High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Since the second half of the 20th century, inscriptions have been found on pottery in a variety of locations in China, such as Banpo near Xi`an, as well as on bone and bone marrows at Hualouzi, Chang`an County near Xi`an. These simple, often geometric, marks have been frequently compared to some of the earliest known Chinese characters appearing on the oracle bones, and some have taken them to mean that the history of Chinese writing extends back over six millennia. However only isolated instances of these symbols have been found, and they show no indication of representing speech or of the non-pictorial processes that a writing system requires.