Writing system
Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best known examples are:The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.
History of writing
The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions on oracle bones from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1200–1050 BC). From the Shang Dynasty, most of this writing has survived on bones or bronze implements ("bronze script"). Markings on turtle shells, or "jiaguwen", have been carbon-dated to around 1500 BC. Historians have found that the type of medium chosen depended on the subject of the writing.