These characters are found to be stylized pictures of some physical objects. Among the large numbers of relics unearthed are about a dozen pottery wine vessels (called zun), which bear a character each. They date back 4,500 years and belong to a late period of the Dawenkou Culture.
Cangjie, if there ever was such a man, must have been a prehistoric wise man who sorted out and standardized the characters that had already been in use.Ī group of ancient tombs have been discovered in recent years at Yanghe in Luxian County, Shandong Province.
After that, certain ancient accounts go on to say, millet rained from heaven and the spirits howled every night to lament the leakage of the divine secret of writing.Īnother story says that Cangjie saw the footprints of birds and beasts, which inspired him to create written characters.Įvidently these stories cannot be accepted as the truth, for any script can only be a creation developed by the masses of the people to meet the needs of social life over a long period of trial and experiment. In imitation of his image, Cangjie created the earliest written characters. Cangjie, according to one legend, saw a divine being whose face had unusual features that looked like a picture of writings. There have been various stories about the origin of the Chinese script, with nearly all ancient writers attributing it to a man named Cangjie. Chinese Scripts and Symbols Chinese Scripts and Symbols - Crystalinks