February
08
/ 2024
During excavations at a 2,500-year-old archaeological site in Puyang, China, a set of 10 polished and painted bone slips or sticks were unearthed, all of which were inscribed with an ancient Chinese numbering system known as the Ten Heavenly Stems and the Twelve Earthly Branches (or the Tiangan (Dizhi) in Chinese). It is believed these bone slips were sacred items that would have been used in fortune telling sessions or during religious ceremonies organized to contact divine beings. Were these Chinese Bone Slips Used for Fortune-Telling Activities? With roots that date far back into antiquity, the Heavenly Stems and the Earthly Branches were used primarily for the purposes of time keeping. These two counting systems were derived from astronomical observations
