The four angels standing on the four corners of the earth and the four winds of the earth by season are a same concept in a Shang Oracle Bone inscriptions. By the Yellow River in middle China, there are easterly winds during spring, southerly winds during summer, westerly winds during autumn and an northerly winds during winter. For example, when the Shang people saw the monsoon coming from the east for several days, they believed it shows that the angel of the east had come here, and announced that spring had come and they started farming. Even today the farmers are not only based on the calendar’s date to farm, also check up the new temperature keep for several days. Similarly when the southern monsoon comes and keeps, the Shang people know it is summer. However, due to seasonal lag, May, June, July, August and September are the warmest months in the middle China, it is not generally recognized that the four seasons on the calendar are equal. Two unearthed Shang bone tablets record the names (features) of the four angels on the four corners of the earth and their four winds of the earth, but so far wrongly explaining seven out of the eight characters in the bone script which name the four-end-wind inscription bone tablet. This paper deciphers the following bone scripts: The character Vibrate震 ( ), pictured that a mouth ( ) issues three forces ( ), which means shouting, the god shouting means thunderclap, the dog’s shouting means shock to awe, the belly’s shouting means pregnancy and birth娠. The character for sprout, separating out, spearing out and exploding out is depicted as Xi 析 ( ) , depicting an axe ( ) to a tree ( ). Thus, on the famous four-end-wind inscription bone tablet, the first inscription says 東方曰析，風曰震 “the east angel names Xi ‘dawn or budding’, the spring wind means thunder or birth (or the spring wind angle names thunder)”. The character Assist襄 ( ) is a picture of a host ( ) around two aliens (夷， ) and walk (行 ), it means the host helps the aliens to walk around his land. The picture is also seen as a Multiracial Zone, like a soil in which several grasses root togerther, thus it means Soil 壤. And the multi-race fusion leads culture prosperity, thus it means Rich and Varied 穰. The character Grow 長 ( ) is a person figure with long hair, in which the plant grows in a way similar to the man hair grows. One of the strategies is for the scribe to create a narrative picture (Chinese character) on the parable of the most familiar thing (for example, human body parts). Thus, the second inscription reads 南方曰襄，風曰長 “the south angel names Rich or Assistance, the summer wind means growth”. The character Dye 染 ( ), depicting a tree 木 ( ) with hatching 彡 ( ), it means the tree with multicolors, or dye is made from plants. The character Bride-kidnapping 彝 ( ), depicting two hands holding a girl with her arms back, it means marriage and extends the meaning of the cardinal law. In other perspective, it means Capture, Receive and Harvest 收 ( ). One shape is with two functions in Chinese characters. Thus, the third inscription says 西方曰染，風曰收 “the west angel names Dye or Color, the autumn wind means harvest”. The character Hug, Pack, Wrap and Womb 勹（ ）is a figure of a woman bows down and hugs a baby but the baby is omitted. Similarly a script for riding a horse is depicted as Yi 夷 and Qi 騎 ( ， ， ), the horse is omitted. The character Destroy毀 ( ), composed of an honoust man ( ) under the hand-mallet ( ). Thus, the fourth inscription says 北方曰包，風曰毀 “the north angel names Pack or Seed, the winter wind means destruction”. The first three pairs of characters Sprout-Birth, Enrich-Growth, Colour-Harvest are mutual glossing, the last pair of characters Pack-Destroy is in opposite, which forms a cycle.

Modern attempts to decipher the Shang bone scripts have been hampered by the fundamental assumption that the scripts are recordings of the sound of the language and not ideas. Some phonetic “translations” could be proposed without the possibility of verification, and some graphic “translations” without meanings are seen as the names of sacrificial rituals by previous scholars. Actually, a character is derived from a thought, and the thought is derived from a figuration, while the figuration itself is derived from the graphed object or event. Therefore, the same character can be used in different dialects or languages to depict the same concepts. Based on the bone scripts being ideograms, several bone scripts used frequently for the names of the day were assumed to be the moon phases; thus, the time interval between two corresponding days with its moon phase was calculated for verification. Extensionally, according to the time interval between the two days, and the moon phase recorded on the bone tablets (or bronze wares) and the chronological table of the kings of Shang compiled by the pre vious scholars, the assumptions of the moon phase characters are attested by the calculations of the numbering days of the solunar date. Solunar dates (Chinese: Gan-Zhi 干支) were used to record dates with a cycle of 60 days. Conversely, on consideration of the dates and moon phases for the bone inscription events, the prevous chronology is improved with iterative methed, and we propose new chronology for Shang kings. In addition, through computation, three records of a lunar eclipse on the Shang bronze inscriptions and on the Zhou bronze vessels are newly recognized, which helps to reconstruct the years of the kings of Shang and of the kings of Zhou; the Shang bone calendar’s New Year started from the summer solstice of the year, from the full moon of the lunar phase and from the dawn of the day.

Human sacrifice is a religious practice in which living human individuals are consumed to worship natural and ancestral spirits. Ample evidence of this practice during the Yin-Shang period is furnished by oracle-bone inscriptions, which are extant from ca. 1200 B.C.E. This paper addresses the issue of female human sacrifice in Shang-dynasty oracle-bone inscriptions both from the point of view of religious studies and from a socio-historical perspective. Proceeding from a systematic overview of the various categories of female human sacrifice in the inscriptional record, the paper analyzes the social status and origins of the victims in order to better understand the specific functions and peculiarities of female human sacrifice under the Shang.