The late Shang oracle bone writings are essential for the study of Chinese etymology as Shang writing is directly ancestral to the modern Chinese script.
This is the oldest known member and ancestor of the Chinese family of scripts, making it the direct ancestor of over a dozen East Asian writing systems developed over the next three millennia, including the Chinese and Japanese logographic and syllable scripts still in current use .
It is certain that Shang-lineage writing underwent a period of development before the oracle bone script developed because of its mature nature. However, Europeans hold that no significant clearly identifiable writing from before or during the early to middle Shang cultural period has been discovered despite the fact that the oracle bone writing scripts clearly harnesses elements of African symbology
