Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian characters were invented over 5, 000 years ago and have gone through golden ages of development and use, but only the ancient Chinese characters have survived the test of time and continue to be used.

Ancient Chinese people used simple pictographs to record events or record notes before the Chinese characters were invented. Over time, the pictographs became simplified to a basic outline and developed designs and meanings; this led to the beginning of pictographic characters. By the 14th century a mature system of characters called jiaguwen had developed. About 6,000 characters have been found inscribed on bones and tortoise shells, recording in detail the activities of sacrificial ceremonies and divinations. Most of these characters are pictographs, but the beginning of ideographs and phonographs as they represent abstract ideas and sounds.

The abstractness of Chinese chars was further strengthened and more ideographic and phonographic characters were introduced based on jiaguwen. After 221BC, the first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, took measures to unify and standardize the many different writing styles after he united China. Xiaozhuan, a simplified type of seal characters became commonly used throughout the empire. Xiaozhuan had a simpler structure and was easier to write. These characters were further simplified as lishu characters, a kind of official script. The lishu had fewer strokes and simplified writing, curved strokes became straight strokes. The transformation of xiaozhuan to lishu to completely changed the look of Chinese characters.

From the 4th to the 6th century, Chinese characters became standardized based on the lishu script. Since the 6th century, a formal script called kaishu was popularized all over China. Although the kaishu have seen minor changes, these characters are basically the same Chinese characters in use today.

Chinese calligraphy has seen many artistic and talented giants. They've infused the characters with a rich artistic meaning beyond the meaning of the character itself. The characters themselves have developed deep and subtle meanings, and when coupled with Chinese poetry, the characters themselves become works of art.