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China’s ancient oracle bones reveal earliest written record of meteor shower 3,000 years ago_我的网站

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    This photo taken on Nov. 18, 2025 shows the Leonid meteor shower seen in Heihe City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. (Photo by Qian Boyu/Xinhua)Chinese archaeologists have pieced together ancient oracle bone fragments to decipher what they say is the earliest written record of a meteor shower, dating back more than 3,000 years and shedding light on astronomical observation in the Shang Dynasty (c.1600BC-1046BC), roughly the Late Bronze Age in the West in which Homer's Odyssey was rooted.
The inscription, found among more than 80,000 fragments, consists of three characters that read "star", "all" and "west," describing a large number of meteors streaking across the night sky and falling westward like rain, Huang Tianshu, a professor at Tsinghua University's Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts, told the Global Times.
"The first character is 'star'… the second means 'all' or 'in batches', depicting meteors falling in large numbers like rain, and the third is 'west,' used as a verb to mean falling westward after crossing the sky," Huang said. "This is important astronomical data recording a meteor shower more than 3,000 years ago."
The team spent years rejoining shattered oracle bones, a process of piecing fragments back together, and only after reassembly did the meaning become clear. 
"Before rejoining, you have no idea what it is saying. Once rejoined, the content becomes largely intact and turns into a very important piece of material for studying history or language," Huang added.
    One piece of ancient Chinese oracle bone Photo: CCTVHuang Dekuan, head of the expert committee for China's national ancient script project, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the record is "the earliest meteor shower documented in Chinese writing," adding that it was a representative achievement that would enable oracle bone inscriptions to be better used as scientific historical sources and push oracle bone studies to a new level.
The discovery is part of a decade long effort that has newly rejoined more than 1,200 groups of fragments, with the results published in a major compendium of oracle bone facsimiles. The research was part of a state-backed project on inheritance and studies of ancient Chinese scripts and civilization, CCTV reported.
The first phase of the national project is about to complete, yielding a string of major findings. These findings provide vital new materials for studying early Chinese civilization and demonstrate the significant value of ancient Chinese characters in the development of Chinese and even human civilizations, per CCTV.
。    4月22日晚，一艘海船擦碰G240国道九江大桥防撞墩，在担杆洲尾水域抢滩不成功沉没，船上共有11名船员，其中7人获救，4人失联正在搜救。　　记者在现场了解到，事故初步调查情况为：　　该海船在下航穿过九江大桥下行通航孔时，可能受西江洪水影响而操作失当，擦碰九江大桥防撞墩后导致货舱进水，随后，该船自行在担干洲尾抢滩坐浅，可能由于坐浅位置选择不当而发生坐沉事故，事故具体原因仍在调查中。　　据了解，该海船为一艘福州籍海船，载运卷钢4907吨，由福州开往鹤山，从鹤山起锚往下游航行。　　21:20航经九江大桥水域时，船体左侧与九江大桥主墩防撞墩发生擦碰，随后坐浅在西江担干洲尾水域。　　23:40之后该船坐沉。　　截至23日9时，当地已协调南海救、海事、渔政及社会救援力量共32艘船艇、400多人参与搜救工作。事故发生后，其中3人第一时间被附近船舶救起，另有4人在23日00:18救起。目前已经救起7人，还有4人失联。　　事故现场暂时未造成水域污染，5艘清污应急船在事发水域附近戒备。　　（总台记者 韩宇皓 杨冠东）。

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