One character, 3,000 years of redrawing.

Chinese characters began as little pictures carved into bone. Over three millennia the brush rounded them, the state standardized them, and the flat clerical stroke squared them into the forms you read today. Here are ten of them, stage by stage.

甲骨文 Oracle bone · ~1200 BC 金文 Bronze · ~1000 BC 小篆 Seal · 221 BC 隶书 Clerical · ~200 BC 楷书 Regular · ~AD 200