Symbols on painted pottery can be dated back to the Stone Age about 5,000 years ago.
These symbols are the prototypes of Chinese characters.

Oracle bone inscriptions appeared in the 14th century B.C.
Of the 4,600 distinct inscriptions discovered so far, about 1,000 have been deciphered. They had been used to record events in considerably details.
Since then, Chinese characters have evolved in several stages: the Great-Seal Script, the Small-Seal Script, the Clerical Script, and the Regular Script.
By the Eastern Han era, about two thousand years ago, the factor of printing had been in place.

A diagram of the origin and development of Chinese characters	Symbols (late stone Age.)	Inscriptions on oracle bones (earliest Chinese characters, 13th Century B.C.)

Inscriptions were on Tripod Ding	Inscriptions on drum shaped stone blocks (stone inscriptions from the 7th Century B.C.)	LangYa carved stone from Qin Dynasty (in Small-Seal Script.)	Eaves tile