About 4650 years ago, according to Chinese legend, Chinese characters (also called Hanzi) were invented by Cangji, a government official under the first legendary emperor Huangdi of China. Cangji was inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of a tortoise veins when he hunted on Mount Yangxu, he also studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, finally a symbolic system of Chinese characters was invented. Another legend tells that Cangjie saw a divine being whose face had unusual features which looked like a picture of writings, then Cangjie created the earliest written characters by imitating his image. The ancient Chinese writers believed that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of the world.

In recent years, Chinese archaeologists have discovered a lot of materials refer mainly to symbols scribed or color drawings on earthenware appeared in the late period of the primitive society and in the early period of recorded society, as well as to a limited number of symbols carved on bones, jade articles and stone artifacts. It can be said that the earliest Chinese scribed symbols appeared in central region of China with a history of over 8,000 years (6,600–6,200BC).

The Oracle Bone Script is the earliest form of Chinese writing, which used from the Middle to the Late Shang dynasty (approximately 1500 BCE to 1000 BCE). This script was etched onto turtle shells and animals bones, which were then used for divination in the royal Shang court, hence the name "oracle bones". Experts and scholars use oracle bones as historical documents to investigate the reigns of later Shang monarchs, and surprisingly confirming the veracity of the traditional list of Chinese emperors that was deemed mythological rather than historical. The shape of these characters are often described as "pictographic", in that they resemble stylized drawings of objects they represent. 

Late Shang to the Western Chou dynasties (1100 BC to 700 BC), another Chinese writing named Greater Seal, mainly appeared on cast bronze vessels. In fact, Oracle Bone Script and Greater Seal overlapped in time, and they might have been the same script but as they were inscribed on different surface types and their visual styles differ due to the quality of the surfaces.

In the following several centuries, the writing script evolved into Lesser Seal, elegant script being the direct parent of the modern, un-simplified Chinese script. Unlike pictographic characters such as Greater Seal characters and Oracle Bone Script, the Lesser Seal characters are more linear, but have not attained the "angular" look of later Chinese scripts. This script has survived the passage of time and continues to be used in the present age in calligraphy and seals.