Talk:Oracle bone

Expansion
I have greatly expanded this page, with extensive references, while leaving out all information on the nature of the oracle bone script itself, so as to keep these pages separate; there is only a little room for further expansion of oracle bone without excessive lengthiness IMO, but there is quite a bit of room for expansion on the script itself. We also need more pictures. Dragonbones (talk) 14:12, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Pericles, thanks for the Fairbanks reference. You wrote "Dragonbones, I'm not used to this style of citation where the full reference is not spelled out, but I will add a citation from Fairbank's book here according to your style." Actually, the reason for the lack of full reference is because the in-text refs are used again and again, with different page numbers for different facts; the full refs are given in the reference section at the end. Thus, your full Fairbanks reference should be added under the References section. Cheers! DBDragonbones (talk) 15:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh! I see. When I saw "further references" I assumed that the title of that section implied they were all for "further reading". My mistake. I added Fairbank to the list.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 16:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, sorry, I didn't realize the confusion that name would cause. I've changed it back to "References".Dragonbones (talk) 01:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

BCE
An editor came in today and changed one instance of BCE to BC, which is inappropriate. First, the rest of the article uses BCE, and Wiki guidelines require consistency. Second, it is specifically stated in the style guidelines that while either style is acceptable, it is not appropriate for an editor to come along and change all of one to the other simply due to preference. My understanding is that what this means is that whichever style gets set first in an article stays.Dragonbones (talk) 13:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC) my toothbrush is an example of this —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.127.176.99 (talk) 23:57, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Merge Plastromancy into Oracle bone?
It seems that everything that the Plastromancy article has is (or should be) in the  Oracle bone article as well. Would it make sense to merge the former to the latter, and to set a redirect? Otherwise, it seems to invite needless duplication. Vmenkov (talk) 04:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to keep the two subjects with different article. What specificity is the duplication? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:24, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As Vmenkov said, the whole Plastromancy article (all 3 paragraphs of it) repeats material covered in greater detail in the Oracle bone article; the third paragraph isn't about plastrons at all. There seems to be nothing to say about plastromancy outside the context of ancient China, and within that context no-one seems to be saying they were used significantly differently from ox scapulae.  Kanguole 15:09, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Kanguole above said pretty much what I wanted to say. (Incidentally, I seem to recall that some sources - maybe Sarah Allan - speculated that the use of turtle plastrons in divination may have been influenced by the special role of this animal in the ancient Chinese mythology; but even then, I would not view this as an argument for keeping 2 separate articles). -- Vmenkov (talk) 20:45, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I support the merger too. Objects like mirrors can be described independently from their use in divination ("catoptromancy"), but oracle bones as artifacts are inextricably tied to their mantic use. And as Kanguole points out, there seems to be no information on plastromancy outside of ancient China. Plastromancy is therefore a content fork of Oracle bone. Plastromancy should be kept as a redirect, and its content merged into the present wiki. Scapulimancy is a different case, because other cultures seem to have used ox scapulae for divination. Madalibi (talk) 01:44, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Not the earliest writing in China?
This sentence is oddly inconsistent:
 * The oracle bones are not the earliest writing in China--a very few isolated mid to late Shang pottery, bone and bronze inscriptions may predate them.

It begins with an emphatic statement, but then says the same thing with "may". I think it needs to be clarified what the source (Qiu?) is saying here. Kanguole 09:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect information
I'm going to add a few paragraphs about James Menzies, the first person to scientifically excavate and study the oracle bones. Some of the sourced information about him is wrong: although he had the largest collection in the world, he never "bought" any of them. They were either formally excavated or donated by locals, who he was friends with. He kept as much as he could in China, and never thought of them as "his". I will find a good source to replace the source used now.Ferox Seneca (talk) 05:12, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Link to Wiki Page
His name leads to a link which doesn't exist. Despite his relevance in history, it seems that he does not have a wikipedia page. AnotherToast (talk) 02:16, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Published collections
Many of these collections are listed in Keightley, Sources of Shang History, pp. 229–231. Kanguole 21:42, 3 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the tip, I should have thought to look there; kind of obvious really. --Tibetologist (talk) 19:19, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Japan's/East Asian oracle bones
Hello,

I kind of dropped a turd and left but I don't have much time right now to expand the article. There is a decently sized body of work which mentions the use of oracle bones in Yayoi Japan, used similarly to the Chinese oracle bones, and this article does not reflect that whatsoever, being centered entirely around China. If no one objects, I'd like to change the article to include Japan, even though Chinese oracle bones are both older and significant and probably what people come to this page looking for. The issue I'm having here is that the article for Scapulomancy includes Plastromancy, which makes no sense. That article is sparse and frankly it's a mess, but could be used for divination scapula which were not labelled "oracle bones", or just renamed and reformatted entirely to include both non Chinese scapulomancy and plastromancy. Considering Japanese oracle bones are called such in books and articles (and used in almost the exact same way), I suggest we include at least the Japanese bones in this article.

Itsabooknotacourse (talk) 16:21, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a different topic from the Shang oracle bones, and should be in a separate article. (Since the exact purpose of the Shang oracle bones is controversial, it's hard to demonstrate that they have the same purpose.) Kanguole 16:50, 6 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Plastromancy redirects here and scapulomancy is a mess/sparse. Should an article for plastromancy thus be made? I can change the scapulomancy article over time, but the issue becomes, since Japanese divination bones are indeed called "oracle bones", should they not be mentioned in an article called "oracle bones"? Every reputable source which mentions them calls them by this name. Itsabooknotacourse (talk) 21:39, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The maze of "-mancy" articles is certainly a mess; I'm not sure how to sort it out. But per WP:NOTDICT, we should have an article for each topic, rather than each term. It often happens that two topics have the same name – WP:DISAMBIG deals with that issue. In this case, I would argue that the Shang oracle bones are the primary topic for the term "oracle bone", so an article on the Japanese ones could be called "oracle bone (Japan)" or similar, and this article would have a hatnote pointing at that one. Kanguole 22:46, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Added some information on how divination changed over time.
Let me know what you think. This is based on Keightley's work on changes in Shang divination practices. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alanba42 (talk • contribs) 16:35, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Bone divination splinter article
Draft:Bone divination I am working on this splinter article and want to make it go over the current redirect Bone divination 14:32, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
 * This seems to be a split of the "Shang divination" section. Why is a separate article needed?
 * Also, this doesn't seem to be the right way to do a split (see WP:SPLIT), as it loses the article history needed for attribution. Kanguole 17:07, 26 July 2022 (UTC)