Decipherment of Oracle Bone Script
◈Key Scholars
Late-Qing paleographer and chancellor of the Imperial Academy. In 1899 he recognized ancient inscriptions on the "dragon bones" sold in apothecaries; that year alone he bought ~1,500 fragments. When the Eight-Nation Alliance occupied Beijing during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, he took his own life — barely a year after the discovery.
Wang's friend, novelist (author of "The Travels of Lao Can"), and Yellow-River engineer. He inherited Wang's oracle-bone collection and in 1903 published "Tieyun canggui" — a catalogue of 1,058 oracle-bone rubbings, the first scholarly publication of the script.
In 1908 he traced the find-spot of the oracle bones — kept secret by antiquities dealers — to Xiaotun village in Anyang, Henan, the last capital of the Shang dynasty (Yin). His identification opened the way to systematic excavation, which the Academia Sinica began in 1928.
Cross-checked the king names in oracle-bone inscriptions against the Shang genealogies in Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian" and found a perfect match — providing the first hard proof that the Shang dynasty, long dismissed as legend, was historical.
◈How Was It Deciphered?
Oracle bone inscriptions are the divination records of the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC), incised on turtle plastrons or ox/deer scapulae. The divination ritual had four stages: (1) date and diviner's name, (2) the question addressed to the spirits, (3) the king's reading of the cracks (his judgment), (4) verification of the outcome. The king himself served as the supreme priest interpreting the cracks; war, agriculture, weather, disease, even his toothaches and dreams — every state decision passed through the bones. Of ~5,000 distinct characters found, ~1,500 have been deciphered.
◈Decoded Characters
Famous inscription: "婦好" — Fu Hao, queen of King Wu Ding (22nd Shang king), general of an army of 13,000, and high priestess. Her undisturbed tomb was excavated at Anyang in 1976, yielding 1,928 bronze and jade artifacts that matched the ~200 oracle-bone inscriptions naming her.
◈The Full Story
Until oracle bones came to light, scholars regarded the Shang dynasty — recorded in Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian" — as myth and legend. Meanwhile, for decades, farmers in Xiaotun village (Anyang, Henan) had been digging up bone fragments and selling them to apothecaries as "dragon bones," to be ground into hemostatic and analgesic powders. Inscribed bones actually fetched lower prices, and shopkeepers sometimes scraped off the writing to raise the value.
In 1899, the paleographer Wang Yirong — sick with malaria — recognized inscriptions on a bone fragment he had pulled from his boiled prescription. He immediately bought up every inscribed bone in the Beijing apothecaries: ~1,500 pieces in that year alone. In 1903 his friend Liu E published "Tieyun canggui," bringing oracle bones into scholarship; in 1908 Luo Zhenyu traced the source to Xiaotun in Anyang, opening the way to systematic excavation.
Systematic excavation by Academia Sinica began in 1928; to date ~160,000 fragments have been recovered, yielding ~5,000 distinct characters of which ~1,500 are deciphered. The king names on the bones match Sima Qian's Shang genealogies exactly — turning legend into history. China's International Center for Oracle Bone Studies now offers a 100,000-yuan (~$14,000) bounty for each newly decoded character, encouraging AI-assisted attempts. Oracle bones are the direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters — a still-living writing system 3,200 years on.