This introductory course to the ancient Chinese writing system covers its origin, nature, classification and development. Students will learn a newly-developed framework, i.e., the three-principle theory of Chinese scripts, by which thousands of characters coming from archeological materials such as jiaguwen (oracle bone inscriptions), jinwen (bronze inscriptions) and jianbowenzi (bamboo and silk scripts) can be appropriately analyzed and classified. Other important components include general theories about language and script, and the historical and cultural aspects of Chinese characters.