of Chinese writing. The bones were believed to have prophecies written on them. The first appearance of what we recognize unequivocally to refer as "oracle bone inscriptions" comes in the form of inscribed ox scapulae and turtle plastrons from sites near modern Anyang (安陽) on the northern border of Henan province. The vast majority were found at the Yinxu site in this region. They record pyromantic divinations of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wu Ding, whose accession is dated by different scholars at 1250 BC or 1200 BC. Though there is no proof that the Shang dynasty was solely responsible for the origin of writing in China, neither is there evidence of recognizable Chinese writing from any earlier time or any other place. The late Shang oracle bone writings constitute the earliest significant corpus of Chinese writing and it is also the oldest known member and ancestor of the Chinese family of scripts, preceding the Chinese bronze inscriptions. Chinese Bronze Inscriptions Chinese bronze inscriptions were usually written on the Chinese ritual bronzes. These Chinese ritual bronzes include Ding (鼎), Dui (敦), Gu (觚), Guang (觥), Gui (簋), Hu (壺), Jia (斝), Jue (爵), Yi (匜), You (卣), Zun (尊), and Yi (彝). Different time periods used different methods of inscription. Shang bronze inscriptions were nearly all cast at the same time as the implements on which they appear. In later dynasties such as Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn Period, the inscriptions were often engraved after the bronze was cast. Bronze inscriptions are one of the earliest scripts in the Chinese family of scripts, preceded by the oracle bone script. Seal script Seal script (Chinese: 篆書; pinyin: zhuànshū) is an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of the Zhou dynasty script. The Qin variant of seal script eventually became the standard, and was adopted as the formal script for all of China during the Qin dynasty. Clerical script The Clerical script (traditional Chinese: 隸書; simplified Chinese: 隶书; pinyin: lìshū) is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy. The clerical script was first used during the Han dynasty and has lasted up to the present. The clerical script is considered a form of the modern script though it was replaced by the standard script relatively early. This occurred because the graphic forms