Oracle bone script is the set of incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient
Chinese characters found on
oracle bones, which were animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in
Bronze Age China. The vast majority record the
pyromantic divinations of the royal house of the late
Shang dynasty at the capital of Yin (modern
Anyang,
Henan Province); dating of the Anyang examples of oracle bone script varies from ca. 14th–11th centuries BCE to c. 1200–1050 BCE. Very few oracle bone writings date to the beginning of the subsequent
Zhou dynasty, because pyromancy fell from favor and divining with
milfoil became more common. The late Shang oracle bone writings, along with a few contemporary characters in a different style cast in bronzes, constitute the earliest significant corpus of Chinese writing, which is essential for the study of Chinese
etymology, as Shang writing is directly ancestral to the modern Chinese script. It is also the oldest known member and ancestor of the
Chinese family of scripts.