The inscriptions on the artifacts which were recently unearthed in east China's Zhejiang Province have reportedly replaced oracle bone script to be the earliest record of ancient Chinese characters, Beijing Times reports.

The inscriptions on the artifacts which were recently unearthed in east China's Zhejiang Province have reportedly replaced oracle bone script to be the earliest record of ancient Chinese characters.[Photo/Chinanews.com]

Following initial on-the-spot research, some experts concluded that the characters incised on the historic relics unearthed in Pinghu, Zhejiang Province belong to the Liangzhu civilization of the Neolithic Age dating from some 5,000 years ago.

Up to now, the origin of the Chinese language was widely believed to date to the oracle bone scripts, with inscriptions on turtle shells dating back to the late Shang dynasty. If confirmed, the new discovery will push the origins of Chinese written language back 1,000 years.

Li Boqian, professor at the Institute of Archaeology and Museology of Peking University says that unlike other original texts which appear in isolation, these characters can be grouped into sentences.

"These symbols may have some language features, but it is too hasty to compare it with the systematic language on oracle bone script", Wang Jianjun, philology doctor at the Historical Institute of Zhengzhou University voice his different opinion on the discovery.

To become a language, certain symbols should be readable, shapeable and explainable, Wang said. From this point of views, the symbols and characters discovered in Pinghu historic relics can not constitute a writing system, Wang added.

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