Evidence · Unread oracle bone characters

The structure of Chinese graphs means a word that fell out of use leaves a graph with no phonetic or semantic anchor…

The structure of Chinese graphs means a word that fell out of use leaves a graph with no phonetic or semantic anchor in later writing.

Suggestive0

What it means

Key questionWhat are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?

6 answers, none ahead yet

Openunchanged

Answer this evidence bears onLost words with no later form

Supports1 for, none against

Still possiblewas No evidence yet

Next steps 3

Download HUST-OBC (Figshare 10.6084/m9.figshare.25040543.v3), tabulate the 9,411 undeciphered classes by image count and source, and cluster them with a period-aware image-similarity merge; report how many distinct unread classes remain and how many are singletons.

~16 h

On: What are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?

—not judged

Using CHANT or Yinqi Wenyuan transcriptions, classify a random sample of 300 unread graphs by the slot they occupy in the divination formula (diviner name, ancestor, place after a hunting verb, verb, object, modifier) and estimate the share that occur only in name slots, with a confidence interval.

~24 h

On: What are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?

—not judged

Compile the list of readings accepted by the National Museum of Chinese Writing since 2016 (Jiang Yubin 2018, the 2023 batch including Zhou Zhongbing and Li Chuntao, Chen Jian and Xie Mingwen 2024) with their graphs and papers, as the held-out test set for any computational method.

~6 h

On: What are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?

—not judged

Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takes

Sources 1

Chinese Writing (Wenzixue gaiyao), translated by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman

Xigui 2000

SRC

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). The structure of Chinese graphs means a word that fell out of use leaves a graph with no phonetic or semantic anchor… [Evidence EVD0DEDTG099HTB]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DEDTG099HTB

@misc{mysteriesdept_evd0dedtg099htb,
  title     = {The structure of Chinese graphs means a word that fell out of use leaves a graph with no phonetic or semantic anchor…},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Evidence, catalog key EVD0DEDTG099HTB},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DEDTG099HTB}
}