Ancient forms of writing originating from Asia, dating to the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600-1046 BCE). Chinese calligraphy evolved from pictographs into the many characters that are written today. Early characters or pictographs have been discovered inscribed into pottery or bone dating back over 4000 years ago. There are five main types of Chinese calligraphy: seal script (zhuan-shu); official script know as clerical script (li-shu); block script called regular script or (kai-shu); semi-cursive script called running script (xing-shu); and cursive script known as grass script or (cao-shu).
