Bamboo and Wood Slips 竹简与木简

The small-seal script is said to be the first standardised Chinese writing. It also represents the last stage of old Chinese writing. A new writing script known as the clerical script began to change into the standard script (kaishu) during the latter part of the Han dynasty, and in that form became dominant with the advent of printing technology in the late Tang and early Song dynasties.

The early form of clerical script was written on bamboo and wood slips, which are called jian in Chinese, the earliest form of books in China.

The practice of writing on these slips began probably during the Shang Dynasty (l6th -l1th century BC) and lasted till the Eastern Han (AD 25-220), extending over a period of 1,600 -1,700 years.

The Records of the Grand Historian, the first monumental general history written by the great historian Sima Qian(145 or 135 BC – 86 BC), consisting of 520,000 characters in 130 chapters and covering a period of 3,000 years from the legendary Yellow Emperor to Emperor Wudi of the Han, was written on bamboo slips. So were other well-known works of ancient China, including the Book of Songs (the earliest Chinese anthology of poems and songs from 11th century to about 600 B. C.) and Jiuzhang Suanshu (Mathematics in Nine Chapters completed in the 1^st century AD., the earliest book on mathematics in China).

Excavations in 1972 in an ancient tomb of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC – AD 25) at Yinque Mountain, Linyi, a Shandong Province, brought to light 4,924 bamboo slips. They turned out to be hand-written, though incomplete, copies of two of China's earliest books on military strategy and tactics: The Art of War by Sun Zi and The Art of War by Sun Bin. The latter had been missing for at least 1,400 years.

Heavy and clumsy as they were, the ancient books of bamboo and wood played an important part in the dissemination of knowledges in various fields.
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小篆可以说是最早的标准化中文书写系统。它也是古文的最后发展阶段。一种新的隶书字体开始演变，大概在汉朝后期形成楷书。随着印刷技术在后唐初宋期的应用，楷书一直是汉字的主要字体。

最早的隶书字形是书写在竹简与木简上的。这些‘简’就是中国最早的书籍纸张。

以简来书写的习惯可能可以追溯到商朝（公元前16至11世纪）直到汉朝初期（25-220年），共计大约一千七百到八百年的时期。

伟大史学家司马迁所写的52万字与130章的《史记》，中国第一部由神话中的黄帝写到汉朝的武帝的不朽通史，就是写在竹简上的。其他有名的古籍，例如《诗经》（中国最早诗集，收集了公元前11世纪到大约公元600年的诗歌）与《九章算术》（大约写于公元前1世纪，全书有九章，是中国最早的一本数学书本）也是写在‘简’上面的。

1972年在山东临沂银雀山考古挖掘的古汉墓中发现了4924个竹简。这些竹简，虽然不完整，原来是用手书写的两本中国最古老的军事战略与策略书《孙子兵法》和《孙膑兵法》竹简。《孙膑兵法》已经失传了最少1400年。

这些‘简’书虽然很笨重，但是在古代传播不同邻域的知识中，却扮演了重要的角色。