Predicting the future was serious business during China’s Shang dynasty, when ‘oracle bones’ helped kings make big calls.

There is no one "oracle bone" — about 13,000 have been found — but these relics hint at the development of writing in ancient China. They date from the late Shang Dynasty, (circa 1250 B.C. to ...

China recently unearthed again inscribed oracle bones, or inscribed tortoise shells or animal bones, of the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th-11th century BC) in Daxinzhuang Shang ruins, more than 100 years ...

Oracle-bone inscriptions were excavated from Yin Ruins in Anyang City, Henan Province, China. They were records of making divination and praying to gods by late Shang people from 1400 B.C.-1100 B.C..

Excavations at the Erlitou site, touted by some scholars as the capital of China’s earliest dynasty, the Xia, have also found signs of the practice. But it was during the Shang that human sacrifice ...

Oracle bones are a primary source which means they are from the time of the Shang Dynasty. Today, by knowing what questions the priests asked the gods, we can understand a lot about people’s ...

In Chen's view, the inscriptions are like a camera on the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), ... Now the Chinese oracle bone script has been included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

Resting on a tiny white cushion in a royal-blue embroidered box - secure in its new home behind a locked door at UC Berkeley's East Asian Library - is an old piece of chipped bone, the size of a ...

They date from the late Shang Dynasty, (circa 1250 B.C. to circa 1050 B.C.), although the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty ruled most of northern China from about 1600 B.C. — the earliest traditional ...