What it is: Tortoise shells or the shoulder blades of oxen that were inscribed with ancient Chinese characters Where it is from: China When it was made: 3,250 years ago Related: The 3,300-year-old ...

Oracle bones like this one are about 3500 years old. They proved the existence of the Shang dynasty. Most of the bones were discovered in the Shang city of Yinxu, near modern-day Anyang.

Narrator: One of the most exciting objects or artefacts we have from the Shang Dynasty are oracle bones. They are animal bones covered in ancient writing and were used to try to predict the future.

The study of these "oracle bones", as they came to be called, has thrown much light on the shadowy Shang dynasty, about which little was known apart from records written long after its demise.

Discovered in 1899, inscribed oracle bones were first bought by antique dealers from Anyang and sold to Tianjin and Beijing. There, they were accidentally discovered and collected by late Qing ...

[Photo by Wang Ru/chinadaily.com.cn] Anyang in Henan province is actively building jiaguwen, or oracle bone inscriptions ... of the late period of the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century ...