Read the paragraph and identify its topic sentence. The ancient Chinese had remarkably advanced ways of writing that had a long-lasting effect on the language. Chinese is one of the oldest written languages, dating to the Shang period (1600 to 1046 BC). Chinese scholars have uncovered written documents from this period that show an early form of present-day Chinese characters. The writing looked more like pictures than the standard characters of today. It consisted of phonetic signs, or signs that mimic human speech. During the Shang period, more than 3,000 characters were in use. Scholars have deciphered about 1,000 of those characters. Considering that modern Chinese uses about 3,500 characters consistently, the ancient Chinese created a written language that has remained relevant and evolved over time.