Chinese emperors faked prophecies

Chinese emperors were deceiving their people falsifying the results of future divination rituals which helped to decide on future policy and which influenced public opinion, Chinese media reported researchers’ opinion.

During the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC), emperors relied on prophecy and divination to huge extent, using techniques such as burning of turtle shell or cow bones and based their predictions on patterns of cracks distribution, Xinhua agency reported .

The expert of the archaeological laboratory in the province of Henan, Hou Jangfeng said they concluded on the basis of experiments, that basically controlled it was easy to control a crack patterns used for certain prophecies.

- During the Shang Dynasty, the emperor led prophets. Thus, it was possible for him to control people's opinions manipulating prophecies based on falsified predictions out of burnt bones – Hou said.

The archaeologist told Xinhua agency that researches included analysus of 185 replica cow bone fragments and turtle shell and that their work received international recognition.