Chinese characters are the root of Chinese civilization and carrier of history. Speaking of its origin, there are many theories. There are two well-known theories in China: firstly, People often say that Cangjie invented Chinese characters. Secondly, meanwhile, many people believe that Chinese characters originated from pictures that ancient people used to record events.
Chinese characters have gone through a number of stages. It’s originated from oracle bone scripts (甲骨文) in the Shang Dynasty (商朝) in its development and evolution. The oldest and earliest Chinese characters are the inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones which were found at the site of the last Shang Dynasty capital Anyang (安阳, in Henan Province).
The next stage is Bronze Inscriptions（金文）. They’re on Chinese ritual bronzes, such as bells（编钟）, tripod（鼎） and so on, from Shang Dynasty（商朝） to Zhou Dynasty（周朝） and even later.
The third stage is Seal Script（篆书）. A major event in the development is the standardization of writing by the first emperor of Qin Dynasty (秦朝). He unified China, Chinese writing, Chinese units of measurements and currency. The first emperor introduced the Qin script as official writing. Since then, this new standardized script, also known as seal script, with neat and regular character pattern, was adopted as the formal and official script in Qin Dynasty.
The next stage is Clerical Script（隶书）. It lays a foundation for the squatter shape of later script forms. The formation of it is an important turning point. It appeared in Warring States Period（战国时期）, formed in Qin Dynasty（秦朝）, was dominant in Han Dynasty（汉朝）, remained in use through Wei-Jin Period（魏晋时期）.
The next stage is Regular Script（楷书）. It is emerged in Later Han Dynasty（后汉）, developed in Wei-Jin Period, and became popular in Tang Dynasty（唐朝）. It’s the foundation of the written form of modern Chinese language. Many famous calligraphers left many masterpieces of regular script. That stands for the great achievements of Chinese Calligraphy in Chinese history.
The last stage is Cursive Script（草书）. One can not talk about calligraphy without mentioning cursive script. It’s created for convenience of writing.