Jiaguwen甲骨文
Jiaguwen is the ancient character that is carved on tortoise shells or animal bones.
The rulers of the Shang Dynasty were so superstitious that they would resort to divinity before going on a great activity. The predicted outcomes were carved on the tortoise shells and animal bones with the characters called jiaguwen. When the augural result came true, the very shell or bone would be saved as the official records. Therefore these collections became the earliest recorded historical materials in China.
甲骨文是刻在龟甲和兽骨上的古老文字。商代的统治者迷信鬼神，行事以前往往用龟甲兽骨占卜吉凶，之后把其相关的内容记录在龟甲兽骨上，其文字称甲骨文。经过占卜应验后，这些刻有卜辞的甲骨就称为一种官方档案被保存下来，因此这些藏品就成为中国有记录以来最早的史料。
Jiaguwen was not recognized when it was first found. The tortoise shells and animal bones carved with jiaguwen were considered to be dragon bones, and were regarded as medicines to cure sickness. This happened until 1899, when a businessman named Wang Yirong realized that these may be a sort of ancient characters. It drew archaeologists and linguists’ attention, so they began to study on them.
甲骨文一开始并没有被认识，刻有文字的甲骨人们一直认为是龙骨，用来当作药材治病，一直到1899年，一位叫王懿荣的商人意识到这可能是一种古代的文字，从此引起了考古学家和语言学家的注意，并开始了研究。
So far more than 150,000 pieces of tortoise shells and animal bones have been excavated; about 4,500 different characters have been discovered and more than 1000 of them recognized which show that a well-developed script with a complete system of written signs had already formed in that early age.
目前出土的甲骨文数量在150000片以上，发现的单字大约有4500个，已识的字公认有1000多个，这表明在那个时期就已经形成了相当成熟的文字。
As the earliest and most precious culture relic, jiaguwen recorded the information of 3 000 years ago about Chinese social politics, economics, culture and so on. Jiaguwen has been the most important direct historical materials for us to study on Chinese ancient history, especially the Shang
Dynasty history, and has become the worldwide knowledge.
甲骨文记录了3000多年前中国社会政治、经济、文化等各方面的资料，是现存最早最珍贵的历史文物。甲骨文一直是研究中国古代历史特别是商代历史的最重要的直接史料，今天研究甲骨文已经成为一门世界性的学问。
