The earliest writing system in the world that we know appeared in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, around the mid-fourth millennium BCE, nearly two millennia earlier than the independently developed Chinese writing system. According to Schmandt-Besserat (1992), the immediate precursor of the earliest script in the Near East was a system of tokens made of small clay counters of many shapes that served for counting goods in prehistoric cultures.

A fully developed writing system is a communication system allowing people to share information without meeting face to face. Writing can also be thought of as a means of social control. Coulmas (1989) observes that the ancient great empires are unthinkable without a writing system because in order to rule a ruler must establish uniform standards and a set of laws in a land which depended on the development of a writing system. Chinese writing has been used for communication and served various political purposes in China, having played a most important role in the development of Chinese civilization in the last three millennia.

The earliest fully developed Chinese writing that we know of today is the inscriptions on turtle shells and oxen shoulder blades, commonly known as oracle-bone script that appeared in the mid-second millennium BCE during the Late Shang dynasty. However, there is no clear evidence that would show what kind of system immediately preceded the oracle-bone script.