(split from Will Simplified characters last? – DB)
This is an interesting assertion. Would you care to elaborate or provide any evidence of the dysfunctionality of those scripts? They seem to have functioned just fine to me, and rather than being abandoned due to sucking, I think they simply naturally mutated over time until they were very different critters.
i thought we were talking about changes in media (from bronzes to bamboo slats to paper, etc. for example) that influenced the change in script more than anything else? or move towards simplicity or efficiency
Sure. First, we should set a few efficiency standards for a written language:
[ol]
[li]One is the amount of intensive labor that would be required to produce the script. For instance, if characters are only recognizable as etchings in steel, we would probably consider it less efficient than one that could be written on parchment. In principle, I think that bone seal script could be written on parchment or made into computer-assisted typeface, so that’s not such an issue.[/li]
[li]One is the learnability of the script, which we can weigh against the likelihood of confusion of graphemes within the script with others, retention demands for different scripts. We should factor the number of distinctive strokes that the script requires.[/li]
[li]A corollary to these above two is a ratio of strokes to retained graphemes to comprehended words. If it takes n hand strokes to write a word in bone seal, but n-m hand strokes to write it in a more modern script, then the former sucks more.[/li]
[li]One is the expressive power of the script, how much expression of the spoken language that the written language could accurately represent. For example, scripts do not catch inflections in speech (for sarcasm, rhetorical questions, etc.), so suck in part because of that.[/li]
[li]One is the ready adaptability of the script to express neologisms, etc., or in general not impede evolution of the spoken language.[/li]
[li]One is the readability of the script, that is the speed at which one can interpret the string and receive the appropriate message from it.[/li][/ol]
Should there be others? Ought I remove any of the aforementioned ones? We can get to the seal script itself once the criteria are set.
I thought the main reason for the script change was the material change - the so-called “dragonbone” script only lasted as long as the supply of tortoise shells, and the Chinese drove the various species to extinction within a thousand years or so, due to their craving for acccurate predictions on all matter of subjects, especially the weather. On tortoise shell you could only scratch straight lines with ease… the cursive lines of the lishu, or whatever its called, were possible once they switched material.
I dont think the Chinese have ever abandoned anything “due to sucking”. Sharks’ fin soup would be a pretty good case - but I’m sure they’ll only abandon it when they run out of sharks. and even then they’ll porbably just move on to dolphins or something similar…
No idea what you mean by “bone seal script”; in your prior post, I assumed you had meant the various scripts during the period from the oracle bone writings to seal script, i.e. the various Shang through Qin period scripts.
A need for efficiency certainly was one of the driving forces behind the evolution of characters at different points in time, yes, and overall, probably the main one. The biggest jump is from pre-clerical to clerical forms, in terms of increased efficiency. I’ll agree that pre-clerical forms suck at efficiency (ease of writing), yes. But it’s not true that ease of writing was always on the increase or that that was the sole reason for changes in scripts. There were needs for disambiguation and shared communication, there were political factors and cultural trends, and so on.
Sure, the OB script was simplified and rectilinear due to the difficulty of engraving on the hard shell and bone materials; the contemporary writing on other materials didn’t require this. When they stopped engraving on shell and bone, that parallel script style ended. However, for the most part, this logic doesn’t extend to other historical script changes, as the primary medium was the brush (on various surfaces) from the Shang dynasty up into modern history.
Extinction could not have been the reason.
First, the oracle bones were written on not only turtle shells but also livestock (mostly bovine) scapulae as well as bones of other species (pyro-scapulimancy was performed on deer, pig and sheep scapulae also, and even deer and human skulls with inscriptions have been found). Although by the Ānyáng phase, use of turtle plastrons dominated, had the supply of the turtle shells run out, we would have merely seen a switch to exclusive use of various bones. This did not happen.
Second, turtles are obviously not extinct, and the shells of various species are suitable for pyromancy.
Furthermore, the species of turtles actually used in the late Shang have been identified by scholars such as James F. Berry (see Appendix I in Keightley’s (1978) Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China). None of them are extinct: Ocadia sinensis, and Mauremys mutica are still found in southern China, while Chinemys reevesi is found in China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and Testudo emys is still found in SE Asia and the Malay Archipelago.
Finally, note that the time period involved was not on the order of a millennium, but rather about 4 centuries; the oracle bones found so far date chiefly from the late Shāng, around the 13th to 11th centuries BCE.
So what was the reason? Abandonment of OB as a ritual. In the early W. Zhōu, other methods of divination soon became more popular, such as the use of Achillea millefolium (milfoil, aka yarrow), and methods associated with the Zhou yi (Yijing or I Ching). This was unfortunate, because the waning and discontinuation of oracle bone records means the archaeological record from the early Zhoū period is rather weak.
No, other than as noted above, there isn’t much of a difference in the use of a brush on different materials, and the primary media for writing didn’t change much anyway.
Script changes over time tended to be driven by a variety of different factors, often efficiency, but not always. To keep it very short, here are the main ones as I see them. Most are the process of gradual, natural evolution and drift:
The need for simple, rectilinear forms when engraving hard surfaces (so that OB script differed from its contemporary daily script, the latter presumably similar to what is preserved on bronzes)
Abandonment of that secondary (OB) form due to changes in ritual
disambiguation (e.g. addition of semantic elements leading to increased complexity), especially in the early Zhou, but continuing to some extent for a millennium or so
regularization (non-centralized standardization in structure) by the middle Zhou
simplification for efficiency (needed by central bureaucracy, for instance, and for communication in general), very gradually over time throughout the Zhou
loss of central political control (by the Zhou court), leading to regional diversity
varying degrees of liberal creativity vs. conservativism in the E. Zhou period, with the Qin state being conservative in structure but adopting a tall, rounded, balanced, formal style (seal script) long before unification (unlike what is normally taught)
varying desires for formality (e.g. by nobles on their bronzes) vs. convenience (for daily use), with coexistence of formal and common scripts during the mid to late Zhou, including within Qin
the imposition of structural (not stylistic) uniformity on the existing seal script (not creation of a new one) in the run up to unification and imposition of this uniform script during and after the conquest, in order to facilitate trade and cultural exchange,
tolerance by the central authority for stylistic variety within Qin
the popularization of writing in the Warring States to Han period, with continued coexistence of formal and more efficient popular forms, with the latter in not only the Qin state but also other areas transforming rounded forms into rectilinear ones (with the Qin forms being forerunners of the clerical script of the WS (proto-clerical), Qin and Han); clerical definitely evolved naturally over time.
the need for efficient use of time and materials by scribes in that period, resulting in increasing adoption by scribes and officials of the existing popular, rectilinear forms, gradually replacing the formal forms (at first only for casual writing, then a few formal purposes)
the natural variations in line width which result when the brush is used quickly for efficiency
adoption of cursive-like features and characters into the clerical script for efficiency
followed by artistic exploration of the fuller potential of these natural variations in the clerical to kaishu era.
formal adoption of clerical script by the Western Han, with seal relegated to only limited formal use.
development of increasingly cursive writing as a secondary style in the W. & E. Han for efficiency
the natural evolution of another popular script (neo-clerical) from clerical simply through drift in daily use and for efficiency during the middle of the E. Han
convergence (through daily use, and for convenience) of neo-clerical and cursive writing into semi-cursive script by the late E. Han
evolution (through daily use) of standard script from this semi-cursive script around the late E. Han to early Wei period (and simultaneous use of these various scripts for a while)
gradual extinction through disuse of variant scripts, with standard script finally dominating after the Wei-Jin period.
Scripts rose and fell for all these reasons, primarily through natural evolutionary forces, rather than because of changes in media, and certainly not because “they sucked”. 
But yeah, moving away from less efficient forms pushed the evolution of writing forward time after time.
it should also be noted that bamboo slats (for writing) are arguably said to have existed alongside some period of oracle-bone inscription (bronzes, etc.), so the changes in media alone does not account.
Yes; not just “arguably said to have existed”, but certainly existed. The main media for writing in the Shang dynasty were brush with ink on wooden and/or bamboo slats just as in the Zhou through Han periods,
and presumably other flat surfaces such as animal skins and broader wooden and/or bamboo tablets. There are characters inscribed in the oracle bones which clearly depict books made from such slats and bound with cord into scrolls just as you see in later periods. This early graph (Shang dynasty, cast in bronze)
,
which means book and which depicts such a bound slat book, is the origin of the modern ce4 character used for a book ‘volume’ today.
The bones and shells would have been a minor medium in comparison to these far easier to use and more abundant media, so the end of the OB ritual is not thought to have had any impact on the Shang-Zhou writing system in general.