Body Movements and the Creation of Early Chinese Hieroglyphs

This paper explores the relationship between body movements and the formation of Chinese hieroglyphs, with Dongba hieroglyphs as a case study. It finds that the characters with body and organ images as composing parts of their shapes account for a high percentage in oracle bone inscriptions and Dongba hieroglyphs, which indicates that there were lots of body movements in the lives of early people. Body movements are of utmost importance in the life of Naxi people and also in the formation of their writing. These body movements acted as the original paradigms from which the hieroglyphic characters were formed and the symbols of these characters were the expressiveness of these body movements. The empirical demonstration of the mutual comparison process from the body movements to the hieroglyphic verbs showed a whole picture of the process of how body movements were turned into writing symbols. The accomplishment of the process is a product not only of time but also of the development of human beings' cognitive abilities.Keywords:: body movementshieroglyphsNaxi Dongba hieroglyphscase studycognitionanthropology of sport AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank Professor Fan Hong at the University College Cork, Ireland, and Professor Tan Hua at South China Normal University, China, for their kind help. Great thanks also go to Mr He Limin and Professor He Chunyun. Zhang Jie would also like to thank the China Scholarship Council and University College Cork for providing her with the opportunity to study in Ireland.Notes 1.CitationRobinson, The Story of Writing, 36–7. 2.CitationGuar, A History of Writing, 97. 3.CitationFazzioli, Understanding Chinese Characters, 23; Lu and Aiken, “Origins and Evolution.” 4.CitationWinterbottom, “The Writing on the Wall?” 5.CitationWang, “The Study.” 6.CitationXu, Narration of Analytical Dictionary, 753. 7.CitationLi, “The Polyphyletic Theory.” 8.CitationSchmandt-Besserat, How Writing Came About, 69. 9.CitationGuo, “The Dialectic Development”; CitationChen, “On the Origin”; CitationTang, An Introduction, 194; and CitationWang, “The Study.”10.CitationYang, “The Dualistic Overview”; CitationShi, “From the Archaeological Culture.”11.CitationLu, “The Origin.”12.CitationLu and Aiken, “Origins and Evolution.”13.CitationFairbank and Reischauer, China: Tradition & Transformation, 27; CitationGuo, “The Dialectic Development.”14.CitationHe, “On the Original Version.”15.CitationBlanchard and Cheska, The Anthropology of Sport, 11.16.CitationHuang, “The Nature.”17. As of June 8, 2013, the Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. listed on its website: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/265009/hieroglyph, “hieroglyph,” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition.18.CitationBoltz, “Early Chinese Writing.”19. National Museum of Chinese Writing (NMCW), Anyang, Henan Province.20. As of June 6, 2013. http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/body+movement.21.CitationWang, “On the Dissimilation.”22.CitationTang, The Secret, 346.23. Ibid.24.CitationLou, “The Naxi Minority.”25.CitationHu et al., “To Open Up.”26.CitationChinese Civilization Center, China: Five Thousand Years, 454.27. Ibid.28.CitationFang, Naxi Hieroglyphic Character Genealogy, 37.29.CitationRock, A Na-khi-English Encyclopedic Dictionary, 102.30. Ibid.31. See note 4.32.CitationGe, A Collection, 191.33.CitationLi and He, “The Role.”34. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception.35.CitationLi and Sheng, “Embodied Cognition.”36.CitationBarsalou, “Grounded Cognition.”37. Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh.38.CitationGreg, Geng, and Liang, Introduction to Human, 84–5.39. Ibid., 152, 194–96.41.CitationYe, “Embodied Cognition.”42. Ibid.43. See note 26.Additional informationNotes on contributorsZhang JieZhang Jie is a PhD student at the School of Physical Education and Sports Science at South China Normal University, China. Her research interests focus on the studies of the relationship between body movements and primitive culture.Hu XiaomingHu Xiaoping is a professor at the School of Physical Education and Sports Science in South China Normal University, China. His main research interests are in the area of Anthropology of Sports and sports & recreation

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · China · Literature · Movement (music · Political science · Scholarship · Visual arts · Action Observation and Synchronization · History · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Multisensory perception and integration

• Origins and evolution of Chinese writing systems and preliminary counting relationships

  Open Access•Wei Lu, Max Aiken•Accounting History•2004

  Add to list

• The Anthropology of Sport

  Tsuneo Sogawa, Sōgawa Tsuneo et al.•Asian Folklore Studies•1989

  Add to list

• The Story of Writing

  Kirsten Anne Fudeman, Kirsten Fudeman et al.•Language•1998

  Add to list

• Grounded Cognition

  Lawrence W Barsalou•Annual Review of Psychology•2007

  Add to list

• Early Chinese writing

  William G Boltz•World Archaeology•1986

  Add to list