In China, in parks, mountains, and villages, you can find Chinese characters or other symbols carved into living bamboo. People just act naturally, on the smooth surface, picking up a stone with sharp points. This simple and natural form of writing could have been practiced thousands of years ago and has to do with the origin of Chinese writing.
Vertical carvings on living bamboos predate bamboo strips
Writing horizontally is natural for the eyes to read. Although not in a natural direction, Chinese writing had been fixed on vertical columns until the last century. There should be a cause. Tsien [1] he has attributed the verticality of Chinese writing to the bamboo strip and brush. However, the bamboo strips can also be placed in a horizontal direction for writing. It seems that horizontal writings have never been discovered on bamboo strips from ancient times. As for the origin of the verticality of Chinese writing on bamboo strips, there could be three scenarios. In the first case, the scribes sew the vertical direction without claiming the horizontal one. In the second case, both vertical and horizontal writing were practiced, but later horizontality was abandoned. In the third case, the vertical direction was already established before the bamboo strips were used. The first case is unlikely, since the scribes can tell which direction is more advantageous after trying each one. The second case means that the vertical layout is advantageous over the horizontal layout in the competition. We don’t support this case as we feel that horizontal writing is adequate for reading, so it shouldn’t fail the competition. Let’s talk about the third case.
To find writing before bamboo slips, we focus on two things: writing material and writing instrument. Again, we find bamboo. But this time it’s live bamboo. Certainly, as a native plant of China, bamboo is plentiful, has smooth surface and thin skin. It is easy and convenient to carve bamboo. The carvings are clear to read and remain so for the life of the bamboo. These conditions are met: writable, readable, and relatively maintainable. Sharp pointed stones can be the tool. In prehistoric society, perhaps nothing was more suitable for developing writing than living bamboo and stone. It is natural to write in vertical columns on the round, narrow surface of stems that grow upright.
Living bamboos may be prime candidates for writing. One question is: did people start writing on them earlier than on the bamboo strips that were cut from them? It is quite possible that our ancestors started using stone tools to carve them in the beginning, long before the advent of ink and brush. That is the simplest way to write in its broad sense. In early times, people could plant bamboos in front of their houses for a variety of uses. People also carved symbols on them for drawing and engraving. Later, people discovered that the writings can be migrated to bamboo strips. Carvings on living bamboos at that time may be abundant. It is difficult to know the number of texts and their complexity. They should already be sequenced vertically. Before the bamboo drains, there should be at least ‘sentences’ written on living bamboos. Later writings on bamboo leaf and book inherited verticality.
Living bamboos and bamboo leaves carried the lost origin of Chinese writing.
However, the symbols on living bamboo cannot last until our generation. Many materials cannot be kept for that long. Research on the history of writing is generally based on archaeological finds and written records. Ancient carvings prior to bamboo slip on living bamboo seem never to have been mentioned. Writing may have already migrated to the bamboo sheet before the earliest records. It is often difficult to create written works (engravings, etc.) with durable material and method. But it’s okay that most writing lasts only years/decades instead of hundreds of years or millennia. For most people, preservation for more than a hundred years was not desirable in most cases. Even today, with advanced preservation techniques, most published works would not be found a millennium later, not to mention personal writings.
Oracle bone script is the undisputed oldest writing system in China dating back to the Shang dynasty. The oracle bones were mainly for divination by the royal house. Given their special purpose, the relative scarcity of bones and shells, and the relative difficulty of making the scripts, they should not be the most widely used writing material at the time. The script was already fully developed, with no apparent predecessor. True writing in China could have existed much earlier. Records from other surviving media indicate that bamboo slips were in existence as early as the oracle bone writing period. There are Neolithic signs dating back a few millennia before. In these millennia, there were possibly many writings on bamboo leaves or living bamboos, on which Chinese writing developed.
conclusion
Carvings on living bamboos with stone tools may have originated Chinese writing. They fixed the Chinese system in a vertical direction which was later inherited by bamboo strips, paper books, etc.
References
[1], Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien. Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions. Second edition. University of Chicago Press. 2004. Page 204.
