# A Guide to Ancient Chinese Divination Oracle Bones of the Shang Dynasty

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 3 Oct 2026, 59 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75487037/a_guide_to_ancient_chinese_divination_oracle_bones_of_the_shang_dynasty_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Journey into the mysterious world of Shang Dynasty divination and discover how ancient Chinese rulers used oracle bones to seek answers from the supernatural. Long before modern methods of prediction, Shang kings and diviners turned to carefully prepared animal bones and turtle shells to ask questions about warfare, harvests, weather, illness, childbirth, hunting, and the future. Explore how oracle bone divination actually worked. Discover how diviners prepared ox scapulae and turtle plastrons, carved questions into their surfaces, and applied intense heat to create cracks that were then interpreted as supernatural responses. Learn how these rituals connected the royal court with ancestors and powerful spiritual forces believed to influence the fate of the kingdom. The episode also examines the extraordinary inscriptions preserved on these objects. Often called oracle bone script, these ancient characters represent some of the earliest substantial examples of written Chinese and provide invaluable information about Shang society. Discover what the inscriptions reveal about kings, royal ancestors, military campaigns, sacrifices, agriculture, eclipses, illnesses, and religious ceremonies. Explore the religious world behind the divinations. Learn about the Shang belief in ancestral spirits, natural forces, and powerful supernatural beings, as well as the special position of the king as an intermediary between the human and spiritual worlds. Discover why questions about warfare, harvests, weather, and royal health were treated as matters of both political and religious importance. This episode also follows the discovery of the oracle bones in modern times and their importance to archaeology and Chinese history. Explore the site of Yinxu near modern Anyang, the excavation of royal tombs and ritual remains, and the painstaking work scholars have undertaken to decipher thousands of inscriptions. Drawing on oracle bone inscriptions, archaeological discoveries, Shang ritual practices, ancient historical traditions, and modern scholarship, this immersive journey separates established evidence from later legends and misconceptions. Discover how a collection of bones and shells transformed our understanding of one of China's earliest recorded civilizations. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this episode is perfect for history enthusiasts, ancient China lovers, archaeology fans, mythology and religion listeners, documentary audiences, relaxation, or listening before sleep. Step into the ritual world of the Shang Dynasty and discover how ancient Chinese rulers sought answers from the spirits of the past.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: In the summer of 1899, a Chinese scholar named Wang
[0:05] Speaker 1: Yirong lay ill with malaria. He is prescribed with an
[0:11] Speaker 1: unusual remedy. Dragon bones. These were ancient animal bones sold
[0:19] Speaker 1: in apothecaries, believed to be ground-up fossils with healing powers.
[0:26] Speaker 1: When Wang inspected one before it was pulverized, he was
[0:28] Speaker 1: astonished to see carved symbols on the bone surface. Those
[0:33] Speaker 1: symbols looked like archaic Chinese characters, unlike any script known
[0:39] Speaker 1: at the time. Little did Wang know, he had stumbled
[0:43] Speaker 1: upon a 3,000-year-old royal archive. This dragon bone in his
[0:50] Speaker 1: hand was in fact an oracle bone from the Shang dynasty.
[0:55] Speaker 1: bearing the burnt cracks and inscribed questions of an ancient
[0:59] Speaker 1: divination ritual. Now this discovery opened a window into China's
[1:04] Speaker 1: Bronze Age, revealing the earliest known written records of Chinese civilization.
[1:10] Speaker 1: It confirmed that the Shang Dynasty, 1600-1050 BC, long mentioned
[1:17] Speaker 1: in legends and later texts, was indeed historical and had
[1:22] Speaker 1: left behind a rich trove of inscriptions. And so, one
[1:27] Speaker 1: might imagine the scene, thousands of years ago in a
[1:30] Speaker 1: Shang court, where the king, seeking answers from the divine,
[1:35] Speaker 1: holds a heated bronze rod to a prepared ox shoulder bone.
[1:39] Speaker 1: As the bone heats up, it suddenly cracks. The king's
[1:45] Speaker 1: diviner leads him forward to read the pattern of that crack,
[1:50] Speaker 1: interpreting it as a message from ancestral spirits. The question
[1:54] Speaker 1: that prompted this ritual was, Perhaps, will the harvest be good,
[1:58] Speaker 1: or shall we go to war, is then carefully carved
[2:03] Speaker 1: onto the bone, along with the answer revealed by the
[2:06] Speaker 1: crack pattern. These inscribed animal bones and turtle shells, known
[2:12] Speaker 1: as oracle bones, were the essential tools of divination in
[2:16] Speaker 1: the late Shang dynasty. To date, over a hundred thousand
[2:21] Speaker 1: fragments have been unearthed from the Shang royal capital at Yinxu,
[2:25] Speaker 1: modern-day Anyang, bearing millions of characters that tell us about
[2:30] Speaker 1: the concerns, rituals, and daily life of a Bronze Age
[2:36] Speaker 1: Chinese civilization. So let's go back to the Shang Dynasty
[2:42] Speaker 1: and take a look at what these oracle bones were
[2:44] Speaker 1: used for, and the nature of the inscriptions carved upon them,
[2:49] Speaker 1: the process of divination that animated Shang politics and religion.
[2:54] Speaker 1: and the broader role these artifacts played. We'll compare Shang
[2:58] Speaker 1: Oracle bone divination with other early Chinese divination practices and
[3:04] Speaker 1: see what made it so special. So, it's going to
[3:09] Speaker 1: be part A, history talk, and part detective story, as
[3:16] Speaker 1: we explore how a handful of cracked bones bridge the
[3:19] Speaker 1: gap between legend and history and bring back voices of
[3:24] Speaker 1: a 3,200-year-old civilization? Well, let me welcome you first in.
[3:32] Speaker 1: Really pleased that you're going into this exploration of Chinese
[3:35] Speaker 1: history with me today. Oh, we're going to have so
[3:39] Speaker 1: much fun, I promise. But to kick off the fun,
[3:44] Speaker 1: why don't you click the like and subscribe button? You
[3:47] Speaker 1: know I have to ask. And thank you to those
[3:51] Speaker 1: who checked out the merch store. and to those lovely
[3:54] Speaker 1: people keeping the channel going on YouTube memberships or Patreon.
[4:00] Speaker 1: Very kind of you. Now, that's all out of the way.
[4:04] Speaker 1: Let's get down to the topic at hand. Nice and relaxed.
[4:08] Speaker 1: There's no need to rush. So what exactly are oracle bones? Well,
[4:16] Speaker 1: they're literally pieces of bone or shell. most often flat
[4:21] Speaker 1: shoulder bones of oxen, the scalpulae, or the undershells of
[4:25] Speaker 1: turtles called the plastrons, used in Chinese divination rites. In
[4:31] Speaker 1: the Shang Dynasty, the bones formed a spiritual conduit between
[4:35] Speaker 1: the royal court and the unseen world of the ancestors
[4:38] Speaker 1: and gods. Shang diviners would pose questions about important matters
[4:44] Speaker 1: and use the heat to crack the bones, interpreting the
[4:48] Speaker 1: answers and omens. the questions, and sometimes even the answers,
[4:54] Speaker 1: were engraved onto the bones, which creates a very convenient
[4:59] Speaker 1: record of the divination. These inscriptions, known as oracle bone script,
[5:05] Speaker 1: are the earliest attested form of Chinese writing, making the
[5:09] Speaker 1: Shang the first Chinese dynasty to leave written records. The
[5:15] Speaker 1: typical oracle bone was prepared with great care for the ritual.
[5:19] Speaker 1: A large ox shoulder blade or turtle shell would be cleaned,
[5:23] Speaker 1: and its outer surface polished smooth. On the underside, pits
[5:28] Speaker 1: or grooves were chiselled into bone at strategic points. Often
[5:33] Speaker 1: the bones were also anointed with blood, likely from a
[5:36] Speaker 1: sacrificial animal prior to heating, as part of sanctifying the ritual.
[5:42] Speaker 1: Once ready, the bone or shell was likely a primitive
[5:45] Speaker 1: device awaiting a question. the Bronze Age equivalent of a
[5:49] Speaker 1: magical medium, I suppose. But why do we call them
[5:53] Speaker 1: oracle bones? Well, because they were used to seek oracles,
[5:58] Speaker 1: divine answers to pressing questions. The term itself was coined
[6:04] Speaker 1: in the early 20th century by scholars translating the Chinese
[6:08] Speaker 1: name 甲骨文, which literally means shell and bone script. These
[6:14] Speaker 1: bones were not seen as mere objects by the Shang people,
[6:18] Speaker 1: They were part of a sacred process. By applying intense
[6:22] Speaker 1: heat to the prepared hollows in the bone, cracks would
[6:26] Speaker 1: form on the polished front surface, typically in a radial
[6:31] Speaker 1: or spiderweb pattern. The Chinese character for divination, Bo, is
[6:37] Speaker 1: actually a pictograph of the crack on an oracle bone,
[6:40] Speaker 1: showing how central this practice was to ancient Chinese culture.
[6:47] Speaker 1: It's important to note that while oracle bones have been
[6:50] Speaker 1: found in several places, they are most strongly associated with
[6:54] Speaker 1: the late Shang capital at Yinshi in Henan. The vast
[6:59] Speaker 1: majority of inscribed oracle bones, numbering over 100,000 pieces, have
[7:04] Speaker 1: been unearthed from that site. They date roughly from 1250 BC,
[7:09] Speaker 1: the reign of King Wu Ding, to the end of
[7:12] Speaker 1: the Shang dynasty around 1046 BC. Earlier Chinese culture may
[7:17] Speaker 1: have practiced scalpel amansi, that is, burning bones for omens
[7:21] Speaker 1: as well. But without writing, for example, archaeologists have found
[7:27] Speaker 1: burned animal bones at pre-Sheng sites, suggesting the roots of
[7:31] Speaker 1: this divination ritual predate the Shang. However, it is in
[7:36] Speaker 1: the Shang period that we see the practice fully developed
[7:40] Speaker 1: and meticulously recorded in writing. Very lucky that we got that. Thankfully,
[7:46] Speaker 1: they didn't grind them all up into medicine. Would have
[7:50] Speaker 1: been quite a shame. Now, physically, an oracle bone with
[7:55] Speaker 1: inscriptions is an object that bridges the natural and human worlds.
[8:00] Speaker 1: On one hand, that's a piece of an animal. You
[8:02] Speaker 1: can clearly see the shape of a shoulder blade or shell.
[8:07] Speaker 1: On the other hand, the bone is incised with neat
[8:09] Speaker 1: columns of characters, documenting a dialogue with the divine. Some
[8:14] Speaker 1: oracle bones are small broken fragments with just a few characters.
[8:19] Speaker 1: Like large intact scalpulae contain long inscriptions, the longest have
[8:23] Speaker 1: over a hundred characters. But together, these artifacts provide an
[8:29] Speaker 1: unparalleled archive of the late Shang dynasty's spiritual and political life.
[8:36] Speaker 1: So to understand oracle bones, we really do have to
[8:40] Speaker 1: step into the shoes of a Shang diviner. and examine
[8:44] Speaker 1: the process of divination in the Shang Dynasty. Rituals can
[8:49] Speaker 1: be summarized in a series of careful steps, each recorded
[8:53] Speaker 1: on the bone itself. First, the ritual began with a
[8:56] Speaker 1: statement of the date and officiant. The Shang Dynasty used
[9:01] Speaker 1: a 60-day cyclical calendar, the heavenly stems and earthly branches
[9:05] Speaker 1: system to mark dates. A typical inscription might start with
[9:09] Speaker 1: something like, On day twelve, in the reign of King Whosoever,
[9:14] Speaker 1: divination was performed. Often the name of the diviner or
[9:20] Speaker 1: the person conducting the ceremony was noted as well. The
[9:24] Speaker 1: introductory line set the stage. It told us when and
[9:28] Speaker 1: by whom the question was asked. Next, we had the
[9:33] Speaker 1: question or the charge, which is the topic of inquiry.
[9:39] Speaker 1: The Shang king or diviner posed a question to the
[9:42] Speaker 1: ancestors or deities. These questions could be about pretty much anything, really,
[9:48] Speaker 1: as long as it was concerned to the royal household. Weather, hunting, dreams, childbirth, warfare,
[9:56] Speaker 1: and so on. For example, a king might ask, will
[10:00] Speaker 1: it rain within the next ten days? Or is whosoever
[10:05] Speaker 1: ancestor causing my headaches? A common type of question was
[10:10] Speaker 1: whether a planned ritual or sacrifice would please the spirits
[10:13] Speaker 1: and bring good fortune. The charge was often phrased in
[10:17] Speaker 1: a binary way. so the crack's message could be interpreted
[10:21] Speaker 1: as either auspicious or inauspicious. Sometimes multiple charges were stated
[10:26] Speaker 1: in both positive and negative form, rather it will rain
[10:30] Speaker 1: versus it will not rain, to cover all the outcomes.
[10:35] Speaker 1: The scribe carved the charge into the bone before or
[10:38] Speaker 1: immediately after the divination, aligning it near the spot where
[10:42] Speaker 1: the crack would appear. Then we have prognostication. That is
[10:49] Speaker 1: the interpretation. Once the question was stated, the actual divination
[10:54] Speaker 1: took place. A red-hot bronze rod or burning wood ember
[10:59] Speaker 1: was applied to the bits on the reverse side of
[11:01] Speaker 1: the bone. The intense heat caused the bone or shell
[11:05] Speaker 1: to crack on the polished front side. Each crack made
[11:08] Speaker 1: a loud pop. Imagine the sudden sound in the silence
[11:12] Speaker 1: of a ritual chamber. The cracks typically appeared as thin lines,
[11:19] Speaker 1: often resembling a shape of a branching diviner's symbol. Now,
[11:25] Speaker 1: a single session might produce multiple cracks. Diviners usually made
[11:29] Speaker 1: several cracks in one session, sometimes on one bone or
[11:34] Speaker 1: spread across multiple bones. Each crack itself could be numbered
[11:38] Speaker 1: or marked to keep track. The diviner or the king
[11:42] Speaker 1: himself would then examine the pattern of cracks and interpret
[11:46] Speaker 1: them to discern the answer. How exactly they interpreted specific
[11:51] Speaker 1: crack patterns is one of the lingering mysteries. They left
[11:55] Speaker 1: us with answers and their conclusion, but we yet to
[11:59] Speaker 1: find a rulebook for reading the cracks. But what we
[12:06] Speaker 1: do know is that they would declare the outcome as favourable.
[12:10] Speaker 1: auspicious or unfavourable inauspicious, based on what they saw. In
[12:16] Speaker 1: many inscriptions we see a phrase like auspicious or not
[12:19] Speaker 1: auspicious indicating the prognostication. Often the king personally voiced the interpretation,
[12:26] Speaker 1: effectively making the prognostication part of the inscription as well.
[12:30] Speaker 1: A lot of them had stuff written on it like
[12:33] Speaker 1: the king read the crack and said auspicious. But then
[12:40] Speaker 1: in some cases, not always, the Shang recorded the actual
[12:45] Speaker 1: outcome of the event in question after it happened. This
[12:49] Speaker 1: is called verification. For example, if the question was about
[12:53] Speaker 1: an upcoming hunt and the divination predicted success, what the
[12:59] Speaker 1: bones might be later inscribed with the results of the hunt, etc.,
[13:04] Speaker 1: whatever they caught, if they caught a buffalo or a
[13:07] Speaker 1: few foxes, whatever. Such verification inscriptions are relatively rare, but
[13:13] Speaker 1: when they do appear, they are very valuable, because they
[13:16] Speaker 1: show a follow-up, covering the loop and the divination. In
[13:21] Speaker 1: many cases, the Shangri-La recorded the divination itself, the question
[13:25] Speaker 1: and the answer, and did not bother to add verification later,
[13:30] Speaker 1: perhaps because once the ritual was done, the bone's main
[13:33] Speaker 1: purpose was already fulfilled. In fact, a complete record with
[13:37] Speaker 1: all four parts is very uncommon. More often we just
[13:42] Speaker 1: have the date, who did the divining, and the question.
[13:47] Speaker 1: The outcome might have been understood at the time and
[13:49] Speaker 1: left uncarved on written or perishable materials. Some oracle bones
[13:56] Speaker 1: even show evidence of having been used for divination, but
[14:00] Speaker 1: left uninscribed, except maybe a brush-written note. which suggests that
[14:06] Speaker 1: scribes did not carve every single outcome, possibly due to time,
[14:12] Speaker 1: or because the question was just so routine. Well, to
[14:18] Speaker 1: illustrate the process, consider an actual oracle bone inscription from
[14:22] Speaker 1: the late Shang, which has been translated to English, obviously.
[14:28] Speaker 1: On Renzi, day 49, the king made cracks and divined.
[14:35] Speaker 1: Charge If we hunt at Wu, will we return with
[14:39] Speaker 1: no disasters? Prognostication. The king read the crack and said, Auspicious.
[14:47] Speaker 1: This interpretation was then engraved on the bone. Verification. Later,
[14:55] Speaker 1: we caught one wild buffalo, one tiger, and seven foxes.
[15:02] Speaker 1: So in this example, we can always picture the sequence.
[15:06] Speaker 1: the diviner announces the date, and that the king is
[15:09] Speaker 1: performing a divination. The question is a hopeful one about
[15:14] Speaker 1: the safe and successful hunting trip. The bone gets cracked up,
[15:18] Speaker 1: the king judges the cracks as a positive sign, and
[15:22] Speaker 1: after the hunt, the scribe adds the result. It's a
[15:25] Speaker 1: four-part record that allows us to follow a king's decision-making
[15:28] Speaker 1: from intention to confirmation, a vivid glimpse of royal life.
[15:34] Speaker 1: And from numerous such inscriptions, We know Shang kings were
[15:37] Speaker 1: deeply concerned with aligning their actions to the will of
[15:40] Speaker 1: their ancestors and gods. The divination ritual was a way
[15:44] Speaker 1: to consult the ancestral spirits on virtually every matter, big
[15:49] Speaker 1: and small, everything from a hunt to a war. They
[15:54] Speaker 1: asked whether it would rain, whether an ancestor was angry
[15:57] Speaker 1: due to a missed offering, or whether a child being
[16:00] Speaker 1: born would be auspicious. No detail was too small or
[16:04] Speaker 1: too great. So, after the divination was done, the used
[16:09] Speaker 1: oracle bones did not just lie around. They were often
[16:13] Speaker 1: buried in groups, within royal precincts. Archaeologists had found pits
[16:18] Speaker 1: at Yinshu, containing hundreds or even thousands of fragments, sorted
[16:23] Speaker 1: by type. For example, one pit might contain only turtle shells,
[16:29] Speaker 1: another only ox bones. And this suggests that the divination
[16:34] Speaker 1: rite itself was a sacred act, and after serving their purpose,
[16:38] Speaker 1: the inscribed bones were ritually deposited, perhaps as a kind
[16:42] Speaker 1: of archive offering to the spirits. In one dramatic find,
[16:47] Speaker 1: a bit held over 17,000 oracle bone pieces, along with
[16:51] Speaker 1: a human skeleton, possibly a sacrificial victim or a diviner,
[16:57] Speaker 1: interred with the tools of his trade. The Shankor took
[17:02] Speaker 1: it all so seriously, that the physical remnants of the
[17:05] Speaker 1: practice were handled with ritual care. Really, the process of
[17:11] Speaker 1: divination was so elaborate and methodical, a combined religious ritual,
[17:16] Speaker 1: technical procedure and record-keeping. And that is why the oracle
[17:22] Speaker 1: bones are such a rich historical source. The Shang diviners
[17:26] Speaker 1: and scribes left a detailed log of their questions and concerns,
[17:30] Speaker 1: effectively an ancient database of royal worries and hopes. So
[17:37] Speaker 1: what do the inscriptions really tell us? We already know
[17:41] Speaker 1: that they are the earliest form of written Chinese, and
[17:45] Speaker 1: they open a direct window into the minds of the
[17:48] Speaker 1: Shang people. These inscriptions are typically very terse, just a
[17:54] Speaker 1: few characters denote the essential information, yet their context and
[17:58] Speaker 1: structure speak volumes about Shang society, language and belief. As
[18:04] Speaker 1: we saw, A full inscription ideally includes the date, the
[18:09] Speaker 1: divino's name or the king's name, the question, the interpretation,
[18:14] Speaker 1: and sometimes, if you're lucky, the result. For example, a
[18:18] Speaker 1: real oracle bone text might read in translation, crack-making on
[18:22] Speaker 1: day 15, prince divined, it will rain, king prognosticated, not auspicious. Later,
[18:29] Speaker 1: it really did rain. In Chinese, the whole story might
[18:32] Speaker 1: be compressed into a few sequence of concise characters, almost
[18:38] Speaker 1: like shorthand. In fact, well, you know much about Chinese,
[18:43] Speaker 1: it's pretty conservative, you can express quite a bit with
[18:46] Speaker 1: just a few characters. However, as noted, most inscriptions are incomplete,
[18:53] Speaker 1: that they might omit the outcome or even the prognostication.
[18:57] Speaker 1: It seems the act of divination itself and the king's
[19:01] Speaker 1: decision in the moment were the primary concern. Once the
[19:05] Speaker 1: decision was made, writing down the eventual outcome was just
[19:09] Speaker 1: an optional afterthought, unless it served as feedback for future reference.
[19:16] Speaker 1: Now what about the language and the script? Well, the
[19:19] Speaker 1: Orca Bone script is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese writing.
[19:24] Speaker 1: If you look at a lot of the old Jiagouan scripts,
[19:26] Speaker 1: they are Some of them are pretty recognizable to the
[19:30] Speaker 1: old ones, but it's been a few thousand years, so
[19:35] Speaker 1: you'll have to use your imagination. But either way, scholars
[19:39] Speaker 1: have cataloged around 5,000 distinct characters from the Oracle Bones.
[19:45] Speaker 1: Some of these characters are easy to recognize, some of
[19:48] Speaker 1: them not so much. Pictographs or simple ideographs that evolved
[19:52] Speaker 1: into modern Chinese characters. About a quarter of the Oracle
[19:57] Speaker 1: Bone characters, roughly 1,200, have been definitively deciphered, and their
[20:02] Speaker 1: meanings and sounds are known with certainty. Many others remain
[20:07] Speaker 1: partially understood, or a subject of debate. Now this means
[20:12] Speaker 1: that the Oracle Bones still hold some mystery. They're characters
[20:18] Speaker 1: whose exact meaning we haven't quite nailed down yet, often
[20:23] Speaker 1: because they might refer to obscure rituals, place names, or
[20:27] Speaker 1: people that we lack references for. There's the hard part
[20:32] Speaker 1: about Chinese, realizing what might be someone's name or place,
[20:38] Speaker 1: and A lot of names and place names have gone
[20:42] Speaker 1: out of fashion over all these years. It's very hard
[20:45] Speaker 1: to figure it out. Now, one fascinating aspect is that
[20:50] Speaker 1: the core vocabulary found in these inscriptions overlaps with a
[20:54] Speaker 1: lot of basic Chinese vocabulary used throughout history. Words for
[20:59] Speaker 1: familial relationships, agricultural activities, heavenly bodies, and elemental concepts are
[21:06] Speaker 1: all present. anchoring the Shang language as an early form
[21:10] Speaker 1: of Old Chinese. The inscriptions tend to be formulaic, due
[21:15] Speaker 1: to the repetitive nature of divination records, but, cumulatively, they
[21:22] Speaker 1: provide enough context that the modern scholars can translate many
[21:26] Speaker 1: of them with a good amount of confidence. For example,
[21:32] Speaker 1: when we see a sequence of characters including symbols for
[21:35] Speaker 1: rain and auspicious on many bones, alongside date notations, we
[21:40] Speaker 1: can pretty much deduce that they are talking about whether
[21:43] Speaker 1: rain will come and if that's a good sign. By
[21:48] Speaker 1: cross-referencing thousands of fragments, the experts can decode the script
[21:53] Speaker 1: and even reconstruct aspects of Shang grammar and usage. But
[21:59] Speaker 1: it is worth noting that in the Shang dynasty, writing
[22:03] Speaker 1: was likely not limited to oracle bones. The fact that
[22:07] Speaker 1: complex writing systems appear in these inscriptions implies that the
[22:11] Speaker 1: Shang elite were already literate in some context, perhaps writing
[22:15] Speaker 1: on perishable materials like bamboo slips of wood which have
[22:20] Speaker 1: unfortunately not survived. Indeed, some oracle bones show signs that
[22:26] Speaker 1: divination was first written with a brush and ink before
[22:30] Speaker 1: being carved. A few unearthed pieces still have ink marks.
[22:36] Speaker 1: or show only partial carving, as if the process was interrupted.
[22:42] Speaker 1: The Shang also cast short inscriptions on bronze ritual vessels.
[22:46] Speaker 1: Those bronze inscriptions are typically shorter and more commemorative, etc.,
[22:51] Speaker 1: marking an offering by a person, whereas the oracle bones
[22:56] Speaker 1: are more likely daily logs of activity. Together the sources
[23:01] Speaker 1: confirm that by the late 2nd millennium B.C., the Chinese
[23:06] Speaker 1: writing system was already in use and would continue unbroken,
[23:10] Speaker 1: with evolutions, of course, into later eras. And the continuous
[23:15] Speaker 1: thread of script is why modern Chinese readers can discern
[23:21] Speaker 1: a good amount of meaning in some oracle bone writings.
[23:25] Speaker 1: And that is remarkable. When I was in a museum in,
[23:29] Speaker 1: I think it was in Hengyang, it might have been Hengyang,
[23:33] Speaker 1: but I saw some old Chinese writings just like that.
[23:38] Speaker 1: And you can definitely recognize that they are the ancestors
[23:42] Speaker 1: of the modern characters. And even me, as a non-Chinese,
[23:49] Speaker 1: a white guy from Australia, even I can understand a
[23:53] Speaker 1: little bit of Chinese from 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago.
[24:02] Speaker 1: I can still make out what they're getting at. In fact,
[24:05] Speaker 1: Oracle Bones, these, I'm not flexing, but Oracle Bones have
[24:09] Speaker 1: a lot of those continual characters, like we mentioned, Rain
[24:13] Speaker 1: and Inauspicious or Auspicious. Even me, I could make out
[24:18] Speaker 1: what they are cataloguing, and that's amazing that Chinese has
[24:23] Speaker 1: lasted for that long. Well, anyway, let's go to the
[24:30] Speaker 1: content of the questions. Okay, so the subject matter of
[24:34] Speaker 1: oracle bone inscriptions gives us a bit of a slice
[24:37] Speaker 1: of life of the Shang royal court, albeit a rather
[24:41] Speaker 1: selective one. They were almost, in terms of the questions recorded,
[24:46] Speaker 1: exclusively those posed for the Shang kings or their immediate circle.
[24:51] Speaker 1: And that means we're reading the anxieties of kings, not commoners.
[24:56] Speaker 1: The oracle bones provide a highly selective picture of the
[25:00] Speaker 1: concerns that were relevant to the Shang elite But what
[25:04] Speaker 1: were those concerns? Well, they were preoccupied with matters such
[25:08] Speaker 1: as agriculture and natural events, warfare and hunting, health and childbirth,
[25:15] Speaker 1: rituals and sacrifice, travels and tributes, dreams and portents too. Now,
[25:22] Speaker 1: that is an interesting one. There are cases where a
[25:25] Speaker 1: king's dream is recorded, followed by a divination to interpret it.
[25:31] Speaker 1: The Shang believed dreams could be communications from the spirit world,
[25:34] Speaker 1: you see. If the king dreamed of an ancestor or
[25:37] Speaker 1: an ominous symbol, they might perform a divination the next
[25:40] Speaker 1: day to understand its meaning. Likewise, any strange event, like
[25:45] Speaker 1: bizarre animal behavior or celestial events, could prompt a question
[25:48] Speaker 1: to the oracle. But despite the variety of topics, one
[25:54] Speaker 1: common thread is clear. All questions had a religious dimension.
[25:59] Speaker 1: The Shang kings didn't ask, How do I do this
[26:02] Speaker 1: in a practical sense, they asked. Will the spirits favour
[26:06] Speaker 1: the action if I do it, or if I don't
[26:09] Speaker 1: do it? Practically every query is underpinned by the belief
[26:14] Speaker 1: that outcomes depended on the will of ancestors or gods.
[26:18] Speaker 1: And it shows the theocratic nature of Shang-Rul. The king
[26:22] Speaker 1: was not just a political ruler, but also the chief
[26:25] Speaker 1: priest of the society. He was constantly seeking divine guidance.
[26:32] Speaker 1: Another notable feature of the oracle bone texts is how
[26:36] Speaker 1: they name specific individuals. The Shang kings addressed or invoked
[26:42] Speaker 1: their ancestors by name in these divinations. For example, a
[26:46] Speaker 1: charge might be directed to Father Jia or Grandmother Xin,
[26:51] Speaker 1: asking that ancestor's advice or intervention in some manner. Over time,
[26:57] Speaker 1: scholars compiling the names from thousands of fragments were able
[27:01] Speaker 1: to piece together the Shang royal genealogy. In fact, oracle
[27:05] Speaker 1: bone inscriptions have verified the names of the last nine
[27:09] Speaker 1: or so of the Shang kings, from King Wuding onward,
[27:14] Speaker 1: that is, and of course many royal family members. And
[27:19] Speaker 1: this matches up with later historical records and allowed historians
[27:23] Speaker 1: to confirm that those individuals were indeed real. Imagine the
[27:27] Speaker 1: excitement of discovering that on a bone the name of
[27:31] Speaker 1: a king that had previously known only from much later texts.
[27:36] Speaker 1: I mean, Chinese history in that time, especially if you
[27:40] Speaker 1: read stuff like The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes
[27:46] Speaker 1: figures are mentioned in a semi-mythological context. So you imagine
[27:53] Speaker 1: if you find evidence that King Arthur was real, Or
[27:59] Speaker 1: Merlin was real. That's pretty much what we're getting at. Now,
[28:05] Speaker 1: one famous case in the Chinese way of looking at
[28:09] Speaker 1: it is Fu Hao, a consort to King Wu Ding.
[28:12] Speaker 1: The Oracle Bones mentioned Fu Hao repeatedly in context of
[28:15] Speaker 1: military campaign and rituals. They mention that she was leading
[28:20] Speaker 1: troops to battle and conducting important sacrifices. For a long time,
[28:25] Speaker 1: Fu Hao was just a name in these inscriptions. but
[28:28] Speaker 1: she emerged as a remarkable personality, a female general and
[28:33] Speaker 1: a high priestess in a very patriarchal society, I'm sure,
[28:37] Speaker 1: which was pretty unexpected. Then, in 1976, archaeologists excavated the
[28:44] Speaker 1: tomb at Yinshu, and guess what? It was the tomb
[28:48] Speaker 1: of Fu Hao, complete with weapons, bronzes, and a wealth
[28:53] Speaker 1: of goods, and that confirms her status exactly. as described
[28:58] Speaker 1: on the oracle bones 3,000 years earlier. Now, isn't that
[29:03] Speaker 1: just great? That's a powerful example of how oracle bone
[29:07] Speaker 1: inscriptions as primary sources can really expand our understanding of
[29:11] Speaker 1: history and even lead to tangible archaeological discoveries. Now, while
[29:21] Speaker 1: they are terse and formulaic, They always convey an enormous
[29:26] Speaker 1: amount of information about what mattered to the Shang kings.
[29:31] Speaker 1: It's the closest thing we have to hearing the voice
[29:34] Speaker 1: of the Shang dynasty. As if the bones are speaking,
[29:39] Speaker 1: the questions allow. across thirty-two centuries. So the oracle bones
[29:48] Speaker 1: were far more than just a fortune-telling trick. They sat
[29:53] Speaker 1: at the heart of Shang religion, governance, and the worldview.
[29:57] Speaker 1: The practices of divination with oracle bones illuminates the structure
[30:01] Speaker 1: of Shang society and its values. So let's talk about
[30:05] Speaker 1: ancestral worship and general theology in a Bronze Age Chinese sense.
[30:11] Speaker 1: The Shang people believed that royal ancestors, deceased kings and
[30:16] Speaker 1: forefathers of the ruling house, continued to exist in the
[30:20] Speaker 1: spiritual realm and wielded great influence over the living. These
[30:25] Speaker 1: ancestral spirits could bestow blessings like good harvests or victory
[30:30] Speaker 1: in war. But on the other hand, they could also
[30:34] Speaker 1: inflict misfortunes like illness and natural disasters, if you didn't
[30:39] Speaker 1: properly appease them. Above the ancestors, the Shang also acknowledged
[30:44] Speaker 1: other spiritual forces, nature deities like river gods, mountains, the
[30:50] Speaker 1: sun and the moon. and a supreme deity, often called Shangdi,
[30:56] Speaker 1: or just Di, meaning high god or lord. However, crucially,
[31:03] Speaker 1: the Shang king did not typically address Shangdi directly. He
[31:08] Speaker 1: communicated through his ancestors, who in turn could intercede the
[31:12] Speaker 1: higher powers. Oracle bone inscriptions clearly reflect this theology. Many
[31:19] Speaker 1: charges explicitly invoke a specific ancestor, or ask whether a
[31:24] Speaker 1: particular ancestor is responsible for an event. For example, if
[31:28] Speaker 1: the kingdom was experiencing a drought, the king might ask,
[31:32] Speaker 1: Is great-grandfather Yi angry in thus causing the drought? The
[31:37] Speaker 1: assumption is that if the ancestor is displeased, he must
[31:42] Speaker 1: be placated with offerings. The bones show the king asking
[31:46] Speaker 1: if a planned sacrifice would satisfy the ancestor and bring rain.
[31:50] Speaker 1: And so in this way, Oracle bone divination was a
[31:54] Speaker 1: tool for diagnosing the will of the ancestors and the gods.
[31:58] Speaker 1: It was a two-way communication device, I suppose. The king
[32:02] Speaker 1: offered sacrifices and inquired for guidance. The cracks in their
[32:05] Speaker 1: interpretations were the ancestors' replies. So what about the king's role? Well,
[32:13] Speaker 1: the oracle bone showed the king's duality in his identity
[32:17] Speaker 1: as both political head of the state and the high
[32:19] Speaker 1: priest of the ancestral cult. In earlier periods of Shang,
[32:24] Speaker 1: it seems the king often relied on specialist diviners to
[32:28] Speaker 1: perform the crack-making and perhaps pronounce interpretations. The inscriptions name
[32:36] Speaker 1: various diviners, probably court shamans or trusted officials, who conducted
[32:42] Speaker 1: the rituals on the king's behalf. However, as we get
[32:47] Speaker 1: into later Shang period, especially by the reign of the
[32:51] Speaker 1: last few kings, the inscriptions increasingly show the king himself
[32:56] Speaker 1: taking charge of the divination head-on. It's notable that by
[33:01] Speaker 1: the last Shang kings, the ruler had taken over the
[33:05] Speaker 1: role of diviner personally, and this suggests that by performing divinations,
[33:11] Speaker 1: the king expressed his kingship in the most blatant of ways.
[33:17] Speaker 1: The Shang king was literally the chief fortune-teller of the realm,
[33:21] Speaker 1: His legitimacy and decision-making were tied to his exclusive ability
[33:25] Speaker 1: to consult the ancestral spirits. Oracle bone divination was a
[33:32] Speaker 1: routine part of governance. We might say it was policy
[33:37] Speaker 1: by Oracle. Before undertaking campaigns, the king sought ancestral sanction.
[33:43] Speaker 1: Before building a new settlement or going out hunting, they
[33:46] Speaker 1: had to consult. It's as if no significant action was
[33:50] Speaker 1: taken without first checking in with the spirits to see
[33:54] Speaker 1: if it was okay. This had a unifying effect on
[33:58] Speaker 1: Shang society. Religion and statecraft were inseparable. The elite class,
[34:04] Speaker 1: the nobility and military leaders were invested in these rituals
[34:08] Speaker 1: as well, because they often participated in the sacrifices or
[34:13] Speaker 1: led the actions that were divined upon. the common people's
[34:17] Speaker 1: lives were indirectly affected too. For instance, if the oracle
[34:22] Speaker 1: predicted a poor harvest, the king might order more prayers
[34:26] Speaker 1: or grain storage. If the oracle forbade war at a
[34:30] Speaker 1: certain time, truth would not be mobilized until the spirits
[34:33] Speaker 1: allowed it. Thus, while commoners didn't get to ask questions
[34:37] Speaker 1: on oracle bones themselves, the outcomes of those royal divinations
[34:41] Speaker 1: trickled down to affect agricultural schedules, taxation, warfare and more.
[34:48] Speaker 1: The Shang government essentially ran on a system of supernatural consultation.
[34:53] Speaker 1: A bit like constantly calling up the psychic down the
[34:57] Speaker 1: road to see what you should do with your career.
[35:01] Speaker 1: But not everyone in Shang society could access this form
[35:04] Speaker 1: of divination. It wasn't like you could just go down
[35:07] Speaker 1: and buy a bunch of bones for the next week.
[35:11] Speaker 1: The oracle bone inscriptions overwhelmingly represent royalty. or at least
[35:16] Speaker 1: princely activities. There's scant evidence that ordinary folk's questions were recorded,
[35:23] Speaker 1: but it makes you wonder what kind of questions they'd have.
[35:27] Speaker 1: Probably pretty much the same as the royals, sparing the
[35:30] Speaker 1: war and things like that. You had hunting and agricultural concerns.
[35:38] Speaker 1: Perhaps common people practiced their own forms of folk divination, though.
[35:43] Speaker 1: like interpreting natural omens or casting lots with simpler means.
[35:48] Speaker 1: But the large-scale pyro-osteomancy with inscribed records was a royal monopoly.
[35:57] Speaker 1: Either way, divination did not happen in isolation. It was
[36:01] Speaker 1: part of a larger complex of Shang ritual practice. Before
[36:05] Speaker 1: cracking the bone, they might have offered a libation or
[36:08] Speaker 1: killed a sacrificial animal to invoke the ancestor's presence. After
[36:13] Speaker 1: getting an answer, they often followed up with the appropriate
[36:16] Speaker 1: sacrifice or action that was indicated. The oracle bone inscriptions
[36:21] Speaker 1: sometimes directly record what sacrifice was made or planned. For instance,
[36:25] Speaker 1: offering cattle, sheep, or even humans. After all, it was
[36:31] Speaker 1: a style at the time. Bronze Age, you know what
[36:34] Speaker 1: it's like. The Shang were willing to make lavish and
[36:38] Speaker 1: at times gruesome offerings to appease the spirits. and that
[36:43] Speaker 1: included human sacrifice, usually of war captives or slaves, which
[36:48] Speaker 1: the bones and archaeological evidence both attest to. If an
[36:53] Speaker 1: oracle bone divination revealed that an ancestor was angry, the
[36:57] Speaker 1: logical next step was to arrange a big sacrificial ritual
[37:01] Speaker 1: to nullify that spirit. Thus oracle bones were often step
[37:07] Speaker 1: one in a chain of events, essentially providing the justification
[37:11] Speaker 1: for ritual expenditure. Because oracle bone inscriptions record the activities
[37:18] Speaker 1: of the king, they inadvertently become a chronicle of the
[37:21] Speaker 1: Shang state. For example, if we read the sequence of
[37:24] Speaker 1: bones and see multiple entries about campaign against the Guifeng tribe,
[37:29] Speaker 1: one of the neighboring peoples, by the way, and inquiries like,
[37:32] Speaker 1: will we capture prisoners, followed by a verification, captured 30 prisoners,
[37:38] Speaker 1: we learn that the Shang were at war with that
[37:40] Speaker 1: tribe in that period. In fact, much of what we
[37:44] Speaker 1: know about Shang military history diplomatic contacts and internal events,
[37:50] Speaker 1: come from carefully piecing together the oracle bone records. They
[37:54] Speaker 1: mention harvest failures, which correlate with the evidence of climate events.
[37:59] Speaker 1: They mention solar eclipses and dates, which can be matched
[38:02] Speaker 1: with astronomical calculations to pin down chronology. They list a
[38:07] Speaker 1: sequence of sacrifices over years, which hint at agricultural and
[38:11] Speaker 1: festival calendars of the Shang. In a sense, They're a
[38:16] Speaker 1: state record, not intentionally for posterity, but rather effectively so.
[38:22] Speaker 1: Compelling illustration of the role of oracle bones in society
[38:27] Speaker 1: is how the Shang kings use them to legitimize their rule.
[38:31] Speaker 1: If a king can say, my ancestors, who founded our dynasty,
[38:36] Speaker 1: have ordained this action, it reinforces his divine right. Later
[38:42] Speaker 1: Chinese dynasties like the Zhou famously articulated the Mandate of
[38:46] Speaker 1: Heaven theory to justify their authority. But the Shang method
[38:51] Speaker 1: was more familial. They leaned on the authority of the
[38:54] Speaker 1: royal lineage's spirits. The fact that kings are shown almost
[38:59] Speaker 1: debating with their ancestors, asking repeatedly until an auspicious answer
[39:03] Speaker 1: was obtained in some cases, shows that governance was a
[39:06] Speaker 1: negotiation between human intention and divine approval. But there's also
[39:14] Speaker 1: a critical view. What is missing? Your oracle bones are invaluable.
[39:21] Speaker 1: We should critically note what they do not tell us
[39:24] Speaker 1: as much as what they do. They don't directly speak
[39:27] Speaker 1: of the lives of the commoners. peasants, artists, and of
[39:32] Speaker 1: course that was 99.9% of the people. So can we
[39:37] Speaker 1: really paint a picture of Shang society just from the bones?
[39:43] Speaker 1: We can infer things. If a harvest is divine, that
[39:46] Speaker 1: implies the toil of farmers and concern for But the
[39:51] Speaker 1: bones won't mention a farmer by name or the price
[39:53] Speaker 1: of grain. All those people out there in the fields,
[39:58] Speaker 1: history's forgotten them. They're also silent on any secular thoughts
[40:03] Speaker 1: of the king. We hear the king's asking the ancestors,
[40:08] Speaker 1: but we don't hear the king's private reasoning or any
[40:10] Speaker 1: internal court debates. Everything is couched as a divine query.
[40:14] Speaker 1: And this was likely a deliberate worldview, To the Shang,
[40:19] Speaker 1: framing divisions, decisions rather, as divinations, was the proper way
[40:24] Speaker 1: to think about them. Moreover, because the language is so formulaic,
[40:29] Speaker 1: we have not been able to read them as full narratives.
[40:33] Speaker 1: They're entries in a logbook, not fleshed-out stories or texts
[40:39] Speaker 1: with introspection. Nonetheless, as a reflection of Shang society's priorities,
[40:46] Speaker 1: the bones are unparalleled. They confirm that Shang politics and
[40:51] Speaker 1: religion were really one and the same, and the belief
[40:54] Speaker 1: in the ancestral spirit's guidance permeated every level of decision-making.
[41:00] Speaker 1: The fact that thousands of these bones were used to
[41:03] Speaker 1: answer only the king's questions illustrates the enormous obsessive focus
[41:08] Speaker 1: on getting things right with the divine was there. It
[41:12] Speaker 1: speaks to a worldview where the supernatural was intimately involved
[41:16] Speaker 1: with the natural world, a sick cow, a successful hunt,
[41:20] Speaker 1: a spell of rain, everything attributed to the pleasure or
[41:24] Speaker 1: displeasure of higher powers. Now, we already know that it
[41:30] Speaker 1: was a distinctive practice of its time, but it wasn't
[41:34] Speaker 1: the only one in terms of divination. Early Chinese civilizations
[41:39] Speaker 1: saw several forms of it, and understanding those will certainly
[41:43] Speaker 1: help us put the oracle bones into context. So how
[41:48] Speaker 1: did Shang divination compare to what became before and after? Well,
[41:53] Speaker 1: we have to go into pre-Shang and Neolithic divination to
[41:58] Speaker 1: have a look at that. Long before the Shang, early
[42:02] Speaker 1: inhabitants of China were already attempting to peek into the
[42:05] Speaker 1: future or seek guidance from unseen forces. Archaeological evidence suggests
[42:11] Speaker 1: that as far back as the Neolithic period, people practiced osteomancy.
[42:16] Speaker 1: that is, divining with bones, as some Neolithic sites archaeologists
[42:21] Speaker 1: have found animal bones with burn marks or charring in patterns,
[42:26] Speaker 1: hinting that they were heated in a fire as part
[42:28] Speaker 1: of rituals. These early bones are not inscribed, writing hadn't
[42:34] Speaker 1: been developed yet, but their presence indicates that the idea
[42:38] Speaker 1: of communicating with the divine through burning bones had deep roots.
[42:45] Speaker 1: By the time of Xia culture, which precedes the Shang,
[42:50] Speaker 1: looking roughly 2000 to 1600 BC, though still semi-legendary due
[42:55] Speaker 1: to lack of written records, it's likely that some form
[42:58] Speaker 1: of scapulomancy was already in use. In fact, a few
[43:03] Speaker 1: inscribed animal bones have been found at early Bronze Age sites,
[43:07] Speaker 1: like early Gang and Zhengzhou, associated with either late Xia
[43:12] Speaker 1: or early Shang periods. which might be precursors to the
[43:15] Speaker 1: classic Anyang oracle bones. This suggests that Shang divination systems
[43:21] Speaker 1: evolved from earlier traditions and became increasingly formalized and recorded
[43:27] Speaker 1: as well as writing matured. The Shang were conquered by
[43:32] Speaker 1: the Zhou dynasty around 1046. The Zhou, inheriting many Shang
[43:37] Speaker 1: cultural elements, continued to practice divination, but also introduced new methods.
[43:44] Speaker 1: oracle bone divination did not disappear overnight. Early Joe kings
[43:48] Speaker 1: in the Western Joe period, 1046-771, still used turtle shells
[43:55] Speaker 1: and bones occasionally for oracles, as evidenced by a small
[43:59] Speaker 1: number of oracle bones found in Joe contexts. However, there
[44:04] Speaker 1: was a marked shift. The Joe increasingly favoured milfoil divination,
[44:10] Speaker 1: which eventually was codified in the text known as the
[44:13] Speaker 1: I Ching or the Book of Changes. Milfoil divination involves
[44:18] Speaker 1: casting or manipulating yarrow stalks. To generate hexagrams, this is
[44:25] Speaker 1: six-line symbols, which are then interpreted according to set patterns.
[44:31] Speaker 1: This method is quite different from cracking bones, as it's
[44:35] Speaker 1: more abstract and based on numerical chances. According to historical tradition,
[44:41] Speaker 1: The earliest versions of the Yijing were compiled in the
[44:44] Speaker 1: early Zhou era, possibly with contributions by King Wen of
[44:48] Speaker 1: Zhou and his son, the Duke of Zhou, although the
[44:52] Speaker 1: text evolved over time. But why the shift? Well, some
[44:57] Speaker 1: scholars suggest that the Zhou, to distance themselves from the
[45:01] Speaker 1: Shang they had overthrown, placed a bit less emphasis directly
[45:05] Speaker 1: on consulting the Shang ancestral spirits, which, of course, would
[45:09] Speaker 1: not be theirs to consult. and they moved towards a
[45:13] Speaker 1: more broad cosmological principle, like heaven's mandate. They formalized divination
[45:21] Speaker 1: into a philosophical system, the I Ching, that could be
[45:25] Speaker 1: easily used by nobles more widely, not just by the
[45:29] Speaker 1: king and his lineage ancestors. And so, by the Eastern
[45:34] Speaker 1: Zhou period, the spring and autumn and warring states, 8th
[45:39] Speaker 1: to 3rd century B.C., The use of oracle bones had
[45:43] Speaker 1: greatly diminished. Divination was then often done by cleromancy, that
[45:49] Speaker 1: is casting lots such as bones or sticks and interpreting
[45:52] Speaker 1: the outcome, and by astrology too, reading omens, things like that.
[45:59] Speaker 1: Tortoise-shell divination, though, did continue as a respected technique. In fact,
[46:04] Speaker 1: texts like the Joe Lee, Rites of Joe, mention officials
[46:08] Speaker 1: who interpret cracks indicating that the cracking of turtle shells
[46:12] Speaker 1: was still part of state rituals, albeit perhaps in a
[46:16] Speaker 1: more limited way. However, few inscribed shells survive from Zhou times,
[46:23] Speaker 1: likely because the Zhou mostly wrote divinations in registers or
[46:28] Speaker 1: on the shells in ink that has not survived. The
[46:31] Speaker 1: practice of carving the question into the bone after divination,
[46:36] Speaker 1: a hallmark of the Shang, was largely abandoned. Writing was
[46:40] Speaker 1: often done on perishable bamboo or wood by then, which
[46:44] Speaker 1: is obviously quite a shame. Now, let's compare some techniques.
[46:50] Speaker 1: We have pyromancy and claromancy. Now, the Shang method, pyro-osteomancy,
[46:58] Speaker 1: pyro being fire, osteo being bones, involves general pyromancy using
[47:03] Speaker 1: fire to produce signs or cracks, whereas I Ching method,
[47:08] Speaker 1: is more of a clerimantic one, casting lots in this case,
[47:13] Speaker 1: generating a hexagram via yarrow stalks or coins in later practice,
[47:17] Speaker 1: and then reading that pattern against a set of interpretations.
[47:23] Speaker 1: Both are randomizing processes, given spiritual weight, but the experience
[47:28] Speaker 1: is different. A Shang king directly experienced the drama of
[47:32] Speaker 1: fire and a cracking bone, a visceral sign, which he
[47:36] Speaker 1: and the diviner interpreted on the spot. A Joe aristocrat
[47:41] Speaker 1: handling yarrow stalks engaged in a more cerebral ritual, consulting
[47:47] Speaker 1: a manual for the meaning of the resultant symbol, a
[47:51] Speaker 1: step toward a more literate and text-oriented divination. This shift
[47:58] Speaker 1: could also be seen as part of the broader intellectual
[48:01] Speaker 1: changes of the early Joe, which also antiquated the articulated
[48:06] Speaker 1: rather the Mandate of Heaven concept, and that is that
[48:09] Speaker 1: Heaven grants the right to rule based on virtue, which
[48:13] Speaker 1: was used to justify the Zhou replacing the Shang. Very convenient.
[48:19] Speaker 1: So under the Mandate of Heaven idea, signs of displeasure
[48:22] Speaker 1: from Heaven, like natural disasters, were more generalized omens, not
[48:28] Speaker 1: necessarily tied to a specific ancestor's whim. Thus divination took
[48:32] Speaker 1: on a different tone. less personal in terms of ancestor spirits,
[48:37] Speaker 1: but more cosmic in interpretation. It is important to note
[48:43] Speaker 1: that while methods changed, the underlying desire to seek guidance
[48:46] Speaker 1: from a higher order remained constant, and still does, to
[48:51] Speaker 1: be honest. As atheistic as modern China is, well, these people,
[48:56] Speaker 1: you can still find them on the streets every now
[48:58] Speaker 1: and then, working with the I Ching. No one's doing
[49:02] Speaker 1: the oracle bone stuff anymore, of course, but you can
[49:05] Speaker 1: still find plenty of fortune tellers. Now, later Chinese history
[49:10] Speaker 1: is replete with divination practices, astrology, feng shui, lot-drawing spirit mediums,
[49:18] Speaker 1: of course the I Ching too. The I Ching itself, interestingly,
[49:22] Speaker 1: contains traces of older methods. Some of its hexagram explanations
[49:27] Speaker 1: mention a crack-making method, or outcomes that sound like oracle consultations.
[49:34] Speaker 1: And this suggests the Book of Changes incorporated older divination
[49:39] Speaker 1: experiences into its interpretations. And indeed the legend in China
[49:45] Speaker 1: is that divination by turtle shell and divination by milfoil
[49:49] Speaker 1: were two parallel methods that coexisted. The I Ching was
[49:53] Speaker 1: originally a manual for the milfoil method, while oracle bones
[49:58] Speaker 1: were the medium for the other. But Shang China was
[50:03] Speaker 1: not the only culture practicing scalpelomancy In other parts of
[50:07] Speaker 1: the world, people independently discovered that heating bones produces cracks
[50:11] Speaker 1: that can be read for omens. However, what is unique
[50:16] Speaker 1: about the Shang oracle bone practice is the combination of
[50:20] Speaker 1: pyromancy with a writing system. Many cultures would interpret the
[50:24] Speaker 1: cracks spontaneously or orally, but the Shang took the extra
[50:29] Speaker 1: step of writing down the questions, and sometimes the answers.
[50:34] Speaker 1: A fusion of writing with divination, that we're extremely lucky
[50:40] Speaker 1: to have, turning simple fortune-telling into a lasting historical record.
[50:49] Speaker 1: And so we can say that the discovery of oracle
[50:52] Speaker 1: bones in 1899 and the early 20th century didn't just
[50:57] Speaker 1: illuminate the Shang dynasty, but it had a profound impact
[51:01] Speaker 1: on Chinese scholarship. You see, For a long time, Chinese
[51:07] Speaker 1: historians had relied on much later texts, like that of
[51:10] Speaker 1: Sima Qian, the Records of the Grand Historian, compiled around
[51:14] Speaker 1: 100 BC, or various Zhou and Han texts for early history.
[51:19] Speaker 1: But the oracle bones provided contemporary evidence from late 2nd
[51:23] Speaker 1: millennium BCE, pushing the horizon of recorded history back by
[51:28] Speaker 1: nearly a thousand years. They helped confirm the sequence of
[51:34] Speaker 1: Shang kings, and events hinted to in legend. In modern China,
[51:40] Speaker 1: oracle bone studies became an entire field of research. Scholars
[51:49] Speaker 1: painstakingly matched fragments, identified characters, and even compiled dictionaries of
[51:55] Speaker 1: oracle bone scripts. This endeavor continues today, as new finds emerge,
[52:02] Speaker 1: and as imaging technology sometimes even allows us to read
[52:06] Speaker 1: previously ineligible marks. It's also pretty interesting to see how
[52:11] Speaker 1: the role of oracle bones was viewed by later Chinese traditions.
[52:16] Speaker 1: After the Shang, the Zhou, and subsequent dynasties perhaps looked
[52:20] Speaker 1: back at the Shang divination as something both ancestral and
[52:24] Speaker 1: even a little bit alien. The Zhou, for instance, criticized
[52:29] Speaker 1: the last Shang king for male moral failings. but they
[52:32] Speaker 1: didn't necessarily criticize the practice of divination itself, they just
[52:37] Speaker 1: co-opted it in a new form. And during the Confucian era,
[52:42] Speaker 1: there was some ambivalence. Confucius himself edited the Book of
[52:47] Speaker 1: Changes I Ching, according to tradition at least, and valued
[52:51] Speaker 1: the moral lessons drawn from divination outcomes. But mainstream Confucianism
[52:57] Speaker 1: later focused more on ethics than superstition. Meanwhile, popular religion
[53:03] Speaker 1: continued various divination rites. In a sense, the oracle bones
[53:07] Speaker 1: mark the beginning of a continuous story of Chinese divinatory
[53:11] Speaker 1: and written tradition. From the cracks on the bones, to
[53:15] Speaker 1: the lines in the I Ching, to the horoscope of
[53:18] Speaker 1: a Song dynasty emperor, the thread is an enduring human
[53:22] Speaker 1: quest to make sense of the future and the unknown.
[53:28] Speaker 1: So in conclusion, young oracle bone divination was a product
[53:32] Speaker 1: of its time, but also a progenitor of later divinatory practices.
[53:39] Speaker 1: It stands at a crossroads, looking back to prehistoric shamanistic
[53:43] Speaker 1: practices of heating bones, and looking forward to more systematized
[53:48] Speaker 1: divination texts of the classical era. Its core purpose, to
[53:53] Speaker 1: seek certainty in uncertain times, is universal, and indeed, quite
[54:00] Speaker 1: relatable even today. While the mediums change, few today would
[54:05] Speaker 1: crack a bone to decide on a business deal, I suppose,
[54:09] Speaker 1: but they still might consult a horoscope, maybe. That, yeah,
[54:14] Speaker 1: that happens quite a lot. The whole impulse remains. The
[54:20] Speaker 1: oracle bones, thus, connect us not only to early Chinese culture,
[54:26] Speaker 1: but to this fundamental human behaviour. Even after thousands of years,
[54:32] Speaker 1: we haven't shaken it off. We're always trying to glean
[54:35] Speaker 1: wisdom from the patterns we observe around us. All right. Well,
[54:43] Speaker 1: that's it for today. All about the Chinese oracle bones.
[54:47] Speaker 1: Wasn't it good fun? Did you have fun? I had fun.
[54:52] Speaker 1: So I'm going to thank the top dear patrons. Dark, Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Ember, Susan, Cameron, Legitimus, Kerry, Charlene, Katiana, Lynn, Therese, Nicholas, Ulf, Edneer, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Aaron, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[55:14] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Stark Factory, Shell, Wendy, Josie, Ryan, Sarah, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH,
[55:26] Speaker 1: Crystal and Dalvery, Thank you very much. And I've appreciated
[55:32] Speaker 1: you being with me here this evening. Perhaps you'd like
[55:36] Speaker 1: to come back and listen to a little more. I
[55:40] Speaker 1: hope you found it satisfactory. You know where I'll be.
[55:44] Speaker 1: Same time, same place. I'm always here. I wish you
[55:48] Speaker 1: all good night. Lots of love to you all out there,
[55:52] Speaker 1: all around the world. And that's it from me. Goodnight, everyone.

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