Oracle Bones

Lesson: History

We've been learning about the Shang Dynasty in Ancient China. We've learnt how artefacts help us learn about the past. Mr Kelly gave us pictures of different artefacts and we tried to work out what they were. One of the artefatcs was an Oracle bone.

These bones were taken from the belly of a tortoise or made from Ox bone. When the Emperor wanted to find the answer to a burning question, he would ask his priest. The priest would then write the question onto the bone before burning holes into it. 

The holes would make the bone shatter. Once the bone had shattered, the priest then used the cracks to find the answer to the question so he could tell the Emperor.

We took a trip back to Ancient China and made some Oracle bones of our own. We didn't have space to write questions (we put these in our topic books), so we wrote our names on them instead using Chinese lettering.

Check out some pictures from our lesson in the gallery below.