When we go to the museum， we can see strange characters（文字）. They are on turtle shells（殼） or animal bones（骨頭）. Today， lets explore（探索） the secrets（秘密） of these ancient（古老的） Chinese characters.

In the Shang Dynasty（商朝）， the kings liked to ask fortune tellers（占卜者） about things in their life. These things could be family matters， weather， buildings or even wars（戰(zhàn)爭）. The fortune tellers wrote down their answers on turtle shells or animal bones. So these words tell us a lot about the Shang Dynasty.

In 1899， a man named Wang Yirong became sick in Beijing. He bought a medicine called “dragon bones（龍骨）”. But it was actually made out of decayed（腐爛的） turtle shells. Wang Yirong was a clever man. He found some strange characters on the shells. These are what today we call Jiaguwen， oracle bone inscriptions.

Oracle bone inscriptions are more than 3，000 years old. Most of them are found in the Yin ruins（殷墟） in Anyang， Henan province. We have found about 5，000 characters， but we can only understand 1，700 of them.

Look at these characters！ They are the Chinese character “ma（馬）” in different forms（形態(tài)）.

The oracle bone inscription is the earliest one. It looks like a running horse. It has a long face and long legs. The second one is the bronze inscription（青銅銘文）. People carved（刻） it on bronze ware（青銅器）. It has a big eye instead of（代替） a face. The third one is a seal character（篆書）. It looks much closer to（更接近） the one we use today. In later times， the character “ma” becomes simpler（更簡單）. Now it only has three strokes（筆畫）， but we can still see the shape of a horse in it. Isnt that fun？ Lets learn to write oracle bone inscriptions.