Museum showcases Shanxi's ancient heritage

The dragon pattern, which was abstracted from a variety of beasts, helps to trace the origins of dragon totems in Chinese culture, the researcher said.

When mentioning the flat pottery kettle, Gao said two red pictographic characters inscribed on it might be the earliest written language in China.

"One character might be easily identified as wen — meaning written language or culture in Chinese," Gao said. "This character is similar to those in the Shang and Zhou dynasties."

He said there are different interpretations of the other character, but the most acceptable are yi — which means "capital city" — and yao — the name of the legendary emperor of Yao.

Gao said that archaeologists believe these two characters were part of an ancient writing system more than 500 years older than the Shang Dynasty oracles written on bones and turtle shells discovered in Anyang city, Henan province.

When mentioning the guibiao, Gao said it is a set of gnomon shadow measurement tools comprising a vertical bar called biao and a horizontal scale called gui. Guibiao was also used as a timekeeping tool, with the vertical bar casting the shadow of sunlight on the horizontal scale to indicate the time of day.