Precursors of Chinese Characters
As we begin publishing a series of notes on the history of Chinese characters, an important qualification is necessary: the history of Chinese characters must be distinguished from the history of writing in China. Historians know of a form of writing that existed in China in 5000–1600 BCE, so similar to runic writing and, at the same time, so poorly studied because artifacts bearing it are rare that it does not seem justified to classify the surviving inscriptions as a character-based script.
This writing is taowen (陶文, taowen, literally: writing on pottery), consisting of incised marks on clay vessels found in excavations of Neolithic cultures. The marks are usually located on the bottoms or rims of Neolithic vessels. The limited number of signs has even led some researchers to suggest that this Neolithic writing was alphabetic.
Archaeological research into later periods of China’s material culture has shown that, in the early second millennium BCE, pottery bears groups of signs rather than isolated marks; their shapes resemble the signs on Yin bones and shells. Thus, at the Wucheng (吴城, Wucheng) site in Jiangxi Province (江西省, Jiangxi sheng), dating to the early second millennium BCE, pottery was discovered with incised marks arranged in groups of 5-7 signs. In some cases, there were as many as twelve marks. Such groups of signs may well be regarded as inscriptions. In their shapes, the marks resemble signs of the Yin script (named after the locality of Yin (殷, Yin)), but they cannot be identified with signs of the Yin script or modern Chinese writing. These signs can be considered precursors of the Yin script or local forms of it. None of the presumed inscriptions has been deciphered. Studying them is a task for future generations of Chinese paleographers.