Ancient oracle bone inscriptions in Europe digitally preserved by Chinese team

ZHENGZHOU, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- A university team in central China's Henan Province has successfully completed the high-definition digitization of 542 oracle bone inscriptions housed in European institutions, marking significant progress in preserving these cultural treasures in their ancestral home.

The inscriptions were digitized by the oracle bone script information processing laboratory at Anyang Normal University in the city of Anyang, which is known as the home of oracle bones.

Of the inscriptions that have been digitized, 485 are housed in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Germany, and the remainder are housed in different institutions in France.

Liu Yongge, the lab's director, said the team is currently processing the data to create detailed digital models, which will be shared globally via an AI research platform.

The lab is also negotiating with institutions in Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium to digitally preserve further oracle bone inscriptions, he noted.

Oracle bone script, or Jiaguwen, is an ancient Chinese writing system. Inscriptions were carved on tortoise shells or animal bones. Jiaguwen is the earliest known form of Chinese writing, composed of the oldest fully developed characters found in China. More than 160,000 inscriptions have been excavated from the Yinxu ruins in Anyang and are now in collections scattered at home and abroad. ■