The Oracle is a "mature systematic script" that basically includes the Six Books of Calligraphy. According to the logic of word evolution, there must be a "pre-mature script" before the Oracle, and the whole should be a little behind the Oracle. The Xia Dynasty was a dynasty before the Shang Dynasty, which lasted for about 400 years, so the Xia Dynasty should use the "first mature script".
However, in recent years, some scholars believe that the Xia Dynasty script is not a "first-ripe script", but a Xia Seal, a mature script with a rigorous structure, and the Xia Yu Shu and the Yu Wang Monument are its representatives. It is said that the Shang Dynasty was a nomadic people, and at first did not use writing, but only after Pan Geng moved to Yin did it use the folk characters of the Xia Dynasty. The final conclusion is that the Xia Dynasty not only had writing, but also was more advanced than the Shang Dynasty oracle bones.
What is the truth? In fact, the oracle bones of The Yin Ruins and the pottery of the Erlitou site basically confirm that the Xia Dynasty already had writing, but the overall level was not as good as that of the Shang Dynasty.
In the last century, Oracle expert Dong Zuobin discovered the "Zhou Sacrifice System" of the Shang King, that is, di Xin and other Shang kings carried out five kinds of sacrifices to the first duke and the first king in an orderly and orderly manner, with a cycle of ten decades, thus forming the "Zhou Sacrifice Spectrum". In the first decade of the Zhou Dynasty, the Shang kings sacrificed the six ancestors before the Shang Tang, and the twenty-fifth to the tenth to the twenty-fifth king. There are six merchant ancestors recorded in the "History of Yin Benji", which are highly similar to the "Zhou Sacrifice Genealogy", but the names are slightly different, which may be caused by different ancient and modern writing methods.
In addition to the "Zhou Sacrifice Genealogy", there are also records of "Gao Zu 夒 (náo)" and "Gao Zu 夋 (帝俊)" in the oracle bones, "Gao Zu 夒" is "Gao Zu Yuan", and "夒" and "夋" are glyph distortion relationships. According to historical records, Emperor Jun, Di Shun, and Emperor Zhao may be the same person, the ancestor of the Shang Dynasty, followed by the Shang Qi, dating back to the early Xia Dynasty at the latest, or before the Xia Dynasty.
Through the records of the "Zhou Sacrifice Genealogy" and "Gao Zuyuan", in addition to confirming the credibility of the "Records of History", it is more important to see that the princely states of the Xia Dynasty, the Shang Kingdom, had written at the latest in the early Xia Dynasty, otherwise the names of these merchants could not be passed down. It is worth mentioning that after the middle of the Xia Dynasty, the names of Shang chiefs have been very standardized, using the "Japanese name system", that is, "a certain word + the Tiangan character on the day of birth in the ten days of dryness".
Normally speaking, the script used by the Shang clan should be consistent with the Xia clan as the co-lord of the world, just as the Zhou people's script was the same as the merchant script before the Battle of Makino, so it should be the Xia script passed to the merchants, and the Xia people's merchant script was not much different at that time. But there is also another possibility, that is, the Xia people have no writing, and the following princely states and shangguo have writing, but the pottery of the Erlitou site can basically negate this.
In 1965, the "Bulletin of excavations at the Erlitou Site of Yanshi in Henan" recorded: "A total of 24 kinds of inscriptions were found (below, partial), the vast majority of which were engraved on the upper edge of the inner mouth of Dakouzun. The purpose of these signs, which we do not yet know, may be a primitive script that deserves further discussion. ”
In 1999, a large excavation report, "Yanshi Erlitou", was published, covering all the excavation materials from 1959 to 1978, and for the inscriptions on the pottery, the book recorded: "The carved symbols found are mainly from the inner edge of the mouth of the Great Mouth Zun and the mouth inside other vessels, with vertical lines of different thicknesses, cross shapes, cross shapes, dendritic shapes, etc., some of which are similar to hieroglyphs. ”
At that time, it was not very clear, but later after comparing the oracle bones, it was basically confirmed that these inscriptions were words and had a lineage relationship with the oracle bones.
The reason why it is said that the pottery inscription in Erlitou is text, you can see the scholar Cao Dingyun's analysis of figures 1-4 and 5-7 above.
The first is Figure 1-4, which has a lineage relationship with the word "ya" in the oracle bone. In Figure 1-4 above, Figure 1 is somewhat special (see figure below), and the relationship with the Oracle inheritance is very obvious, it belongs to the initial text of the Oracle "Ya" character, after the Shang Dynasty, with the improvement of the cognition of "Ya", it is known that adding the tail is more effective, so after adding the tail, it is reflected in the text. Figure 2-4 is also the word "ya", and the oracle bone also has the word "ya" with a tail fin on this basis.
It is unclear whether the two "ya" characters in the Erlitou tao text represent the same meaning, that is, whether Figures 2-4 are a simplification of Figure 1 or an arrow that represents different uses or different identities.
The second is Figure 5-7, which represents not a "mouth" but a "well", and the inheritance relationship between the two is more obvious. The ancients lived by the water, and the purpose of their digging wells was not to get water at first, but to hunt, so the tic-tac-toe in the oracle bone was written, and one of them had a deer on it, that is, a well dug specifically for deer hunting.
At the same time, there is also an important evidence, related to Erlitou Taowen Figure 8, Figure 8 also draws a "ya" character, indicating that it is a hunting method that combines these two means, that is, hunting with arrows and traps, which also shows that the ancients in the Erlitou period already knew the "will to create characters". The meaning represented in Figure 8 is now no separate Chinese character to express, which is also one of the difficulties in judging ancient scripts such as oracle bones, because of the changes of the times, some ancient characters have been eliminated because they are not suitable for the needs of the times, and Figure 8 is so. The words that have been completely eliminated are naturally difficult to decipher without inheritance in later generations, so it is indeed inconceivable that Western scholars have deciphered ancient Egyptian and other scripts.
Judging from the inheritance of Erlitou pottery and oracle bone, the pottery is relatively primitive, and the glyphs of the oracle bone are more standardized and the method of making characters is more complete, which is obviously more advanced than the pottery.
Therefore, if the Erlitou site is the site of the Xia Dynasty, then they are the Xia Dynasty script, that is, the "early mature script" speculated according to the logic of script evolution.
References: "Cao Dingyun: Seeking Verification of Xia Dynasty Characters- Erlitou Cultural Tao Wen Kao", Oracle Bone "Zhou Sacrifice Spectrum", etc