Bamboo slips are the carrier used for recording before the popularization of paper. The dates of bamboo slips discovered now are mainly the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties, the Three Kingdoms, and the Western Jin Dynasty at the latest. Bamboo slips can be woven into a book with string or cowhide rope.
There were bamboo slips in Shang Dynasty. In Zuo Zhuan and Guoyu, people's remarks in the Spring and Autumn Period often refer to "simple strategies". However, the bamboo slips that can be found in modern archaeology are only from the Warring States period, and most of them are bamboo slips of Chu State, such as Guodian bamboo slips, Cili bamboo slips, Shang Bo bamboo slips, Tsinghua bamboo slips and so on.
Bamboo slips were widely used from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to the Qin and Han Dynasties. Around the 4th century AD, bamboo slips were replaced by paper manuscripts because of the widespread use of paper.
Extended data:
Simply speaking, the processing process is to cook the bamboo tube. It is said that it needs to be baked with fire to make it "sweat" and dehydrate, which is called "fixing green" to prevent future deformation, prevent it from being eaten by insects and facilitate writing. Therefore, bamboo slips are also called "historical records", which are extended to books and historical records.
After fixing, the thread can be punched and then passed through the bamboo slips to form a book, or the bamboo slips can be tied directly without punching. Scraping bamboo slips after fixing makes the surface of bamboo slips smooth, which is beneficial to writing.
The processed bamboo chips have two sides: yellow and green. It is usually written on the yellow side (front) and the green side on the back. Some bamboo slips are written on both sides, such as the second kind of Qin bamboo slips, Japanese Book.
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