The oldest decision-making system still in use on Earth.

Three thousand years ago — before Rome rose, before the Buddha taught — scholars of the Zhou dynasty compiled the I Ching: 64 hexagrams encoding every situation a human life can meet.

Its true origins are older still, and honestly unknown. Tradition holds that the culture hero Fu Xi read the patterns of heaven and earth and drew the first eight trigrams, some five thousand years ago. No one can prove when. No one can prove who. This is not verifiable history — it is the memory this classic keeps of itself.

We have seen this kind of mystery before. Thirty centuries ago, the people of Sanxingdui raised a bronze sacred tree nearly four meters tall — craftsmanship so refined that it forced scholars to rewrite what they believed about the Bronze Age. Who they were, where they came from, and why they vanished, no one can answer to this day. The origin of the I Ching is the same kind of mystery.

What we know is this: it has never stopped being consulted. Not by emperors. Not by generals. Not by the artists, scientists and psychologists of the modern age.