I am watching a lecture right now and the professor says that China MAY have received the concept of writing from the Indo-European migrations. He goes on to say that it is very controversial, but the Chinese do not have the evolution of pictographs to writing like the Sumerians did. He says there isn't enough evidence to point one way or another, but it is plausible that the Indo Europeans brought writing to the Chinese.
Just curious as to whether this is true and if so what evidence is there?
It's been suggested before, but there's no evidence. The consensus is that Chinese writing developed independently, in China.
The evidence for the early evolution of Chinese writing is poor. The first clear evidence of writing - the Shang oracle bones - is already a mature writing system that is ancestral to the modern Chinese writing system. It's unlikely that Chinese writing sprang forth fully developed, Athena-like, but evidence for its evolution is lacking.
There are suggestions that earlier symbols, mainly appearing on Neolithic pottery, are precursors to writing. Certainly, there are symbols that can reasonably be believed to be pictographs. The early ones pre-date the Indo-European expansion into China and the adoption of Indo-European cultural elements and technologies by the Chinese. The pictographs may be clan symbols, which were used into the Shang Dynasty; they don't appear to be written text.
There are occasional claims of much older precursors to writing, such as geometric scratch marks on older pottery, including before 8000BP. These are not generally accepted as pictographs or writing.
If these Neolithic symbols are ancestral to Shang writing systems, the idea of writing was indigenous.
the Chinese do not have the evolution of pictographs to writing like the Sumerians did.
We have possible pre-writing pictographs, and we have pictographic writing (Shang characters are often pictographic, e.g., the characters for fish, horse, and elephant are pictures of a fish, a horse, and an elephant). The evolutionary step between the two is missing, probably because it was written on more perishable materials (such as bamboo) than the Shang oracle bones.
Bolt argues that the Chinese writing system developed indigenously, but in the period immediately before the Shang oracle bones. If this is the case, it is possible that the idea of writing came with the Indo-European expansion to the east. However, I know of no evidence that the eastern Indo-Europeans were writing that early (and when they are writing much later, it is with scripts that probably came with the spread of Buddhism). The idea of writing would have had to have, once the more western Indo-Europeans came into contact with writing systems, leapt over the intervening Indo-European cultures all the way to China without leaving a trace of that journey. The simplest explanation is that the Chinese writing system developed in China, and that it did so without the idea of a writing system arriving with the Indo-Europeans.
For Boltz on the evolution of Chinese writing systems:
Boltz, W. (1986), "Early Chinese Writing", World Archaeology 17(3), 420-436. https://www.jstor.org/stable/124705
Boltz, W. (2000), "The Invention of Writing in China", Oriens Extremus 42, 1-17. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24053703 http://oriens-extremus.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/OE42-01.pdf
William G. Boltz, The origin and early development of the Chinese writing system, American Oriental Society, 1994. (I haven't read this, but since Boltz was saying largely the same thing in 1986 and 2000, I guess it's the 200 page version of his 1986 paper.)
For the Neolithic possible precursors,
Demattè, P. (2010), "The Origins of Chinese Writing: The Neolithic Evidence", Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20(2), 211-228. DOI: https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/10.1017/S0959774310000247
Paola Demattè, The Origins of Chinese Writing: Archaeological and Textual Analysis of the Pre-dynastic Evidence, PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1996.
Postscript: Chinese languages show significant Indo-European influence. Beckwith argues - rather controversially to many - that the Chinese languages should be though of as Indo-European creoles, or even be classified as Indo-European languages. If there was good evidence of writing systems among Central Asian Indo-Europeans early enough, the introduction of writing to China via Indo-European contact could explain Boltz's suggested rapid evolution of the Chinese writing system prior to the Shang oracle bones. If Boltz is correct about the rapid evolution, and Demattè wrong about Neolithic precursors. It has been suggested that the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) had writing, but the evidence is much weaker than the Neolithic Chinese evidence - the known "writing" consists of a single seal, the "Anau seal":
So, Chinese writing appears to be completely independent.
Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Princeton University Press, 2009.
John Colarusso, "Remarks on the Anau and Niyu Seals," Sino-Platonic Papers 124, 2002. http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp124_anau_niya_seals.pdf
Fredrik T. Hiebert, "The Context of the Anau Seal," Sino-Platonic Papers 124, 2002. Link as above.