朗读者

China’s ancient oracle bones reveal earliest written record of meteor shower 3,000 years ago_我的网站

匹诺曹

A |

This photo taken on Nov. 18, 2025 shows the Leonid meteor shower seen in Heihe City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. (Photo by Qian Boyu/Xinhua)Chinese archaeologists have pieced together ancient oracle bone fragments to decipher what they say is the earliest written record of a meteor shower, dating back more than 3,000 years and shedding light on astronomical observation in the Shang Dynasty (c.1600BC-1046BC), roughly the Late Bronze Age in the West in which Homer's Odyssey was rooted.
The inscription, found among more than 80,000 fragments, consists of three characters that read "star", "all" and "west," describing a large number of meteors streaking across the night sky and falling westward like rain, Huang Tianshu, a professor at Tsinghua University's Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts, told the Global Times.
"The first character is 'star'… the second means 'all' or 'in batches', depicting meteors falling in large numbers like rain, and the third is 'west,' used as a verb to mean falling westward after crossing the sky," Huang said. "This is important astronomical data recording a meteor shower more than 3,000 years ago."
The team spent years rejoining shattered oracle bones, a process of piecing fragments back together, and only after reassembly did the meaning become clear.
"Before rejoining, you have no idea what it is saying. Once rejoined, the content becomes largely intact and turns into a very important piece of material for studying history or language," Huang added.
One piece of ancient Chinese oracle bone Photo: CCTV

One piece of ancient Chinese oracle bone Photo: CCTVHuang Dekuan, head of the expert committee for China's national ancient script project, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the record is "the earliest meteor shower documented in Chinese writing," adding that it was a representative achievement that would enable oracle bone inscriptions to be better used as scientific historical sources and push oracle bone studies to a new level.
The discovery is part of a decade long effort that has newly rejoined more than 1,200 groups of fragments, with the results published in a major compendium of oracle bone facsimiles. The research was part of a state-backed project on inheritance and studies of ancient Chinese scripts and civilization, CCTV reported.
The first phase of the national project is about to complete, yielding a string of major findings. These findings provide vital new materials for studying early Chinese civilization and demonstrate the significant value of ancient Chinese characters in the development of Chinese and even human civilizations, per CCTV.
。 (서울=연합뉴스) 서대연 기자 = 오세훈 서울시장이 주택공급 방안 관련 용산공원 부지의 대안으로 탄천물재생센터 부지를 제시한 가운데 26일 강남구 일원동 탄천물재생센터 부지의 모습. 오 시장은 이날 김윤덕 국토교통부 장관과 만나 탄천 물재생센터에 가칭 '동남권 청년 특화 산업단지'를 조성하는 구상에 대해서 정식으로 제안했다고 밝혔다. 김 장관은 "오 시장이 탄천물재생센터를 검토해 달라고 요청했고, 우리는 자료가 전혀 없으니 필요하다고 해 가능한 자료를 바로 주기로 했다"며 "그 자료를 받아 분석해봐야 어떤 얘기를 할 수 있을 것 같다. 적극적으로 검토해보겠다는 취지로 오 시장과 대화를 나눴다"고 말했다. 2026.8.26 [email protected]。