By: Brandon Rios      4/23/09

People in China Began Writing about 1500BC, more than a thousand years later than people in West Asia or Egypt, but earlier than anyone in Europe, Africa, or Central America. The earliest writing that we know of from China was on animal bones. which are called "oracle bones" because they were used to tell the future. The writing on these oracle bones is the same writing that people use in modern China, just in an earlier version. The signs they used came from pictures, like earlier Egyptians hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform.

Teacher: Mrs.Badawi

People in early China also wrote on strips of bamboo wood. Later on, people also wrote on silk cloth. The earliest Chinese literature that we know of probably comes from the later part of the Western Chou Dynasty. about 800 BC (the same time as Hesiod in Greece) and was written on silk.

(Shang Dynasty) Around 2000 BC, the Chinese learned how to make bronze out of tin and copper, so we call this the Bronze Age. About the same time, they developed writing. Like Sumerian and Egyptian writing of this time, their writing is based on pictures that stand for ideas or sounds. (Han Dynasty) Kao Tsu (Liu Pang), when he established the Han Dynasty in 202 BC, didn't really change that much from the system that Ch'in had set up.  He still got the kings and their families to live at his capital city, and he still sent out governors and judges whom he could trust. But Kao Tsu didn't kill or exile the scholars anymore. Instead, Kao Tsu called for smart educated men to work for him, to be the governors and judges he needed, because he knew they would be good workers and make fair, wise, decisions (but still he would not let any women be judges, no matter how smart they were).