Areas using only Chinese characters in green; in conjunction with other scripts, dark green; maximum extent of historic usage, light green. (does not include other territories annexed by Japan in WW2)

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone script (literally "shell-bone-script"). The oracle bone script is a well-developed writing system, attested from the late Shang Dynasty (1200-1050 B.C.) from Anyang , and from Zhengzhou , dated 1600 BC.

In addition, there are very few logographs found on pottery shards and cast in bronzes, known as the Bronze script, which is very similar to but more complex and pictorial than the Oracle Bone Script. Only about 1,400 of the 2,500 known Oracle Bone logographs can be identified with later Chinese characters and therefore easily read. However, it should be noted that these 1,400 logographs include most of the commonly used ones.

According to legend, though, Chinese characters were invented earlier by Cangjie (c. 2650 BC), a bureaucrat under the legendary emperor, Huangdi. The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu (today Shanxi ) when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zi — Chinese characters. It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of civilization, for good and for bad.

Modern archaeological evidence, however, has suggested an earlier Neolithic root of Chinese characters. The earliest evidence for what might be writing comes from Jiahu , a Neolithic site in the basin of the Yellow River in Henan province, dated to c. 6500 BC. It has yielded turtle carapaces that were pitted and inscribed with symbols. Later excavations in eastern China's Anhui province and the Dadiwan culture sites in the eastern part of northwestern China's Gansu province uncovered pottery shards, dated to c. 5000 BC, inscribed with symbols. It is unknown whether these symbols formed part of an organized system of writing, but many of them bear resemblance to what are accepted as early Chinese characters, and it is speculated that they may be ancestors to the latter.

Inscription-bearing artifacts from the Dawenkou culture culture site in Juxian County , Shandong , dating to c. 2800 BC, have also been found . The Chengziyaisite in Longshan township, Shandong has produced fragments of inscribed bones used to divine the future, dating to 2500 - 1900 BC, and symbols on pottery vessels from Dinggong are thought by some scholars to be an early form of writing. Symbols of a similar nature have also been found on pottery shards from the Liangzhu culture of the lower Yangtze valley.

Although the earliest forms of primitive Chinese writing are no more than individual symbols and therefore cannot be considered a true written script, the inscriptions found on bones (dated to 2500 - 1900 BC) used for the purposes of divination from the late Neolithic Longshan Culture (c. 3200 - 1900 BC) are thought by some to be a proto-written script, similar to the earliest forms of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt . It is possible that these inscriptions are ancestral to the later Oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty and therefore the modern Chinese script, since late Neolithic culture found in Longshan is widely accepted by historians and archaeologists to be ancestral to the bronze age Erlitou culture and the later Shang and Zhou Dynasties.

The oldest Chinese inscriptions that are indisputably writing are the Oracle bone script , a well-developed writing system of the Shang Dynasty (or Yin Dynasty), attested from about 1600 BC (from Zhengzhou ) and 1300 BC (from Anyang ), along with a very few logographs found on pottery shards and cast in bronzes, known as the Bronze script , which is very similar to but more complex and pictorial than the Oracle Bone Script. Only about 1,400 of the 2,500 known Oracle Bone logographs can be identified with later Chinese characters and therefore easily read. However, it should be noted that these 1,400 logographs include most of the commonly used ones.