The Oracle Bones
In the nineteenth century, villagers near Anyang sold inscribed bones they dug up to pharmacies as 'dragon bones', ground up for medicine. The scholar Wang Yirong, buying some from an antiques dealer, recognised the markings as ancient writing in 1899; how many of the earliest Chinese inscriptions had already been eaten is unknowable.
Xu Yahui, Ancient Chinese Writing: Oracle Bone Inscriptions from the Ruins of Yin (National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2002); Wang Yirong's identification of the inscriptions (1899)
Shang-dynasty ox bones and turtle shells, heated until they cracked, whose patterns diviners read as answers from ancestral spirits.