section_path: Society and culture
section_name: Society and culture
paragraph_text: Society and culture
  
  Bones from slaughtered animals have a number of uses. In prehistoric times, they have been used for making bone tools. They have further been used in bone carving, already important in prehistoric art, and also in modern time as crafting materials for buttons, beads, handles, bobbins, calculation aids, head nuts, dice, poker chips, pick-up sticks, arrows, scrimshaw, ornaments, etc.
  
  Bone glue can be made by prolonged boiling of ground or cracked bones, followed by filtering and evaporation to thicken the resulting fluid. Historically once important, bone glue and other animal glues today have only a few specialized uses, such as in antiques restoration. Essentially the same process, with further refinement, thickening and drying, is used to make gelatin.
  
  Broth is made by simmering several ingredients for a long time, traditionally including bones.
  
  Bone char, a porous, black, granular material primarily used for filtration and also as a black pigment, is produced by charring mammal bones.
  
  Oracle bone script was a writing system used in ancient China based on inscriptions in bones. Its name originates from oracle bones, which were mainly ox clavicle. The Ancient Chinese (mainly in the Shang dynasty), would write their questions on the oracle bone, and burn the bone, and where the bone cracked would be the answer for the questions.
  
  To point the bone at someone is considered bad luck in some cultures, such as Australian aborigines, such as by the Kurdaitcha.
  
  The wishbones of fowl have been used for divination, and are still customarily used in a tradition to determine which one of two people pulling on either prong of the bone may make a wish.
  
  Various cultures throughout history have adopted the custom of shaping an infant's head by the practice of artificial cranial deformation. A widely practised custom in China was that of foot binding to limit the normal growth of the foot.