What did early Chinese writing look like?

The earliest known Chinese writing is known as oracle bone script. It was developed by the Shang dynasty in the 13th century BC. Writing was used for communication, record-keeping, and divination. Oracle bone script is a collection of symbols that were carved onto animal bones or tortoise shells. The characters were primarily pictographs, where a single character represents a word. However, there were also ideograms, which represent an idea or concept, and phonetic symbols, which represented a sound. These symbols evolved gradually into the modern Chinese characters used today.