Replicas of eight Neolithic sinograms went on public display this month at the Hubei Three Gorges Migration Museum, where visitors could trace, copy and study each symbol inside a new glass case. “Visitors are encouraged to handle charcoal rubbings and examine enlarged images of the strokes,” said a museum staff member, according to a report by Global Times. The centerpiece—three nearly complete pottery supports bearing carved signs—comes from more than 1,000 supports unearthed at the Liulinxi site in Zigui County.
Archaeologists noted that the incisions include eight recognizable characters—among them zhu, wei and yao—and argued that their shapes could push the origin of Chinese writing to about 5,000 BCE, roughly two millennia earlier than the oracle-bone corpus of the Shang Dynasty.
The objects were excavated in 2021 from Liulinxi, a Neolithic settlement regarded as a major prehistoric community in Central China. The dig yielded tombs, ash pits, bonfire remnants, stone tools and an array of pottery. “The low river terrace and humid climate helped preserve the material exceptionally well,” said Zhou Hao of Zigui’s cultural heritage department, according to Global Times.
Rescue work catalogued 232 distinct incised symbols on ceramics, many appearing in clusters rather than in isolation. “These inscriptions can be considered the earliest known Chinese characters. More importantly, the Liulinxi symbols appear in groups rather than in isolation, making their interpretation more feasible,” said Feng Shi, the study’s lead author, according to Global Times. He added that several signs share structural features with the Shang oracle-bone script, suggesting a possible line of continuity.
Not all scholars agree. “The material is highly valuable for exploring the origins of writing, but scholars are still debating the defining characteristics and exact time period of the transition from pictorial signs to pictographic oracle bone script,” said Liu Zheng of the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics, according to Global Times.
Researchers have cited cinnabar-inked symbols from mid-Shang layers, early Xia-period marks at the Taosi site in Shanxi and motifs on pottery from the Hongshan Temple site in Henan as additional milestones, yet none matches Liulinxi’s combination of quantity, preservation and repeated groupings.
At the museum in Yichang, a display case now holds three of the clearest artifacts, and explanatory panels invite the public to weigh the evidence. “This demonstrates that 7,000 years ago, early inhabitants of the region already possessed a relatively sophisticated concept of civilization,” said a curator, according to Global Times. Hands-on stations let patrons practice rubbing techniques with charcoal and rice paper, echoing methods used by epigraphers in the field.
International peer review has yet to confirm the proposed timeline, and foreign scholars await full publication of the corpus and stratigraphic details. For now, the Liulinxi supports remain at the center of an ongoing debate about when Chinese writing first emerged.
Produced with the assistance of a news-analysis system.