China offers reward to decipher ancient bone inscriptions

Beijing, Nov 28 (IANS) China is offering a financial reward to help decipher inscriptions on 3,000-year-old oracle bones used in ancient China for divination.

Since the reward was printed in newspapers last year, many people have offered their contributions which are being reviewed by experts, Xinhua news agency reported.

Over the past 100 years, researchers have only been able to decipher around one third of the characters on the animal bones and tortoise shells that have been found so far.

The remaining characters are difficult to decipher, according to Guo Xudong, from the oracle bones and Yin-Shang culture research centre in Anyang, Henan province.

Yin was the last capital of the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 B.C.) and the excavation of the Yin ruins in present day Anyang began as early as 1928. The oracle bone scripts discovered at the ruins are considered to be the oldest Chinese inscriptions.

Chinese oracle bone inscriptions were included in the list of Unesco Memory of the World International Register on October 31.

Oracle bones from ancient China, hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt, cuneiforms from ancient Babylon, and Mayan glyphs from Mesoamerica are among the world's most famous ancient writing systems.

"The other three have been lost throughout history, but the oracle bones are the only ones that still survive as they have evolved over time into current Chinese characters," said Guo.

Oracle bone inscriptions were first discovered in 1899 by Beijing scholar and antiquarian Wang Yirongt. Wang noticed that symbols on animal bones and tortoise shells looked like a form of writing.

Around 160,000 pieces of oracle bones have been found so far.

Among the 4,300 characters inscribed on them, only 1,600 have been decoded.

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