the.com/oracle bones

means Turtle shells and ox bones used in ancient China to ask the gods yes-or-no questions by reading the cracks that heat caused in them, often with the question and sometimes the answer carved right into the surface.

from The practice comes from Shang dynasty China, roughly the second millennium BCE: diviners would carve a question into a cleaned turtle plastron or ox scapula, apply a heated point until the bone cracked, then interpret the pattern of fissures as a divine answer. The modern name is a translation of the Chinese term jiǎgǔwén ('shell-bone script'), coined after farmers in the late 19th century kept digging up inscribed bones near Anyang and selling them as 'dragon bones' to apothecaries, not realizing they were grinding up some of the earliest known Chinese writing. Scholars eventually recognized the carved marks as genuine script, making these the oldest substantial body of Chinese writing yet found.