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The Origin of Ancient Chinese Symbols
 In the archaeological site of LongShan (龍山/龙山),
southeast part of China, historians found one of the earliest primitive forms of Chinese symbol writing, which could date
back to c. 3200 -1900BC's era. It was almost contemporary to the beginning of the writing system out of Mesopotamia
and Egyptian civilization.
 However, later in the basin of Yellow River, northern China,
some archaeological evidence suggest that the earliest form of ancient Chinese symbols found in Jiahu
(賈湖/贾湖) can be dated back to over 6,000 years ago. The picture on the right side
shows that archaeological project on the the discovery of "ancient Chinese writing symbols inscribed on tortoise shells
and animal bones" was under the military protection.
The very first version of ancient Chinese symbols is "Shell-Bone-Script", which was found in the Chinese Shang Dynasty.
These symbols were created based upon the picture of real objects. Chinese call "Shell-Bone-Script" as
Jia Gu Wen, which means "the inscriptions on tortoiseshells and animal bones".
Before the invention of paper, Chinese
people wrote their symbols on whatever they could find. They started inscribing characters on tortoise shells or
animal bones, later on they started to inscribe words on the bronze ware, instruments, monuments, and even bamboo clips.
The pictures presented above shows the ancient Chinese symbols appearing on "the blade of the sword", "the ancient Chinese music instrument" and "bamboo clips".
The Ancient Pictographic Symbols
As we mentioned earlier that most ancient Chinese characters were pictographic symbols, which means there were created based upon the picture of real objects. The picture given shows the ancient Chinese symbol for "goat". 
These two symbols were actually the original version of the Chinese symbol for "goat". The one on the left side was the very first appearance of the Chinese symbol for "Goat". After a certain period of evolution, a new symbol appeared, which is shown on the right side of the picture given above.  The left one was actually the inscription found on the shells of turtles and bones of wild animals. The right one was the words inscribed on bronze and material. The right one obviously looks closer to the modern version, of "goat" in Chinese as it is written today. The modern version of Chinese symbol for goat as well as its pronunciation is given below.
Pronunciation: Young
Special Note: The whole structure of the symbol for "goat" was created to resemble the sheep's head. Does it look like it? Sheep was a very specific animal in ancient Chinese society and was regarded as being "good, honest and kindhearted". In Chinese culture the word for sheep was even used to symbolize "good Luck". Its pronunciation is also easy to remember, which is very similar to that of an English word "young".
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