MCLC: row over Liangzhu inscriptions

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: row over Liangzhu inscriptions
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Source: (7/12/13): 
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/17977691/experts-row-over-earlie
st-chinese-inscriptions/

Experts row over 'earliest' Chinese inscriptions

BEIJING (AFP) - Fierce debate has erupted among experts in China over the
discovery of 5,000-year-old inscriptions that some believe represent the
earliest record of Chinese characters.

Pottery pieces and stone vessels unearthed at the Zhuangqiaofen
archaeological site in the eastern province of Zhejiang push "the origin
of the written language back 1,000 years", the state-run Global Times
newspaper reported.

The inscriptions predate the oracles, writings on turtle shells dating
back to the Shang Dynasty (C.1600-1046BC), which are commonly believed to
be the origin of the written Chinese language system.

Some of the inscriptions were written together in what some experts
believe resembles a short sentence.

Li Boqian, an archaeology professor from Peking University, said the
symbols reveal the ancient Liangzhu civilisation -- which existed in
Zhejiang and neighbouring Jiangsu in the Neolithic Age -- had already
developed the basic structure of sentences from independent words, the
Global Times said earlier this week.

Other specialists dismissed the significance of such a find. Xu Hong, an
archaeology researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
expressed scepticism on links between the inscriptions and the development
of Chinese script.

"Even if those signs on the stones were characters, they were simply from
a long dead east Asian country before the Middle Kingdom existed," he said
on Sina Weibo, China's version of the social network Twitter.

"Many signs and character lookalikes earlier than the oracles have been
found in east Asia."

Xia Jingchun, a professor of Chinese language from Beijing Technology and
Business University, also wrote on Weibo: "It's long been believed by
experts that there were more ancient characters than the oracles, because
the oracles were too mature, and older languages are supposed to be less
developed."

The inscriptions were found among artefacts unearthed between 2003 and
2006, state media said.