Journal 7

This week I have been mostly working with getting all of the images ready for insertion into the body of the text. The first thing that I did was finish selecting the Shang Primary sources that I would like to use, marking them, and then scanning them. The next part was going through and editing all of the image files and converting them from a PDF format to a JPEG format. I used paint to crop, rotate, and resize all of the pictures so that anyone would be able to see the specific aspects that I want to highlight. The next thing that I did was to continue this procedure to encompass all of the different sources that I will be using through the whole of Chinese history. I was able to get most of my pre-modern sources all organized.

 Although I was able to get most of the image files that I want, I still need to figure out which images that I would like to use for the Ta Wen Kou graphs section. This section is hardest to decide on what images to use because it during the pre-writing stage of Chinese writing. This section is also the most important and the most controversial. Many historians take very specific views on which specific Chinese mini culture's writing became the full writing system that the Shang Dynasty used. From from what I have read and the images that I have looked at I think that the Ta Wen Kou graphs are the mostly likely candidate for the pre-writing stage of Chinese. The most interesting thing about the evolution of the Chinese script is that many candidates abound for the role of the precursor to the full script, and we know that the Shang Dynasty is the final manifestation of this evolutionary period, but there is no in between script. There is a missing link which goes from simple scratches on pottery to full writing. Therefore, it is very hard to tell how the script evolved to the final Shang script.

 As I have been just trying to get everything done as quickly as possible I have become very disorganized. Many of the materials were just saved to my computer in random locations. I spent the remainder of my time organizing all of my sources to make sure that I will have everything that I need in order to make the final product easier to produce. Specifically I was able to organize all of the image files into the separate time periods in which they were created.

 Next week will be the big writing week. As I have much of the sources compiled and much of the background information written I will now be looking at the primary sources and then discussing the implications of the specific sources. I will start to insert the images into the background information that I have already written and then deal with the sources in the order in which they appear in the timeline.