Chinese philosophy was philosophy written in the Chinese traition of thought. Chinese philosophy has a history of several thousand years; its origins are often traced back to the Yi Jing (the Book of Changes), an ancient compendium of divination, which introduced some of the most fundamental terms of Chinese philosophy. Its age can only be estimated (its first flowering is generally considered to have been in about the 6th century BCE), but it draws on an oral tradition that goes back to neolithic times.