as the stem; for the son of the ugly to the name of the month, known as the branch, something in the sky with the day, something in the ground with the month, the difference between yin and yang, so there is a branch of the stem of the name as well."

The Sui Dynasty's "The Five Elements of the Great Meaning" agrees with the idea that the stem and branches were created by Daxue.

The original origin of the heavenly stems and earthly branches is inconclusive, but if you look at the artifacts, the oracle bone divination of Yin ruins (after Pan Geng moved the capital to Yin, the Shang Dynasty was also known as Yin) unearthed over the past hundred years contains a large number of records of stems and branches used to date, and the most frequently occurring characters in oracle bone inscriptions are also the stems and branches.

From the discovery of the Shang dynasty oracle bones, more than 99 percent of the content is related to divination, that is, we often say "oracle bone divination", but divination is not all the content of the oracle bones, in addition to a small number of other kinds of content is also very important and divination has nothing to do with the carving of the words. For example, the "table of stems and branches" is one of the inscriptions. The "stem and branch table" inscription is a kind of special inscription in the oracle bone inscriptions, which belongs to a kind of table inscription. This inscription is engraved with ten heavenly stems: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, xin, non, dec and twelve Earthly Branches: son, ugly, c, d, e, f, n, un, shen, you, huxu, hai with the name of the composition of sixty stems of the table of the stems of the scholars also known as the table of the a. This a table listing engraved in the oracle bones, a special inscription, belonging to the table of a kind of engraving. This Azi table listing inscribed sixty stems and branches of the "stems and branches table" is the people at that time used to check and project the stems and branches of the genealogical table, the stems and branches table can be said to be the earliest calendar in our country.