China invented the longest lasting and most stable writing system in history. Chinese—the language—as we know it today is almost the same as the first inscriptions from nearly 3,200 years ago. And Chinese—the script—is the only system in the world still used to represent the language for which it was invented.

Somehow, someway, even the first grumblings of its existence were remarkable. We find a fully formed system, a complete repertoire of signs, from the very first moment we encounter it: no proto-, no tag labels, no numeric tablets with four names carved into them. The first examples of Chinese contain complete sentences, almost all comprehensible. An unprecedented feat.

So does this mean that the Chinese script was invented overnight? That it sprouted like a mushroom at the end of the second millennium bc, already fully formed? Not likely. Much more probable is that what we’re seeing is already an advanced stage, far removed (though we don’t know how far) from the moment of invention. Its syntax is flexible, the number of characters already substantial—between three thousand and five thousand, all well designed and clear. Hundreds of inscriptions on turtle shells, ox scapulae, and bronze objects, buried in various tombs, concentrated around the capital of the Shang dynasty, Anyang, in northeast-central China.

The question we must ask ourselves about these remains is whether, indeed, they remain only because the inscriptions are found on weather-resistant materials, much less perishable than material like papyrus or parchment. Turtle shells and metal make for perfectly durable surfaces. We might assume that the evidence we have represents only the few lucky survivors—that an incalculable number of inscriptions fell victim to time’s voracity, thrown pitilessly down its gullet, never to be seen. A much more realistic scenario, compared with imagining that some hyperliterate scribe, in the court of the Shang dynasty, conceived of something as finished and polished as was the Chinese script in 1200 bc, all in the blink of an eye.

Assuming, then, that the first phases came earlier, how far back must we date its invention? Scholars have pointed to Neolithic signs as antecedents—signs spread throughout China, from Banpo, in Xi’an, in the west to Liangzhu in the east and dating to about 5000 bc—though nothing is certain, even if some of the signs resemble those found in Anyang. They’re not sufficient, in any case, for re-creating a complete inventory. We can’t label a few simple signs, with their crude geometry, a “script.” That the eventual script might have grown out of former symbols is by no means an absurd hypothesis—in fact, it’s true for other regions—but proving that usage and meaning have remained consistent over the span of millennia is an extremely difficult task. How would you piece it all together? It would be like connecting two dots that are miles apart, with nothing in between to g