Culture： The tradition of ancestral worship has a long history in China. Archeologists have found it was practiced even in Prehistoric Times.

文化:祭天祀祖在中国有着悠久的历史，在史前时期的考古中曾一再发现这类遗存。

With the emergence of farming, people worshipped the heaven in hope of favorable weather for crops. It was actually a kind of nature worship.

随着农业的出现，人们为祈求风调雨顺的好年景而产生了对天的崇拜，这是自然崇拜中的一种。

Another kind of worship was ancestor worship, also called soul worship.

祖先崇拜又叫灵魂崇拜。

People offered sacrifice to their ancestors, praying for blessings bestowed by their ancestors.

人们祭祀祖先，为的是求得先人的保佑。

From the Xia Dynasty onwards, the primitive religion changed greatly.

自夏代开始，原始宗教的内容发生很大变化。

Kings were endowed with supreme authority. In order to secure his power, the king combined ancestral worship and nature worship to create the God or the Heaven, and proclaimed himself the agent or the worldly descendent of the God.

由于帝王是世上最高的统治者，为了维护他的统治，就把祖先崇拜与自然崇拜结合起来,创造了天或上帝这样的至上神，并称自己为上天的使者或是其子孙。

Characters had existed in the Shang Dynasty, and discovered written materials are the remains of the late Shang, which mainly preserved on tortoise shells or shoulder blades of cattle. Nowadays, they are referred as oracle-bone inscriptions.

商代已有文字，现在已发现的文字资料都是商代后期的遗物，主要保存在龟甲和牛肩胛骨上的，今人称之为甲骨文。

Since mainly used to record the facts of divination, it is also called oracle inscription.

因多为记录占卜之事，亦称卜辞。

A piece of it is about forty or fifty words, the longest a hundred words or also.

卜辞一篇约四五十字，最长的有百字左右。

Apart from this, some bronze vessels are also engraved with a few characters, called jin wen (writings on bronzes) or zhong ding wen (writings on bells and tripods).

在少量铜器上亦铸有一些文字，称为金文，或钟鼎文。

The longest writing consists of forty or fifty words, while the shortest one only five or six words, even one or two.

铜器铭文长的有四五十字，短的只有一二字或五六字。

Up till now, not many of such inscriptions have been found, but they are a primary source of historical materials for the research of the Shang period.

迄今为止，发现的钟鼎文数量并不多，但它们是研究商代的重要历史资料。

Oracle-bone inscriptions are the important state archives.

甲骨卜辞是商朝的国家档案。

The Shang rulers were very superstitious, and they would enquire ghosts and gods through divination when there was sacrifices, wars, hunting, diseases, agricultural affairs, weather conditions etc.

商统治者非常迷信，凡遇祭祀、征伐、田猎、疾 病、农业的丰歉、天气的阴晴风雨等大事，都要用占卜的方法询问鬼神。

Usually, a question was written on a tortoise shell or shoulder blade of cattle, then fired ； when cracks were produced, the oracle was interpreted on the basis of the pattern of them, and the interpretation was then written on the bone, too.

每次占卜时，先将所问事项刻在龟甲或牛肩胛骨上，然后把骨头放在火上烤，直至有裂纹出 现，这时就可以根据裂纹的形状进行占卜。占卜的结果亦刻在骨上。

After the predicted event occurred, the date of the occurrence was also written on the bone.

日后预言成真时，事件的发生日期也会被刻到龟骨上面。

One hundred thousand of pieces of oracle-bone in-scriptions have been found in the ruins of Yin, which contains about 4500 characters and about 2000 have been deciphered. The written characters were already formed in four different ways： pictographs, ideographs, associative compounds and phonetic compounds.

在殷墟发现的甲骨卜辞约有10万多片，所记甲骨文单字总数约有4500左右，今已确认者约有2 000千字左右，基本上具备象形、指事、会意、形声等造字方式。

Scientific Achievements: The development of production is closely related to the advance of scientific knowledge.

科学发展：生产的发展与科技进步密不可分。

The Shang people made great achievement in astronomy, calendar and mathematics.

商代人民在天文、历法、数学等发面均取得了巨大成就。

The oracle-bone inscriptions have records of solar and eclipse, some constellations and newly discovered stars, for example, the Shang astronomers discovered Mars and various comets.

甲骨文中有日蚀、月蚀、星座和新发现的星宿的记载。商代的天文学家已发现了火星及各种流星。

The Shang calendar had been quite perfect. It used a lunar calendar combined

with the solar year,disciplining month by moon, numbering year by sun and adjusting season with an intercalary month.

商代的历法已相当完善，为阴阳合历,以太阴（月）纪月，以太阳纪年，用闰月调整季节。

The common year was 12 months, and the leap year 13 months.

平年12个月，闰年13个月。

The intercalary month was at first added at the end of the year, but later inserted in the middle.

最初年终置闰。商代后期，也在年中置闰。

Ten characters known as “heavenly stems” and twelve other known as “earthly branches” were used to name the days in a cycle of sixty days.

用干支纪日，十干，即“天干”和十二地支相配合，60日为一个周期。

There is a complete list of stems and branches in the oracle bone inscriptions, which is the earliest one in the Chinese history.

在甲骨文中发现有完整的干支表，这是我国最早的干支记录。

The advanced astronomy and calendar were closely connected to agriculture.

商代的天文学和历法的进步，与农业生产的发展有密切关系。

Oracle-bone inscriptions show that numbers as large as 30000 with a decimal system were used ；ideas about odd and even numbers came into being ； the primary ability to calculate was also developed.

数学:商代甲骨文中有大至30000的数字，明确的十进制，奇数、偶数和倍数的概念，有了初步的计算能力。

Optics knowledge was applied to long ago. The convex mirror unearthed can reflect a man’s whole face in a quite small surface.

光学知识在很早就得到应用，出土的商代微凸面镜，能在较小的镜面上照出整个人面。