Heinz-Murray 2E.book

242 Part IV: East Asian Civilization

A cultural unity among the Han Chinese is already apparent in Neolithic

archaeological sites in North China. As long ago as 1600 B.C.E. the Chinese

elite were asking questions of their ancestors by inscribing on oracle bones the

earliest versions of the script still in use today. These oracle bones were usually

the plastrons (or underbellies) of tortoises or the shoulder blades of the oxen

that they used to plow their fields. A ritual master would inscribe a question on

the bone and then apply heat until cracks ran across the inscribed surface. The

cracks were interpreted as a resolution to the question in a way that was

believed to represent the will of the ancestors or the gods. Writing and literacy

early on became to the Chinese the supreme marker of civilization. It was the

possession of civilization, in their view, that distinguished them from all other

known peoples.

The Zhou dynasty text, Liji (Li Chi, or Book of Rites), provides a kind of

ancient Chinese ethnographic classification of peoples in a system of “Five

Regions.” At the center was the “Middle Kingdom” (Zhongguo), that is, the

Map 7.1 China.

Tibet

Anyang

Taklamakan

Desert

Him

ala

yas

CHINA