Tsinghua Bamboo Slips

The texts were obtained by illegal excavation, probably of a tomb in the area of Hubei or Hunan province, and were then acquired and donated to the university by an alumnus.

[1][2] On 7 January 2014 the journal Nature announced that a portion of the Tsinghua Bamboo Strips represent "the world's oldest example" of a decimal multiplication table.

Li Xueqin, the director of the conservation and research project, has stated that the wishes of the alumnus to maintain his identity secret will be respected.

Because of the important role the Shang Shu plays in Chinese culture, the discovery of Warring States manuscripts that bear on its formation attracted interest.

Several others "writings-style"[9] manuscripts present in the excavated collection are not found in the received Exalted Writings, either never having been incorporated into the canonical text, or having been lost or removed in the process of transmission.

In the text, San Bu Wei admonishes Qi 啟 (founder of the Xia dynasty) on how to govern, revise punishments, and conduct rituals.

[30] "It helps establish the place-value system, a crucial development in the history of math", as Professor Wen Xing of Dartmouth College explains.

[31] It is presumed that officials used the multiplication table to calculate land surface area, yields of crops and the amounts of taxes owed.