It was the custom,
in the time of the Shang Dynasty, for people to consult a diviner.
They took to him questions about important things in their
lives.
He would carve these questions on large animal bones
(usually the shoulder blade of an ox) or on turtle shells.
He then applied a red hot bronze point to the bone or
shell and would interpret the way it had cracked under
the heat to predict the answers to the questions. |
The
Shang
Dynasty -
Outline of a
turtle shell |
With copies
of the outline of a large turtle shell, students can take
on the role of a Shang Dynasty diviner.
They can create and
write the kind of questions that would be brought to the
diviner; questions about sickness, dreams, the harvest, the
weather or anything they feel would have been important issues
in the lives of these people.
Students formulate the questions
in such a way that they can be answered with a "yes" or "no," "good" or "bad" or
in other simple ways. |
