[[Ten Windows]]: > Oracle bones stand at the beginning of writing as well—in the mythological pantheon of China, as in Greece, the god of divination is also the god who brings writing into existence. Among the earliest remaining abstract markings are those notched upon bones; such artifacts go back at least fifteen thousand and possibly forty thousand years. To imagine the moment of discovery is easy: a person about to discard a femur or rib notices the marks of the hunting axe, or perhaps a row of nicks and scrapings left by the flaked-stone butchering knife, and decides to add to the pattern. Bone, whose hardened calcium enables terrestrial fleetness, is transformed after death into something quite different: a way to make a record at once portable and lasting. The white surface becomes a first, glimmering intimation of paper.