Oracle Bones and Shoulder Blades
A scholar identified inscribed divination bones in 1899, and later excavation dated them to around 1200 BCE, making them the earliest known Chinese writing. A wholly separate researcher later argued that a similar caribou-bone divination practice among a North American people functioned as a randomiser protecting against over-hunting.
Wang Yirong's 1899 identification of Shang oracle bones; the Anyang excavations (1928–37); Omar Khayyam Moore's 1957 study of Naskapi scapulimancy
The much older physical origin of Chinese divination — heating bone or shell until it cracks and reading the pattern — that predates the I Ching's yarrow-stalk method by centuries.