Decoding 3,000-year-old inscriptions on bones

ZHENGZHOU - Earn $15,000 per character! China is offering financial rewards for help deciphering the characters on 3,000-year-old oracle bones. Since the National Museum of Chinese Writing in Anyang in Central China's Henan province announced the reward in November 2016, many people have tried their luck.

Over the past 100 years, researchers have only been able to decipher around one-third of the characters on the animal bones and tortoise shells that have been found so far. The remaining characters are difficult to decipher, according to Guo Xudong from an oracle bones and Yin-Shang culture research center in Anyang.

Yin was the last capital of the Shang Dynasty (c.16th century-11th century BC) and the official excavation of the Yin Ruins in current-day Anyang began in 1928. The oracle-bone scripts discovered at the ruins are considered to be the oldest Chinese inscriptions.