Writing
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age 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.
Chinese calligraphy
Oracle bone script was one of the forms of Chinese character written on animals bones. Written on oracle bones – animal bones or turtle plastrons, it is the earliest known form of Chinese writing. The first appearance of what we recognize unequivocally to refer as “oracle bone inscriptions” comes in the form of inscribed ox scapula and turtle plastrons from sites near modern Anyang (安阳) on the northern border of Henan province. The vast majority were found at the Yinxu site (in modern Anyang, Henan Province). They record pyromantic divinations of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wu Ding, whose accession is dated by different scholars at 1250 BC or 1200 BC. Even though there is no proof that the Shang dynasty were solely responsible for the origin of writing in China, but neither is there evidence of recognizable Chinese writing from any earlier time or any other place. The late Shang oracle bone writings constitute the earliest significant corpus of Chinese writing and it is also the oldest known member and ancestor of the Chinese family of scripts, preceding the Chinese bronze inscriptions.