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With the start of Oracle Script writing, the Chinese during the Shang Dynasty between the years 1400 BC and 1100 BC used Reed brushes sharp objects to carve into, and later use the reed brush to paint with ink on turtle shells and bones from Oxen that were heated at an extreme temperature, creating them to crack. The cracks would then be inspected to reveal divine answers to a persons question. Most of the things that were written on Oracle bones involved hunting, warfare, weather patterns, ceremonial dates, and other forms of sophisticated thought.
Above is an example from 1300 BC where they heated the turtle shell, carved the characters into the shell, and brushed those characters with a reed brush and ink post carving. 
Prior to real paper, the Chinese would use paper as a packing material but wasn't something people would write on. since it was made out of harder materials such as mixed mulberry bark, hemp and rags with water, mashed it into pulp, pressed out the liquid and hung the thin mat to dry in the sun. Reed brushes weren't picked up again until the invention of bamboo paper in China. Where people would turn the fibers of bamboo through heating, soaking, and stretching into thin sheets of the worlds first real paper (not papyrus). These sheets of bamboo paper were then given to merchants to then sell on the silk road, or to scribes and people of class (royalty, government/military officials, people of wealth).
Above is an example of a reed brush along with the new Standard Script written on the recently invented bamboo paper. You can see that there is a lot more precision with each stroke of the brush, and everything seems to have a higher level of sophistication because of it. |
