During the 19th century , farmers in China ’s Henan Provincebegan discovering oracle castanets — engraved ox scapulae and tortoise shells used by Shang Dynasty leaders for disk - keeping and foretelling purposes — while handle their fields . More bones were excavated in subsequent class , and their inscriptions were expose to be the earliest known form of systematic committal to writing in East Asia . But over the decades , scholar still have n’t come close to crock up one-half of the mystical hand ’s some 5000 character — which is why one Chinese museum is asking member of the public for help , in exchange for a generous hard currency advantage .
As Atlas Obscura report , theNational Museum of Chinese Writingin Anyang , Henan Province has offer to pay citizen investigator about $ 15,000 for each unknown character translated , and $ 7500 if they bring home the bacon a disputed character ’s definitive substance . Submissions must be supported with grounds , and reviewed by at least two language specialist .
The museum begin farming out their oracle bone translation efforts in Fall 2016 . The costly on-going undertaking has score a impasse , and scholars trust that the populace ’s collective smarts — combined with new advances in technology , include cloud computing and bounteous data — will move over new information and save them research money .
As of today , more than 200,000 seer os have been discovered — around 50,000 of which bear school text — so scholars still have a spate to pick up about the Shang Dynasty . Many of the ancient book ’s characters are difficult to verify , as they represent office and people from long ago . However , decrypt even just one character could lead to a significant discovery , expert say : " If we represent a noun or a verb , it can bring many scripts on oracle pearl to animation , and we can understand ancient history better , ” Formosan history professor Zhu Yanmin tell apart theSouth China Morning Post .
[ h / tAtlas Obscura ]
