Of course, we cannot speak of a real literature of the Shang period, a time when just a kind of script was invented. The oldest documents of the Chinese script date from the reign of King Wu Ding (Wuding) 武丁 (around 1150 BC) and are archival materials incised on oracle bones stored in the royal archives. Knowing the future is essential for every human being, and every culture developed her special techniques to know more about events in the future. In China, the Shang kings in Yin developed a method to divine that is found only in China: scapulimany or plastromancy. Using the scapulae (shoulder-blades) of different cattle or the plastron (breastshield) of turtles, diviners tried to tell the future by creating cracks on the bones. Inserting a hot bronze stick into a hole drilled into the surface of the bones, the diviners were able to tell the future by interpreting the emerged cracks. The Shang diviners told the future of sacrifices, military campaigns, tribute payments, hunting expeditions, settlement building, weather, sickness, agriculture and childbirth, that is almost every aspect of the daily routine. Pyromancy or bone divination is known in many other cultures, but especially among nomad steppe cultures. The most interesting thing for us today is that they did not only create cracks, but it is the fact that the scribes (li 吏, shi 史) of the king wrote down the result of the divination on the bones and sometimes compared it with the real event later. Hundreds of these oracles bones were stored in the king's archives, and these oracle bone inscriptions (jiaguwen 甲骨文) are the first testimonies of Chinese history and writing. The first king whose name appears in the inscriptions is that of Wu Ding (Wuding) 武丁 who lived around 1200 BC. Now we know that all stories written down in the traditional histories are not only phantasy, but are in crude pattern an account of crucial events during the Shang period. Of the many states of the 11th century Zhou Dynasty 周 historians later chose only one single city state to reflect the success of their conquest of the Central Plain - Yin. Accounts, reports and history of all other cities were ignored, lost and vanished in the dark of prehistory. This gives the impression that before the founding of the Zhou Dynasty ancient China was ruled by the single territorial state of Shang (Yin). The oracle bone inscriptions of Yin make evident that at least the Shang rulers as listed in the later historiographies really existed. They give us also a picture of the geography and political landscape of the 11th and 10th century BCE. And we can learn much about Shang religion and philosophy. The oracle bone inscriptions are a further proof of the script- and document-oriented spirit of the Chinese people. Unlike the many documents written on bamboo strips that definitely did exist before the oldest oracle bones but that have decayed since long, the bones were preserved and can give us a lively insight into the daily life of the Shang upper class and its political and leisure time activities. There must have been a huge office with hundreds of employees to administrate the preparing, making, and storing the thousands of diviniation documents. During the later part of Shang Dynasty, the king took over the role of the diviner which has been shared by different diviners during early Shang. Only the last few rulers of Yin did not personally make divinations. Until then, every diviner had a special topic or subject he was professional, e.g. one diviner for warfare, one for ancestral rites, one for household affairs, and so on. It was usual to make divinations for a ten-day week (xun 旬, see Chinese calendar) and during special days of this week. The script on the oracle bones came up suddenly, and we have only very few traces of an earlier proto-script, like some readable characters on pottery discovered in the Erlitou 二里頭 site. An overview of the oracle bone inscriptions results in a total number of about 1200 characters. This is the rubbing of an oxen scapula that served as an oracle bone for divining about when to going to hunt. Before the divination process, the bone (scapula) or turtle shell (plastron) was cleaned and polished. Oval and round hollows (aoxue 凹穴; the number is depending on the thickness of the material) were chiseled or drilled in paralled rows on the back side of the bone. The diviner placed a very hot round item (more details are unknown; the divination method is also called pyromancy "divination by fire") in the hollows and thus producing cracks (bu 卜) on the polished front side of the bone. The first task of the diviner after the divination had taken place was to incise the sequential number of the burning spots (crack numbers, xushu 序數) of the whole divination set (chengtao 成套), in turtle shells normally alternating between two parallel rows on the surface, in other, lengthy bones from top to bottom. The whole inscription of a divination (buci 卜辭, zhaoyu 兆語) consists (ideally) of several parts: Preface (xuci 序辭), indicating the date and the diviner (like: "crack-making on day XY, NN divined") Charge (mingci 命辭), indicating the topic or question of the divination, often in positive and negative pairs (duizhen 對貞, like "will there be rain?/will there not perhaps be rain?") Prognostication (zhanci 占辭), an interpretation of the resulting cracks, often made by the king Verification (yanci 驗辭), record of actual events verifying the divination The characters of the text, sometimes also the cracks resulting from the heat application, were filled with cinnabar or ash to make them readable. Some of the characters have no modern counterpart like the animals, in the transliteration simply called "deer". Making the burning cracks into the bone was the task of an oracle specialist, the diviner of this example is called Gu 殼 (also read Que). After creating the cracks, the king himself as a diviner reads the cracks and interprets them. Finally, a scribe wrote down the result of divining and the real outcome of the events. Reading this bone, we are witnesses of an accident during the hunt. Row seven shows that predicted bad luck actually happened when the king cut his finger or so. The words in the square brackets [] are added, the characters in the round brackets () are modern types or modern writing variants. 1 日戊子，子■囚一月 2 〔王〕■曰往乃■（=茲）ㄓ（=有）■六己卯■子寅入 3 癸未卜■（=■）貞旬亡■（=禍），■（=宜）■（=羌）十 4 癸子卜■（=■）貞旬亡■（=禍），王■曰乃■（=茲）亦 5 ㄓ（=有）■若偁。甲午王往逐■（=麑） 6 〔小〕臣■（=協）車馬硪御車子央亦■。 7 癸酉卜■（=■）貞旬亡■（=禍）王二曰（=日）■ 8 王■曰■ㄓ（=有）■ㄓ（=有）■五日 9 丁丑王賓中丁■（=厥）■在 10 XX（=庭）二月 ■ 1 On the day wuzi, ZiNN died, the first month. 2 [The king] read the oracle, saying: Going on the sixth day would be disadvantageous. Day jimao going out to hunt deer, day ziyin coming back. 3 On the day guiwei, Gu made an oracle: The end of the ten-day week will be unlucky, better go to Qiong on the tenth day. 4 On the day guizi, Gu made an oracle: The end of the ten-day week will be unlucky, the king read the oracle, saying: it is even 5 disadvantageous to carry out an oracle. On the day jiawu, the king went to pursue deer. 6 Chariot and horses of he small officer Xie collided with the king's chariot, the driver named Yang fell from the chariot. 7 Crack-making on the day guiyou, Que divined: The end of the ten-day week will be unlucky. Two days later, the king was injured. 8 He read the oracle: Whoo! Disadvantage and awakening on the fifth day of the week. 9 On the day dingchou, the king hosted his ancestor Zhongding, and Qi stayed at 10 the palace for two months.

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