Being separated from one's family and sold
They are more like words and partial sentences. A symbol means an action or event rather then a letter.
If they would be like letters they would have been decrypted a lot easier, it took till the stone of roseta till they decrypted it
D. Robert Smalls
He was an African American slave and gained his freedom and became a ships pilot ,sea captain, and politican
Oracle bones were used during the Shang dynasty to predict the future. The bones were used to process fortune-telling. They were used by Shamans, religious consultants that collaborated with gods and mythical people. The Shamans used the bone's cracks to demonstrate patterns or blemishes to anticipate the future.