Prior to this most characters stood alone, or at most in groups of two or three, so that neither side in the debate over whether these are simply marks or actually written symbols for specific words was fully persuasive. In fact, the question of the origin of Chinese characters has long been fought out on the battle lines between these two positions.
在此之前，大多數器物的刻文多半為單個或三兩陳列，不大能說明這些標記到底是「記號」，還是「文字」，有關中國文字的起源問題，經常在這兩者之間爭論。