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* '''[[Gaussian elimination]]''': First published [[Western world|in the West]] by [[Carl Friedrich Gauss]] (1777&ndash;1855) in 1826, the algorithm for [[System of linear equations|solving linear equations]] known as Gaussian elimination is named after this [[Kingdom of Hanover|Hanoverian]] mathematician, yet it was first expressed as the Array Rule in the Chinese ''[[Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art]]'', written at least by 179 AD during the [[Han Dynasty]] (202 BC &ndash; 220 AD) and commented on by the 3rd century mathematician [[Liu Hui]].<ref>Needham (1986), Volume 3, 24&ndash;25, 121.</ref><ref>Shen, Crossley, and Lun (1999), 388.</ref><ref>Straffin (1998), 166.</ref>
* '''[[Gaussian elimination]]''': First published [[Western world|in the West]] by [[Carl Friedrich Gauss]] (1777&ndash;1855) in 1826, the algorithm for [[System of linear equations|solving linear equations]] known as Gaussian elimination is named after this [[Kingdom of Hanover|Hanoverian]] mathematician, yet it was first expressed as the Array Rule in the Chinese ''[[Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art]]'', written at least by 179 AD during the [[Han Dynasty]] (202 BC &ndash; 220 AD) and commented on by the 3rd century mathematician [[Liu Hui]].<ref>Needham (1986), Volume 3, 24&ndash;25, 121.</ref><ref>Shen, Crossley, and Lun (1999), 388.</ref><ref>Straffin (1998), 166.</ref>

* '''[[Gimbal|Gimbal ('Cardan' suspension)]]''': Around 180 AD, the [[Han Dynasty]] (202 BC &ndash; 220 AD) inventor [[Ding Huan]] (丁緩)—who also created a [[Fan (mechanical)|rotary fan]] and [[zoetrope]] lamp—invented a 'Perfume Burner for use among Cushions', or 'Bedclothes Censer'.<ref name="needham volume 4 part 2 233">Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 233.</ref> This [[Censer|incense burner]] had a series of metal rings which could be moved in any direction while the burner in the middle remained constantly level.<ref name="needham volume 4 part 2 233"/> This is the first clear reference to the gimbal, although there is a hint in the writing of [[Sima Xiangru]] (179&ndash;117 BC) that this device existed in the 2nd century BC (i.e., 'the metal rings burning perfume').<ref>Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 233&ndash;234.</ref> The gimbal incense burner is mentioned in subsequent dynasties, while silverwork specimens of gimbal incense burners from the [[Tang Dynasty]] (618&ndash;907) still exist.<ref name="needham volume 4 part 2 234 235">Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 234&ndash;235.</ref> In the [[Liang Dynasty]] (502&ndash;557) there is mention of gimbals used in hinges for doors and windows, while an unnamed artisan presented a warming [[stove]] to [[Wu Zetian]] (r. 690&ndash;705) in 692 which employed gimbals to keep it constantly balanced.<ref name="needham volume 4 part 2 234">Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 234.</ref> Gimbals used for portable stoves were known in the [[Muslim world|Islamic world]] and [[Middle Ages|Medieval Europe]] by the 13th century, and were even mentioned in the work of [[Villard de Honnecourt]] (c. 1237).<ref name="needham volume 4 part 2 229">Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 229.</ref> Earlier in the 9th century a [[recipe]] book called ''Little Key of Painting'' ([[Latin]]: ''Mappae Clavicula'') mentioned a vase surrounded by rings which allowed it to be undisturbed when in a rolling motion.<ref>Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 229 & 231.</ref> In about 1500, [[Leonardo da Vinci]] (1452&ndash;1519) sketched a set of gimbals in a plan for a ship's compass, while such a design became common in the 17th century.<ref name="needham volume 4 part 2 229"/> An [[azimuth]] [[compass]] with an adjustable [[gnomon]] mounted in gimbals was used in China by at least the 18th century during the [[Qing Dynasty]] (1644&ndash;1912), which could allow navigators to precisely determine [[magnetic declination]] at sea.<ref>Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 229 & 232.</ref> The gimbal is also known as the 'Cardan' suspension after [[Gerolamo Cardano]] (1501&ndash;1576).<ref>Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 228&ndash;229.</ref>


* '''[[Go (board game)]]''': Although ancient Chinese legend (perhaps contrived during the [[Han Dynasty]]) has it that the [[Yao (ruler)|mythological ruler Yao]] came down to earth [[Tian|from the Heavens]] around 2200 BC carrying with him a ''go'' board and stone player's pieces, it is known from existing literature that the ''go'' board game existed since at least the 10th century BC during the [[Zhou Dynasty]] (c. 1050&ndash;256 BC) and was even mentioned in writing by the philosophers [[Confucius]] (551&ndash;479 BC) and [[Mencius]] (371&ndash;289 BC), although the latter two had a slightly negative opinion of it.<ref>Lasker (1960), xiii.</ref><ref>Shotwell, Yang, and Chatterjee (2003), 133.</ref>
* '''[[Go (board game)]]''': Although ancient Chinese legend (perhaps contrived during the [[Han Dynasty]]) has it that the [[Yao (ruler)|mythological ruler Yao]] came down to earth [[Tian|from the Heavens]] around 2200 BC carrying with him a ''go'' board and stone player's pieces, it is known from existing literature that the ''go'' board game existed since at least the 10th century BC during the [[Zhou Dynasty]] (c. 1050&ndash;256 BC) and was even mentioned in writing by the philosophers [[Confucius]] (551&ndash;479 BC) and [[Mencius]] (371&ndash;289 BC), although the latter two had a slightly negative opinion of it.<ref>Lasker (1960), xiii.</ref><ref>Shotwell, Yang, and Chatterjee (2003), 133.</ref>

Revision as of 18:21, 19 August 2008

A four-horse chariot with a parasol from the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang's tomb (interred by 210 BC); the Chinese were the first to invent the collapsible umbrella.

China has been the source of some of the world's most significant inventions, including the Four Great Inventions of ancient China: paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing (both woodblock and movable type). The list below contains these and other inventions which first appeared in China. It does not include foreign-born technologies which the Chinese cultural realm acquired through contact, such as the windmill from the Islamic Middle East or the telescope from Early modern Europe. It also does not include technologies which were originally invented elsewhere but were later invented separately by the Chinese in their own right, such as the chain pump and odometer. Since there is no evidence that the Chinese were the first to invent writing or the calendar, Chinese inventions such as Chinese writing and the Chinese calendar do not need to be mentioned or described. The same may be applied to articles like Chinese opera, Chinese mathematics, and Chinese architecture. This is also not a list of Chinese discoveries of natural phenomena which can be found in the human body, other organisms, the environment of the world, and the immediate solar system.

The Chinese invented original technologies involving mechanics, hydraulics, and mathematics applied to horology, metallurgy, astronomy, agriculture, engineering, music theory, craftsmanship, nautics, and warfare. By the Warring States Period (403–221 BC), the Chinese had advanced metallurgic technology, including the blast furnace and cupola furnace, while the finery forge and puddling process were known by the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). The rise of a sophisticated economic system in China gave birth to inventions such as the use of paper money during the Song Dynasty (960–1279). The invention of gunpowder by at least the 10th century led to an array of unique inventions such as the fire lance, land mine, naval mine, the hand cannon, exploding cannonballs, and the multistage rocket. With the navigational aid of the 11th-century compass and ability to steer at high sea with the 1st-century sternpost rudder, premodern Chinese sailors sailed as far as East Africa and Egypt.[1][2][3] In regards to mechanical clockworks, the premodern Chinese had used the escapement mechanism since the 8th century and the endless power-transmitting chain drive in the 11th century.

The contemporaneous Peiligang and Pengtoushan cultures represent the oldest Neolithic cultures of China and were formed sometime around 7000 BC.[4] Some of the first inventions of Neolithic, pre-historic China include semilunar and rectangular stone knives, stone hoes and spades, the cultivation of millet, rice and the soybean, the refinement of sericulture, the building of rammed earth structures with lime-plastered house floors, the creation of the potter's wheel, the creation of pottery with cord-mat-basket designs, the creation of pottery tripods and pottery steamers, and the development of ceremonial vessels and scapulimancy for purposes of divination.[5][6] Francesca Bray argues that the domestication of the ox and buffalo during the Longshan culture (c. 3000 – c. 2000 BC) period, the absence of Longshan-era irrigation or high-yield crops, full evidence of Longshan cultivation of dry-land cereal crops which gave high yields "only when the soil was carefully cultivated," suggest that the plow was known at least by the Longshan culture period and explains the high agricultural production yields which allowed the rise of Chinese civilization during the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC).[7] With later inventions such as the multiple-tube seed drill and heavy moldboard iron plow, China's agricultural output could sustain a much larger population.

Four Great Inventions

The following is a list of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China—as designated by the late Joseph Needham (1900–1995)—in the chronological order that they were established in China.

Paper

Fragments of hemp wrapping paper dated to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (141–87 BC)
The Diamond Sutra, the oldest printed book, published in 868 AD during the Tang Dynasty (618–907)
An illustration published in Wang Zhen's (fl. 1290–1333) book of 1313 AD showing movable type characters arranged by rhyme scheme in round table compartments

Although it is recorded that the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) court eunuch Cai Lun (c. 50–121 AD) invented the papermaking process and established the use of new raw materials used in making paper, ancient padding and wrapping paper artifacts dating to the 2nd century BC have been found in China, the oldest example of paper being a map from Fangmatan, Tianshui;[8] by the 3rd century, paper as a writing medium was in widespread use, replacing traditional but more expensive writing mediums such as strips of bamboo rolled into threaded scrolls, scrolls and strips of silk, wet clay tablets hardened later in a furnace, and wooden tablets (use of oracle bones as a writing medium died out after the Shang Dynasty).[9][10][11][12][13] The earliest known piece of paper with writing on it was discovered in the ruins of a Chinese watchtower at Tsakhortei, Alxa League, where Han Dynasty troops had deserted their position in 110 AD following a Xiongnu attack.[14] In the papermaking process established by Cai in 105, a boiled mixture of mulberry tree bark, hemp, old linens, and fish nets created a pulp that was pounded into paste and stirred with water; a wooden frame sieve with a mat of sewn reeds was then dunked into the mixture, which was then shaken and then dried into sheets of paper that were bleached under the exposure of sunlight; K.S. Tom says this process was gradually improved through leaching, polishing and glazing to produce a smooth, strong paper.[11][12]

Printing

Woodblock printing: The earliest confirmed specimen of woodblock printing is a miniature dharani Buddhist sutra bearing extinct Chinese writing characters used only during the reign of China's only self-ruling empress, Wu Zetian (r. 690–705), dated no earlier than 704 and preserved in a Silla Korean temple stupa built in 751.[15] However, the earliest known book printed at regular size is the Diamond Sutra made during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), a 5.18 m (17 ft) long scroll which bears the date 868 AD, or the "fifteenth day of the fourth moon of the ninth year" of Emperor Yizong's rule (859–873).[16] Joseph Needham and Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin write that the cutting and printing techniques used for the delicate calligraphy of the Diamond Sutra book are much more advanced and refined than the miniature dharani sutra printed earlier.[16] The two oldest Chinese calendars printed have been found in the Buddhist pilgrimage site at Dunhuang, dated 877 and 882; Patricia Ebrey writes that it is no surprise that some of the earliest printed items were calendars, since the Chinese found it necessary to calculate and mark which days were auspicious and which were not.[16][17]

Movable type: The polymath scientist and official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) was the first to describe the process of movable type printing in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088, attributing this innovation to a little-known artisan named Bi Sheng (990–1051).[18][19][20][21] With the use of fired clay characters, Shen described Bi's technical process of making the type, type-setting, printing, and breaking up the type for further use.[22][21] Bi had experimented with wooden type characters, but their use was not perfected until 1297 to 1298 with the model of the official Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333) of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), who also arranged written characters by rhyme scheme on the surface of round table compartments.[23][19] It was not until 1490 with the printed works of Hua Sui (1439–1513) of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) that the Chinese perfected metal movable type characters, namely bronze.[24][25] The Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) scholar Xu Zhiding of Tai'an, Shandong developed vitreous enamel movable type printing in 1718.[26]

Effects on bookbinding: The advent of printing in the 9th century revolutionized bookbinding, as late Tang Dynasty paper books evolved from rolled scrolls of paper into folded leaves like a pamphlet, which developed further in the Song Dynasty (960–1279) into 'butterfly' bindings with leaves of paper folded down the center like a common book, then during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) wrapped back bindings had two edges of the leaves attached to the spine and secured with a stiff paper cover on the back, and during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) books finally had thread-stitched bindings in the back.[27] It was not until the early 20th century that traditional Chinese thread-stitched bookbinding was replaced by Western-style bookbinding, a parallel to the replacement of traditional Chinese print methods with the modern printing press, in the tradition of Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–1468).[28]

Gunpowder

The earliest artistic depiction of a fire lance gunpowder weapon, a painting at Dunhuang, dated Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907–960 AD)

Although evidence of gunpowder's first use in China comes from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907–960),[29] the earliest known recorded recipes for gunpowder were written by Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du, and Yang Weide in the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript compiled in 1044 during the Song Dynasty (960–1279); the gunpowder formulas described were used in incendiary bombs lobbed from catapults, thrown down from defensive walls, or lowered down the wall by use of iron chains operated by a swape lever;[30][31][32] bombs launched from trebuchet catapults mounted on forecastles of naval ships ensured the victory of Song over Jin forces at the Battle of Caishi in 1161, while the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) used gunpowder bombs during their failed invasion of Japan in 1274 and 1281;[31] during the 13th and 14th centuries, gunpowder formulas became more potent (with nitrate levels of up to 91%) and gunpowder weaponry more advanced and deadly, as evidenced in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) military manuscript Huolongjing compiled by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Ji (1311–1375), completed sometime before the latter's death with a preface added by the former in a 1412 Nanyang publication of the work.[33]

Compass

A model in Kaifeng of a Chinese ladle-and-bowl type compass used for geomancy in the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). The historical authenticity of the model has been questioned.[34]

In San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, Veracruz, Mexico, an ancient hematite artifact from the Olmec era dating roughly 1000 BC indicates the possible use of the lodestone compass in Central America long before it was described in China, yet the Olmecs did not have iron which the Chinese would discover could be magnetized by contact with lodestone.[35] The Chinese by the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) began using north-south oriented lodestone ladle-and-bowl shaped compasses for divination and geomancy and not yet for navigation;[36][37][38] However, it should be pointed out that in the Louen-heng text, on which Tchang Yin-lin and Wang Tchen-touo based their hypothesis, there is no explicit mention of a magnet.[34] the polymath official and inventor Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) was the first to accurately describe both magnetic declination and the magnetic needle compass in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088, while the author Zhu Yu (fl. 12th century) was the first to mention use of the compass specifically for navigation at sea in his book published in 1119.[39][40][41][42][37][20][43] Even before this, however, the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript compiled by 1044 described a thermoremanence compass of heated iron or steel shaped as a fish and placed in a bowl of water which produced a weak magnetic force; the Wujing Zongyao recorded that it was used as a pathfinder along with the South Pointing Chariot.[44][45] bum

Pre-Shang

Inventions which originated in what is now China during the Neolithic age and pre-historic Bronze age are listed in alphabetical order below.

A bronze ritual bell, Zhou Dynasty, 10th to 9th century BC
  • Bell: Clapper-bells made of pottery have been found in several archaeological sites; 1 in a Yangshao site at Dahecun, Henan; 1 in a Daxi site at Yijiashan, Hubei; 7 in the Majiayao sites in Gansu; 2 in the Longshan sites at Baiying and Wadian, Henan; 1 in a Shijiahe site at Tianmen, Hubei; 2 in a Qijia site at Dahezhuang, Gansu.[46] The earliest metal bells, with one found in the Taosi site, and four in the Erlitou site, dated to about 2000 BC, may have been derived from the earlier pottery prototype.[47] Early bells not only have an important role in generating metal sound, but arguably played a prominent cultural role. With the emergence of other kinds of bells during the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC), they were relegated to subservient functions; at Shang and Zhou sites, they are also found as part of the horse-and-chariot gear and as collar-bells of dogs.[48]
  • Coffin, rectangular wooden: The earliest evidence of wooden coffin remains, dating from the 5000 BC are found in the Tomb 4 at Beishouling, Shaanxi. Clear evidence of wooden coffin in forms of rectangular shape are found in Tomb 152 in an early Banpo site. The Banpo coffin belongs to a four years old girl, measuring 1.4 m (4.5 ft) by 0.55 m (1.8 ft) and 3–9 cm thick. By 3000 BC, as much as 10 wooden coffins are found in the late phase of Dawenkou culture (4100–2600 BC) site at Chengzi, Shandong.[49][50] The thickness of a wooden coffin composing by more than one timber frame also emphasized the level of nobility, as mentioned in the Classic of Rites,[51] Xunzi[52] and Zhuangzi,[53] and have been found at several Neolithic sites; double coffin, consisting an outer and inner coffins, with the earliest finds in the Liangzhu culture (3400–2250 BC) site at Puanqiao, Zhejiang; triple coffin, consisting of two outer and one inner coffins, are found in the Longshan culture (3000–2000 BC) sites at Xizhufeng and Yinjiacheng in Shandong.[54] The double coffin remained used during the Warring States Period (403–221 BC), such as the lacquered double coffin of Marquis Yi of Zeng,[55] and have also found in an archaeologial site of Xiongnu's aristocracy in Inner Mongolia.[56]
  • Drum, alligator hide: Drums (made from clay) have been found over a board area at the Neolithic sites from modern Shandong in the east to Qinghai in the west, dating to a period of 5500–2350 BC. In literary records, drums manifested shamanistic characteristics and were often used in ritual ceremonies.[57] Drums covered with alligator skin for ceremonial use are mentioned in the Shijing.[58][59] During the archaic period, alligators probably lived along the east coast of China, including southern Shandong. The earliest alligator drums, comprising a wooden frame covered with alligator skin are found in the archaeological sites at Dawenkou (4100 BC – 2600 BC), as well as serveral sites of Longshan (3000 BC – 2000 BC) in Shandong and Taosi (2300 BC – 1900 BC) in southern Shanxi.[60]
Chinese rice wine containers
A red lacquerware food tray with gold foil engraving, 12th to early 13th century, Song Dynasty
  • Fermented beverage: Archaeologists have discovered residue of a fermented beverage that was 9,000-years old in pottery jars from the Neolithic site of Jiahu, Henan.[61][62][63][64] Chemical tests (including gas and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, and stable isotope analysis) have revealed a fermented beverage of hawthorn fruit and wild grape, beeswax associated with honey, and rice. Herbal wine and a filtered rice or millet beverage was found 5000 years later in sealed Shang and Western Zhou bronze containers and has been identified as containing specialized rice or millet, flavored with herbs, flowers, and possibly tree resins.[65][64] It was found that the chemical composition of the samples is similar to those in modern rice, rice wine, grape wine, beehive wax, tannins, several herbal medicines and hawthorn.[66]
  • Fork: The fork had been used in China long before the chopstick; a bone fork has been discovered by archaeologists at a burial site of the early Bronze Age Qijia culture (2400–1900 BC), and forks have been found in tombs of the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC) and subsequent Chinese dynasties.[67]
  • Lacquer: Lacquer was used in China since the Neolithic period and came from a substance extracted from the lac tree found in China.[68] A red wooden bowl, which is believed to be the earliest known lacquer container,[69] was unearthed at a Hemudu (c. 5000 BC – c. 4500 BC) site.[70] Michael Loewe says coffins at many early Bronze Age sites seem to have been lacquered, and articles of lacquered wood may also have been common, but the earliest well-preserved examples of lacquer come from Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771–256 BC) sites.[71] However, Wang Zhongshu disagrees, stating that the oldest well-preserved lacquerware items come from a Xiajiadian (c. 2000 – c. 1600 BC) site in Liaoning excavated in 1977, the items being red lacquered vessels in the shape of Shang Dynasty bronze gu vessels.[70] Wang states that many lacquerware items from the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC), such as fragments of boxes and basins, were found, and had black designs such as the Chinese dragon and taotie over a red background.[70] Queen Fu Hao (died c. 1200 BC) was buried in a lacquered wooden coffin.[72] There were three imperial workshops during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) established solely for the purpose of crafting lacquerwares; fortunately for the historian, Han lacquerware items were inscribed with the location of the workshop where they were produced and the date they were made, such as a lacquerware beaker found in the Han colony in northwestern Korea with the inscription stating it was made in a workshop near Chengdu, Sichuan and dated precisely to 55 AD.[73]
  • Millet, cultivation of: The discovery in northern China of domesticated varieties of broomcorn and foxtail millet from 8500 BC, or earlier, suggests that millet cultivation might have predated that of rice in parts of Asia.[74] Clear evidence of millet began to cultivate by 6500 BC at sites of Cishan, Peiligang, and Jiahu.[75] Archaeological remains from Cishan sum up to over 300 storeage pits, 80 with millet remains, with a total millet storage capacity estimated for the site of about 100,000 kg of grain.[76] By 4000 BC, most Yangshao areas were using an intensive form of foxtail millet cultivation, complete with storage pits and finely prepared tools for digging and harvesting the crop. The success of the early Chinese millet farmers is still reflected today in the DNA of many east Asian populations, such studies have shown that the ancestors of those farmers probably arrived in the area between 30,000 and 20,000 BP, and their bacterial haplotypes are still found in today populations throughout eastern Asia.[77]
Lamian noodles, similar to the 4,000-year-old noodles made from millet found at Lajia
File:OracleSun.JPG
An oracle bone shard from the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC) with writing (in oracle bone script) inquiring the divine on whether or not it will rain that day
Rice terrace farming in Longji, Guangxi, China
  • Noodle: In 2005, an archaeological excavation at the Lajia site of the Qijia culture (2400–1900 BC) revealed 4,000-year-old noodles made of millet (instead of traditional wheat flour) preserved by an upturned earthenware bowl that had created a vacuum between it and the sediment it was found on; the noodles resemble the traditional lamian noodle of China, which is made by "repeatedly pulling and stretching the dough by hand," according to a BBC News report on the find.[78]
  • Plastromancy: The earliest use of turtle shells comes from the archaeological site in Jiahu site. The shells, containing small pebbles of various size, color, and quantity, were drilled with small holes, suggesting that each pair of them was tied together originally. Similar finds have also been found in the Dawenkou burial sites of about 4000–3000 BC, as well as in Henan, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Shaanxi.[82] The turtle-shell shakers for the most part are made of the shell of land turtles,[83] identified as Cuora flavomarginata.[84] These rattles have been unearthed in quantity, with 70 being found in the Jiahu site, and another 52 being found in the Dawenkou culture sites at Dadunzi, Jiangsu, and type site, Liulin and Wangyin in Shandong.[46] Archaeologists believe that these shells were used either as rattles in ceremonial dances, shamantic healing tools or ritual paraphernalia for divinational purposes.[85]
  • Plowshare, triangular-shaped: Triangular-shaped stone plowshares are found at the sites of Majiabang culture dated to 3500 BC around Lake Taihu. Plowshares have also been discovered at the nearby Liangzhu and Maqiao sites roughly dated to the same period. David R. Harris says this indicates that more intensive cultivation in fixed, probably bunded, fields had developed by this time. According to Mu Yongkang and Song Zhaolin’s classification and methods of use, the triangular plow assumed many kinds and were the departure from the Hemudu and Luojiajiao spade, with the Songze small plough in mid-process. The post-Liangzhu plows used draft animals.[86][87]
  • Rice, cultivation of: In 2002, a Chinese and Japanese group reported the discovery in eastern China of fossilized phytoliths of domesticated rice apparently dating back to 11,900 BC or earlier. However, phytolith data are controversial in some quarters due to potential contamination problems.[88] It is likely that demonstrated rice was cultivated in the middle Yangtze Valley by 7000 BC, as shown in finds from the Pengtoushan culture at Bashidang, Changde, Hunan. By 5000 BC, rice had been domesticated at Hemudu culture near the Yangtze Delta and was being cooked in pots.[89] Although millet remained the main crop in northern China throughout history, several sporadic attempts were made by the state to introduce rice around the Bohai Gulf as early as 1st century.[90] At present, rice remains the main diet in southern and northeastern China as well as Korea and Japan.
  • Salt, use of: The earliest salt use is argued to have taken place on Lake Yuncheng, Shanxi by 6000 BC.[91] Strong archaeological evidence of salt making dating to 2000 BC is found in the ruins of Zhongba at Chongqing. The historical records show that salt and iron monopolies often provided the bulk of state revenue, and remained important to state finance until the 20th century.[92][93] The Discourse on Salt and Iron, written by Huan Kuan during the 1st century BC relates a debate on the state monopoly over salt and iron production and distribution.
Ladies processing new silk, early 12th century painting in the style of Zhang Xuan, Song Dynasty
  • Soybean, cultivation of: The cultivation of soybeans began in the eastern half of northern China by 2000 BC, but is almost certainly much older.[96] Liu et al (1997) stated that soybean was first originated in China and was domesticated about 3500 BC.[97] By the 5th century, soybeans were being cultivated in much of eastern Asia, but the crop did not move beyond this region until well into the 20th century.[98] Written records of the cultivation and use of the soybean in China date back at least as far as the Western Zhou Dynasty.[99]
  • Treetrunk coffin: The treetrunk coffin, single trunk coffin or boat coffin was one of the common burials found mainly in the southern China. One of the few earliest boat coffins are found among the 92 burial tombs in the Songze culture (4000–3000 BC) site at Jiaxing, Zhejiang, similar finds can also be found in the middle phase of Dawenkou culture (4100–2600 BC) sites.[54] In 2006, a treetrunk coffin measuring 6.84 m in length, dating back to the Warring States Period (403–221 BC), are found in a site at Chengdu, Sichuan.[100]
A basin cover for a "coffin urn" from the Neolithic Yangshao culture (c. 5000 – c. 3000 BC), used for the burial of a child, from Shaanxi
  • Urn, pottery burial: The first evidence of pottery urn dating from about 7000 BC comes from the early Jiahu site, where a total of 32 burial urns are found,[101] another early finds are in Laoguantai, Shaanxi.[54] There are about 700 burial urns unearthed over the Yangshao (5000–3000 BC) areas and consisting more than 50 varieties of form and shape. The burial urns were used mainly for childs, but also sporadically for adults, as shown in the finds at Yichuan, Lushan and Zhengzhou in Henan.[49] A secondary burials containing bones from child or adult are found in the urns in Hongshanmiao, Henan.[102] Small hole was drilled in most of the child and adult burial urns, and is believe to enable the spirit to access.[103] It is recorded in the Classic of Rites that the earthenware coffins were used in the time of legendary period,[104] the tradition of burying in pottery urns lasted until the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) when it gradually disappered.[54] Most of the burial urns, starting from the Warring States Period (403–221 BC), are found in areas of Hebei and Liaoning.[105]
  • Vessel, use of skull as: The earliest archaeological evidence of vessels made of human skulls comes from a Longshan culture (3000 BC–2000 BC) site at Jiangou, Handan, where two were found.[106] Another one at the northeastern quarter of the Bronze Age Erligang site dated to 1460–1384 BC,[107] included refuse deposit of about 100 human skulls, mostly of young males that were sawn open at brow level.[108][109] Most of those skull vessels were contributed from prisoners of war and were used in rituals for ancestor worship during the early Shang Dynasty. In literary records, writings concerning the use of skull vessel comes from the Lushi Chunqiu, Hanfeizi, Huainanzi, Shiji, Shuoyuan and Zhan Guo Ce, which includes a reference to Zhibo (d. 455 BC), whose skull was made into a drinking cup by his enemy after being killed.[106][110]

Shang and later

Inventions which made their first appearance in China after the Neolithic age, specifically during and after the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC), are listed in alphabetical order below.

A

  • Acupuncture: Acupuncture, the traditional Chinese medicinal practice of inserting needles into specific points of the body for therapeutic purposes and relieving pain, was first mentioned in the Huangdi Neijing compiled from the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC (Warring States Period to Han Dynasty).[111] The oldest known acupuncture needles made of gold, found in the tomb of Liu Sheng (d. 113 BC), date to the Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD); the oldest known stone-carved depiction of acupuncture was made during the Eastern Han (25–220 AD); the oldest known bronze statue of an acupuncture mannequin dates to 1027 during the Song Dynasty (960–1279).[112] Acupuncture is still used to treat pediatric nocturnal enuresis, i.e. bedwetting.[113]
Bronze mirror of the Sui Dynasty (581–618) showing the twelve divisions of the Chinese zodiac
Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–617), in a posthumous portrait painting by the Tang artist Yan Liben (600–673); he had automatic-opening doors installed in the private studies of his palatial library
  • Animal zodiac: The earliest and most complete version of the animal zodiac mentions twelve animals which differ slightly (for instance, the dragon is absent, represented by a worm).[114] Each animal matches the earthly branches and were written on bamboo slips from Shuihudi, dated to the late 4th century BC,[115] as well as from Fangmatan, dating to the late 3rd century BC.[115] Before these archaeological finds, the Lun Heng written by Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 AD) during the 1st century provided the earliest transmitted example of a complete duodenary animal cycle.[116]
  • Automatic opening doors, foot-activated trigger: Emperor Yang (r. 604–617) of the Sui Dynasty (581–618) had a private library installed in the Guanwen Hall of the palace at the capital of Daxing (modern Xi'an), having a total of fourteen studies with luxurious apparel and furniture.[127] At every third study there was a square door with curtains suspended above it as well as two figurine statues of flying immortals.[127] In the emperor's entourage were serving maids holding "perfume burners"; as he walked towards any of these entrances, they would walk in front of him and press their feet down on a trigger mechanism which not only caused the flying immortals to sweep down and pull the curtains out of the way, but made the door-halves swing backwards and open as well as all the cabinet doors to the book cases within the study.[127] When the emperor exited the study, the trigger was activated again and everything returned to its closed original state.[127] It should be noted the Chinese were not the first to invent automatic opening doors. The first known automatic opening doors were made for a 1st century Roman temple designed by Heron of Alexandria (c. 10–70 AD), although his did not involve a foot-activated trigger mechanism,[127] but worked with the aid of steam power.[128]

B

Huizi currency, issued in 1160
Blast furnace bellows operated by waterwheels, from a book published by Wang Zhen in 1313, Yuan Dynasty
A print illustration from an encyclopedia published in 1637 by Song Yingxing (1587–1666), showing two men working a blast furnace on the right and the puddling process on the left.
A modern toothbrush; the pig bristle version of this existed in China by the late 15th century
Chinese river ships from Along the River During Qingming Festival, by Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145), Song Dynasty
  • Banknote: Paper currency was first developed in China. Its roots were in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), as merchants and wholesalers desired to avoid the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions.[129][130][131] During the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the central government adopted this system for their monopolized salt industry, but a gradual reduction in copper production—due to closed mines and an enormous outflow of Song-minted copper currency into the Japanese, Southeast Asian, Western Xia, and Liao Dynasty economies—encouraged the Song government in the early 12th century to issue government-printed paper currency alongside copper to ease the demand on their state mints and debase the value of copper.[132] In the early 11th century, the Song Dynasty government authorized sixteen private banks to issue notes of exchange in Sichuan, but in 1023 the government commandeered this enterprise and set up an agency to supervise the manufacture of banknotes there.[133] The earliest paper currency was limited to certain regions and could not be used outside specified bounds, but once paper was securely backed by gold and silver stores, the Song Dynasty government initiated a nationwide paper currency, sometime between 1265 and 1274.[131] The concurrent Jin Dynasty (1115–1234) also printed paper banknotes by at least 1214.[134]
  • Bellows, hydraulic-powered: Although it is unknown if metallurgic bellows (i.e. air-blowing device) in the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) were of the leather bag type or the wooden fan type found in the later Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), the Eastern Han official Du Shi (d. 38 AD) applied the use of rotating waterwheels to power the bellows of his blast furnace smelting iron, a method which continued in use in China thereafter, as evidenced by subsequent records; it is a significant invention in that iron production yields were increased and it employed all the necessary components for converting rotary motion into reciprocating motion.[135][136][137][125][138]
  • Belt drive: The mechanical belt drive, with a large wheel and small pulley, was first mentioned by the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) author Yang Xiong (53–18 BC) in 15 BC, used for a quilling machine that wound silk fibers on to bobbins for weavers' shuttles.[139] It was also featured in a Three Kingdoms era book of 230–232, and was not only later refined as the chain drive, but is an essential component to the invention of the spinning wheel.[140] In 1090, Qin Guan's book on textiles and sericulture written during the Song Dynasty (960–1279) described a mechanical belt drive for a silk-reeling device.[141] An illustration of a woman operating a multiple-spindle spinning wheel with a continuous driving belt is featured in the Book of Agriculture published in 1313 by Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333).[142] This silk-handling machinery was a type of flyer which laid thread evenly on reels.[143] By the 14th century, hydraulic power was applied to spinning mills in China for this purpose.[143]
  • Blast furnace: Although cast iron tools and weapons have been found in China dating to the 5th century BC, the earliest discovered Chinese blast furnaces, which produced pig iron that could be remelted and refined as cast iron in the cupola furnace, date to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, while the vast majority of early blast furnace sites discovered date to the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) period immediately following 117 BC with the establishment of state monopolies over the salt and iron industries during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BC); most ironwork sites discovered dating before 117 BC acted merely as foundries which made castings for iron that had been smelted in blast furnaces elsewhere in remote areas far from population centers.[144][145]
  • Borehole drilling: By at least the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), the Chinese used deep borehole drilling for mining and other projects, such as using a derrick to lift liquid brine to the surface through a bamboo pipeline that led to a distilling furnace (which Michael Loewe says was possibly heated by natural gas) where salt could be processed; scenes of this entire process are featured in artwork on Han tomb brick reliefs of Sichuan province, while Loewe states that borehole sites could reach as deep as 600 m (2000 ft).[146] A Western Han Dynasty bronze foundry discovered in Xinglong, Hebei had nearby mining shafts (built to extract copper which could be smelt with tin to make bronze) which reached depths of 100 m (328 ft) into the earth with spacious mining areas; the shafts and rooms were complete with a timber frame, ladders, and iron tools.[147][148]
  • Bristle toothbrush: According to a Library of Congress website, the Chinese have used the bristle toothbrush since 1498, during the reign of the Hongzhi Emperor (r. 1487–1505) of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644); it also adds that the toothbrush was not mass-produced until 1780, when they were sold by a William Addis of Clerkenwald, England.[149] In accordance with the Library of Congress website, scholar John Bowman also writes that the bristle toothbrush using pig bristles was invented in China during the 1490s.[25] While Bonnie L. Kendall agrees with this, she noted that a predecessor existed in ancient Egypt in the form of a twig that was frayed at the end.[150]
  • Bulkhead partition: The 5th century book Garden of Strange Things by Liu Jingshu mentioned that a ship could allow water to enter the bottom without sinking, while the Song Dynasty (960–1279) author Zhu Yu (fl. 12th century) wrote in his book of 1119 that the hulls of Chinese ships had a bulkhead build; these pieces of literary evidence for bulkhead partitions are confirmed by archaeological evidence of a 24 m (78 ft) long Song Dynasty ship dredged from the waters off the southern coast of China in 1973, the hull of the ship divided into twelve walled compartmental sections built watertight, dated to about 1277.[151][152] Western writers from Marco Polo (1254–1324), to Niccolò Da Conti (1395–1469), to Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) commented on bulkhead partitions, which they viewed as an original aspect of Chinese shipbuilding, as Western shipbuilding did not incorporate this hull arrangement until the early 19th century.[153][154]

C

Guo Shoujing (1233–1316) established a calendar in 1281 which measured a year in roughly the same length as the Gregorian calendar of 1582
A cast iron garment hook with gold and silver foil, from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, 4th century BC
The wu xing, or Chinese Five Elements, with green representing wood and east, red representing fire and south, yellow representing earth and center, white representing metal and white, and black representing north and water
The endless power-transmitting chain drive from Su Song's book of 1094 describing his clock tower[155]
Bellows were used not only in metallurgy by the ancient Chinese, but also in chemical warfare.
Illustration of chopsticks
The Xuande Emperor (r. 1425–1435) playing chuiwan with his eunuchs
A Chinese dao (sabre); co-fusion steel, a mixture of wrought iron and cast iron, was used to craft these swords as well as sickles by the 6th century
A window crank; the Chinese have used the crank since the last 2,000 years at least
A hand-held, trigger-operated crossbow from the 2nd century BC, Han Dynasty
A 15th century Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) woodblock print of the Water Margin novel showing a game of cuju football being played
An earthenware model of a stove furnace from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 AD); the Chinese have been using the cupola furnace since antiquity.
A bronze dagger-axe from the State of Han, Warring States Period (403–221 BC); this type of weapon has existed in China since at least the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC).
In his work of 1585, the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin (1548–1620), pictured above, published the first significant work in Europe dealing with decimal fractions, yet their use in China spans back to at least the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD).[156]
The frontispiece to Hu Sihui's Principles of Correct Diet published in 1330 (Yuan Dynasty); the caption reads "Many diseases can be cured by diet alone," a belief which spanned back to at least the 3rd century AD in China.[157]
Ceramic models of watchtowers from the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) showing use of dougong brackets; dougong were used in Chinese architecture since roughly the 11th century BC, during the early Zhou Dynasty.
A Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) illustration showing the process of sublimation of mercury(I) chloride, the man on the left seen brushing the crystals from the sublimation lid by using a feather; the same process was used in the sublimation of crystals of sex and pituitary hormones derived from evaporated human urine.[158]
Each bronze bell of Marquis Yi of Zeng (433 BC) bears an inscription describing the specific note it plays, its position on a 12-note scale, and how this scale differed from scales used by other Chinese states of the time; before this discovery in 1978,[159] the oldest known surviving Chinese tuning set came from a 3rd century BC text (which alleges was written by Guan Zhong, d. 645 BC) with 5 tones and additions or subtractions of ⅓ of successive tone values which produce the rising fourths and falling fifths of Pythagorean tuning.[160]
An original print illustration of 1094 showing the inner workings of Su Song's (1020–1101) clock tower, featuring an escapement mechanism and the world's oldest known chain drive
  • Cast iron: Confirmed by archaeological evidence, cast iron, made from melting pig iron, was developed in China by the early 5th century BC during the Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC), the oldest specimens found in a tomb of Luhe County in Jiangsu province; despite this, most of the early blast furnaces and cupola furnaces discovered in China date after the state iron monopoly under Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BC) was established in 117 BC, during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD); Donald Wagner states that a possible reason why no ancient Chinese bloomery process has been discovered thus far is because the iron monopoly, which lasted until the 1st century AD when it was abolished for private entrepreneurship and local administrative use, wiped out any need for continuing the less-efficient bloomery process that continued in use in other parts of the world.[167][144][168][169][170] Wagner states that most iron tools in ancient China were made of cast iron in consideration of the low economic burden of producing cast iron, whereas most iron military weapons were made of more costly wrought iron and steel, signifying that "high performance was essential" and preferred for the latter.[171]
  • Cardinal direction, use of colors for: In ancient China, the use of five different soil colors corresponding to the four cardinal directions were used in construction of altars and mounds.[172][173][174] The earliest archaeologial evidence of such example comes from a Spring and Autumn Period (722–481 BC) burial site located at Shuangdun, Anhui.[175] The mentions of the "five colors" are recorded in the Shujing and Zuozhuan, while the earliest information on correlative colors associated with each four cardinal directions and center; east (blue), south (red), west (white), north (black) and center (yellow), comes from the Kaogongji,[176] an independent work complied in the Warring States Period (403–221 BC) before being attached to the Rites of Zhou in place of the original missing section "Winter Office" (lost in its entirety) by the mid 2nd century BC.[177][178][179]
  • Chemical warfare using bellows, mustard smoke, and lime: As written in the 4th century BC by the Mohists, followers of the philosophy of Mozi (c. 470 – c. 391 BC), the Chinese of the Warring States Period (403–221 BC) applied the use of burnt balls of the mustard plant (not to be confused with modern sulfur mustard, or 'mustard gas') as a lethal agent in warfare.[189] During a siege, the besieging force would often dig mines under the walls to breach the fortifications of the defenders.[189] As written by the Mohists, the defenders also had the option of digging to meet the enemy's underground tunnel, where bellows connected to furnaces above could be used to pump toxic smoke of burnt mustard and other vegetable material into the shafts.[189] To fight off a peasant revolt in 178 AD during the late Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), riding charioteers of the Imperial forces used portable bellows to pump lime smoke at the enemy, who were ultimately defeated.[190] Powdered lime was also used in lobbed tear gas bombs, such as when the Song Dynasty (960–1279) general Yue Fei (1103–1142) used them with great success against the bandit leader Yang Yao in 1135; when the lime formed a thick fog in the air, Yang's "rebel soldiers could not open their eyes" according to the account of his campaign.[190]
  • Chromium, use of: The use of chromium was invented in China no later than 210 BC, the date when the Terracotta Army was interred at a site not far from modern Xi'an; modern archaeologists discovered that bronze-tipped crossbow bolts at the site showed no sign of corrosion after more than 2,000 years of being interred, the reason being that the Chinese had coated the bronze tips of their crossbow bolts in chromium; chromium was not used anywhere else until the experiments of Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (1763–1829) in 1797–1798.[196]
  • Chuiwan (Chinese golf): Chuiwan, a game similar to the Scottish-derived sport of golf, was first mentioned in China by Wei Tai (fl. 1050–1100) in his Dongxuan Records (東軒錄);[197] it was popular amongst men and women in the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), while it was popular among urban men in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) in much the same way that tennis was for urban Europeans during the Renaissance (according to Andrew Leibs).[198] In 1282, Ning Zhi published the Book of Chuiwan, which described the rules, equipment, and playing field of chuiwan, as well as included commentary of those who mastered its tactics.[198] Chuiwan clubs, 10 in all for each player, were stored in a brocaded case.[199] The chuiwan clubs used by the emperor were lavishly decked in gold and inlaid with jade.[199] The game was played on flat and sloping grassland terrain and—much like the tee of modern golf—had a "base" area where the first of three strokes were played.[200]
  • Civil service examinations: In the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), the xiaolian system of recruiting government officials through formal recommendations was the chief method of filling bureaucratic posts, although there was an Imperial Academy to train potential candidates for office and some offices required its candidates to pass formal written tests before appointment.[201][202][203][204] However, it was not until the Sui Dynasty (581–618) that civil service examinations became open to all adult males not belonging to the merchant class (although having wealth or noble status were not requirements) and were used as a universal prerequisite for appointments to office, at least in theory.[205][206] During the Sui and Tang Dynasty (618–907), the civil service system was actually implemented on a much smaller scale than during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), when an elite core of dynastic-founding and professional families lost their majority in government to a broad strata of lesser gentry families from throughout the country.[207][208] To ensure that examinations were relatively fair (despite difficult requirements and privilege of the better educated), the authorities employed numerous methods such as hiring a bureau of copyists to copy each candidate's examination answers to avoid favoritism by graders who could recognize one's signature calligraphy style.[209][210]
  • Co-fusion steel process: Although both Robert Temple and Joseph Needham speculate that it could have existed beforehand, the first clear written evidence of the fusion of wrought iron and cast iron to make steel comes from the 6th century AD in regards to the Daoist swordsmith Qiwu Huaiwen, who was put in charge of the arsenal of Northern Wei general Gao Huan (496–597, later honored as Emperor Xianwu by Northern Qi) from 543 to 550 AD.[211][212] The Tang Dynasty (618–907) Newly Reorganized Pharmacopoeia of 659 also described this process of mixing and heating wrought iron and cast iron together, stating that the steel product was used to make sickles and Chinese sabers.[211] In regards to the latter text, Su Song (1020–1101) made a similar description and noted the steel's use for making swords.[211] In his encyclopedia of 1637, the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) author Song Yingxing (1587–1666) was the first to describe the process at length, stating that the wrought iron was first beaten into tiny thin plates, packed into wrought iron sheets, and then pressed down with cast iron piled on top.[211] The cast iron would melt first in the furnace, "dripping and soaking" into the wrought iron; once united, they were taken out and forged, heated, and hammered in a process repeated numerous times.[211] Temple and Needham both state that this anticipated the open hearth furnace later invented by Carl Wilhelm Siemens (1823–1883).[212][213]
  • Contour canal: After numerous conquests and consolidation of his empire, China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BC) commissioned the engineer Shi Lu (fl. late 3rd century BC) to build a new waterway canal which would pass through a mountain range and link together the Xiang River and Lijiang River; the result of this project was the Lingqu Canal, complete with thirty-six lock gates, and since it closely follows a contour line, it is the oldest known contour canal in the world.[216]
  • Crank handle: The earliest known depicted crank handle in art comes from a Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) green-glazed pottery tomb model of a farmyard, complete with a rotary grain mill, a man operating a foot tilt hammer for pounding grain, and to his left a winnowing machine with a crank handle used to operate the fan.[217] The crank handle in later Imperial China (Tang and Song dynasties) was also used in grain mills, silk-reeling and hemp-spinning machines, the hydraulic-powered flour-sifter, the hydraulic powered bellows, the water well windlass, and other devices.[218]
  • Crossbow, handheld: In China, bronze crossbow bolts dating as early as mid 5th century BC were found at a State of Chu burial site in Yutaishan, Hubei;[219] handheld crossbow stocks with bronze triggers were discovered in Tomb 138 at Saobatang, Hunan dated to mid 4th century BC;[220][221] repeating crossbows, first mentioned in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, were discovered in 1986 in Tomb 47 at Qinjiazui, Hubei dated to around 4th century BC;[222] the earliest textual evidence of the handheld crossbow used in battle dates to the 4th century BC;[223] handheld crossbows with complex bronze trigger mechanisms have also been found with the Terracotta Army in the tomb of Qin Shihuang (r. 221–210 BC) that are similar to specimens from the subsequent Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), while crossbowmen described in the Han Dynasty learned drill formations, some were even mounted as cavalry units, and Han Dynasty writers attributed the success of numerous battles against the Xiongnu to massed crossbow fire.[224][225] Chao Cuo (d. 154 BC) wrote a memorial to the throne in 169 BC which included his assertion that the Chinese crossbow was superior to the Xiongnu bow.[226] In a cross comparison with a contemporary civilization which created an early crossbow, the ancient Greeks had a crossbow known as the gastraphetes ("belly-bow", so named because the shooter had to draw the bow by pressing his stomach against the concave rear), which was described in Heron's Belopoeica (1st century AD),[227] yet some scholars assert that the handheld crossbow (as invented in China) was not seen in Europe until the 10th century AD.[228][229][230] Unlike the Chinese crossbow, the heavy weight and bulk of the gastraphetes necessitated a prop to keep it standing, i.e. by mounting it on a defensive wall or using a portable prop.[231]
  • Cupola furnace: Vincent C. Pigott states that the cupola furnace existed in China at least by the Warring States Period (403–221 BC),[234] while Donald B. Wagner writes that some iron ore melted in the blast furnace may have been cast directly into molds, but most, if not all, iron smelted in the blast furnace during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) was remelted in a cupola furnace; it was designed so that a cold blast injected at the bottom traveled through tuyere pipes across the top where the charge (i.e. of charcoal and scrap or pig iron) was dumped, the air becoming a hot blast before reaching the bottom of the furnace where the iron was melted and then drained into appropriate molds for casting.[235] Pigott states that even in modern cupola furnaces, sometimes an excess of injected oxygen will cause enough decarburization that a resulting lump of low-carbon iron will appear in the furnace, similar to the wrought iron of the bloomery; although the ancient Chinese had produced wrought iron (no doubt, Pigott says, from the cupola furnace) from about the same time (c. 500 BC) cast iron appeared during the very late Spring and Autumn Period (722–481 BC), there is no direct evidence that the bloomery ever existed in China.[236]

D

  • Dagger-axe: The dagger-axe (戈, gē) was the basic weapon of Shang (c. 1600 – 1050 BC) and Zhou (c. 1050 –256 BC) infantry, although it was sometimes used by the "striker" of charioteer crews.[237] It consisted of a long wooden shaft with a bronze knife blade attached at a right angle to the end.[237] The weapon could be swung down or inward in order to hook or slash, respectively, at an enemy.[237] By the early Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), military use of the bronze dagger-axe had become very limited (and mostly ceremonial); they were slowly phased out during the Han Dynasty by iron spears and iron ji halberds.[238]
  • Diabetes, recognition and treatment of: In ancient China, diabetes was aptly called 'dissolutive thirst' due to diabetic patients' excessive thirst and passing of urine.[243] The Huangdi Neijing compiled by the 2nd century BC during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) identified diabetes as a disease suffered by those who had made an excessive habit of eating sweet and fatty foods, while the Old and New Tried and Tested Perscriptions written by the Tang Dynasty (618–907) physician Zhen Quan (d. 643) was the first known book to mention an excess of sugar in the urine of diabetic patients.[243][244] While his book is now lost, quotations of it were preserved in the Important Medical Formulae and Prescriptions Now Revealed by the Governor of a Distant Province, written by Wang Tao in 752.[243] The Tang physician Sun Simiao (581–682) wrote in his Thousand Golden Remedies of 655 that for diabetic patients "three things must be renounced, wine, sex, and eating salted, starchy cereal products; if this regimen can be observed, cure may follow without drugs."[245] Robert Temple writes that this is similar to the modern method of avoiding alcohol and starchy foods.[245] The sweetness of urine in diabetic patients is also noted in an ancient text of India, but unlike the Chinese texts its date is ambiguous.[245] Sweetness in urine of diabetic patients was discovered in Europe by Thomas Willis (1621–1675) around 1660 and published in 1679, yet this was not associated with sugar until 1776 in a work by Matthew Dobson; in 1815 this sugar was finally specified as glucose.[245]

E

  • Eight-legged essay: The eight-legged essay was a style of essay that had to be mastered by candidates (for bureaucratic office) in the civil service examinations. Its name derived from the eight sections it was divided by: an opening (破題), amplification (承題), preliminary exposition (起講), initial argument (起股), central argument (中股), latter argument (後股), final argument (束股), and conclusion (大結). It was introduced by Wang Anshi (1021–1086), a chancellor of the Song Dynasty (960–1279), and was used by the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) governments.[248] In the examination, each candidate was required to write three essays of this type for the Four Books (of Zhu Xi) and four essays of this type for the Five Classics of antiquity.[249]
  • Equal temperament: During the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), the music theorist and mathematician Jing Fang (78–37 BC) extended the 12 tones found in the 2nd century BC Huainanzi to 60.[253] While generating his 60-divisional tuning, he discovered that 53 just fifths is approximate to 31 octaves, calculating the difference at ; this was the exact same value for 53 equal temperament calculated by the German mathematician Nicholas Mercator (c. 1620–1687) as 353/284, a value known as Mercator's Comma.[254][255] The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) music theorist Zhu Zaiyu (1536–1611) elaborated in three separate works beginning in 1584 the tuning system of equal temperament; in an unusual event in music theory's history, the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin (1548–1620) discovered the mathematical formula for equal temperament at roughly the same time (within 1 to 25 years of Zhu), yet he did not publish his work and it remained unknown until 1884; therefore, it is debatable who discovered equal temperament first, Zhu or Stevin.[256][257][258] In order to obtain equal intervals, Zhu divided the octave (each octave with a ratio of 1:2, which can also be expressed as 1:212/12) into twelve equal semitones while each length was divided by the 12th root of 2.[259] He did not simply divide the string into twelve equal parts (i.e. 11/12, 10/12, 9/12, etc.) since this would give unequal temperament; instead, he altered the ratio of each semitone by an equal amount (i.e. 1:2 11/12, 1:210/12, 1:29/12, etc.) and determined the exact length of the string by dividing it by 122 (same as 21/12).[259] The Harmonie Universelle (1636) written by Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) was the first publication in Europe outlining equal temperament, a new system of tuning that was passionately defended by J.S. Bach (1685–1750) in his Well-Tempered Clavier of 1722.[258]
  • Escapement: The escapement mechanism is an essential device in clocks which marked the birth of the mechanical clock; it was first developed by the Buddhist monk, court astronomer, mathematician and engineer Yi Xing (683–727) of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) for his water-powered celestial globe in the tradition of Zhang Heng (78–139), and could be found in later Chinese clockworks such as the clock towers of both Zhang Sixun (fl. late 10th century) and Su Song (1020–1101).[260][261][262][263][188][264] Yi Xing's escapement allowed for a bell to be rung automatically every hour, and a drum beaten automatically every quarter hour, essentially a striking clock.[265] Unlike the modern escapement which employs a suspended oscillating pendulum resting and releasing its hooks on a small rotating gear wheel, the early Chinese escapement employed the use of gravity and hydraulics.[266] In Su Song's clock tower, scoop containers fixed to the spokes of a vertical waterwheel (which acted like a gear wheel) would be filled one by one with siphoned water from a clepsydra tank.[267] When the weight of the water in the scoop filled to an excess, it overcame a counterweight that in turn tripped a lever allowing the scoop to rotate on a pivot and drain its water.[267] However, as the scoop fell, it tripped a coupling tongue that temporarily pulled down on a long vertical chain, the latter yanking down on a balancing lever which would pull upward on a small chain connected to a locking arm, the latter lifting momentarily to release the top arrested spoke before coming back down to repeat the entire process over again.[267]
  • Exploding cannonballs: The Huolongjing military manual compiled by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Ji (1311–1375) in the mid 14th century described the earliest known exploding cannonballs, which were made of cast iron with a hollow core packed with gunpowder; Jiao and Liu wrote that when fired, they could set enemy camps ablaze; the earliest evidence for exploding cannonballs in Europe date to the 16th century.[268][269] The Huolongjing also specified the use of 'blinding' and 'poison' gunpowder filled into exploding shells; the effects of this chemical warfare was described as such: "Enemy soldiers will get their faces and eyes burnt, and the smoke will attack their noses, mouths, and eyes."[190]

F

The field mill in the Chinese book Yuanxi Qiqi Tushuo Luzui ("Collected Diagrams and Explanations of the Wonderful Machines of the Far West"), by Johann Schreck and Wang Zheng, published 1627
  • Field mill (carriage): In the Yezhongji ('Record of Affairs at the Capital Ye of the Later Zhao Dynasty') written by Lu Hui (fl. 350 AD), various mechanical devices are described which were invented by two Later Zhao (319–351) engineers known as Xie Fei, a Palace Officer, and Wei Mengbian, the Director of the Imperial Workshops.[270] One of these is the field mill, which was essentially a cart with millstones placed onto the frame; these were mechanically rotated by the movement of the cart's terrain wheels in order to grind wheat and other cereal crops.[271] A similar vehicle these two invented was the "pounding cart", which had wooden statues mounted on the top which were actually mechanical figures who operated real tilt hammers in order to hull rice; again, the device only functioned when the cart was moved forward and the wheels turned.[271] The field mill lost its use in China sometime after the Later Zhao, but it was invented separately in Europe in 1580 by the Italian military engineer Pompeo Targone.[272] It was featured in a treatise by Vittorio Zonca in 1607, and then in a Chinese book of 1627 (concerning Western technology) that was compiled and translated by the German Jesuit Johann Schreck (1576–1630) and the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) Chinese author Wang Zheng (1571–1644), although by then it was considered by the Chinese to be an original Western contraption.[273]
  • Finery forge: In addition to accidental lumps of low-carbon wrought iron produced by excessive injected air in Chinese cupola furnaces, the ancient Chinese also created wrought iron by using the finery forge at least by the 2nd century BC, the earliest specimens of cast and pig iron fined into wrought iron and steel found at the early Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) site at Tieshengguo.[274] Pigott speculates that the finery forge existed in the previous Warring States Period (403–221 BC), due to the fact that there are wrought iron items from China dating to that period and there is no documented evidence of the bloomery ever being used in China.[275] The fining process involved liquifying cast iron in a fining hearth and removing carbon from the molten cast iron through oxidation.[274] Wagner writes that in addition to the Han Dynasty hearths believed to be fining hearths, there is also pictoral evidence of the fining hearth from a Shandong tomb mural dated 1st to 2nd century AD, as well as a hint of written evidence in the 4th century AD Daoist text Taiping Jing.[276] Both Wagner and Pigott write that the fining hearth was a key feature of traditional Chinese iron smelting in recent centuries.[274][277]
Local man setting off fireworks during Chinese New Year in Shanghai; the Chinese have used fireworks for entertainment since at least the Song Dynasty (960–1279), coinciding with the use of gunpowder weapons
"Angler on a Wintry Lake," painted in 1195 by Ma Yuan, featuring the oldest known depiction of a fishing reel, although the oldest description of a fishing reel in China dates to the 3rd century AD
Chinese flamethrower from the Wujing Zongyao manuscript of 1044, Song Dynasty
Sheng player Guo Yi beside the River Thames, London, England.
Modern gas cylinders; the Chinese used a bamboo version of this by at least the Tang Dynasty (618–907)
A rotating gimbal
The go board game
Rock carving of a bodhisattva playing a guqin, Northern Wei Dynasty (386–534 AD).
A bronze hand cannon from the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), one of the oldest in the world
A horse wearing a decorative harness with a horse collar
A Sui Dynasty (581–618 AD) cart figurine pulled by a bull
A Song painting by Ma Lin, dated 1246, using India ink on silk
Microsopic view of smallpox
A Jacob's staff, from John Sellers' Practical Navigation (1672)
A jade burial suit from the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), located at the Museum of Chinese History, Beijing
Two-masted Chinese junk from the Tiangong Kaiwu published by Song Yingxing, 1637
A Chinese kite in flight
The 'self-tripped trespass land mine', from the Huolongjing, 14th century
A pair of Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 AD) tomb statuettes playing the game liubo
File:Chinese Academy of Sciences.png
Li Guokun and others working under the Chinese Academy of Sciences engineered a new wind power generator employing magnetic levitation, which is now being mass produced by the Guangzhou-based Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology Co.[278]
Example of a Chinese printed map in a gazetteer, showing Fengshan County of Taiwan Prefecture, published in 1696
Wooden statues of tomb guardians from the Tang Dynasty (618–907); mechanical-driven wooden statues served as cup-bearers, wine-pourers, and others in this age
A Qianlong era (1735–1796) traditional bamboo style book of Sunzi's The Art of War
A multistage rocket from the 14th century military manuscript Huolongjing, Ming Dynasty
A modern geothermal borehole; the Chinese dug boreholes since the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) to collect natural gas as fuel for boiling brine in producing salt.
A naval mine from the Huolongjing, mid 14th century.
The Zhaozhou Bridge of Zhao County, Hebei, completed by 605, making it the oldest fully-stone open-spandrel segmental arch bridge
A page from The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, commented on by Liu Hui in 263
Principle of a pinhole camera; light rays from an object pass through a small hole to form an inverted image.
Chinese playing card dated c. 1400 AD, Ming Dynasty
A sancai porcelain dish from the Tang Dynasty, 8th century
A plan and side view of a canal pound lock, essentially a double-gate canal lock used to regulate water levels in segmented canal chambers for the safe passage of ships, first invented by the 10th century engineer Qiao Weiyo for a section of China's Grand Canal
Joseph Needham writes that the raised-relief maps known in China by the 11th century may have been influenced by earlier Han Dynasty (202 BC –220 AD) incense burners and jars such as this, showing artificial mountains as a lid decoration.[279]
A restaurant menu from Hong Kong; the first menus appeared in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279).
A Song Dynasty painting on silk of two Chinese cargo ships accompanied by a smaller boat; notice the large stern-mounted rudder on the ship shown in the foreground
  • Fireworks: Fireworks first appeared in China during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), in the early age of gunpowder. The common people in the Song era could purchase simple fireworks from market vendors; these were made of sticks of bamboo packed with gunpowder,[283] although grander displays were known to be held. In 1110, a large fireworks display in a martial demonstration was held to entertain Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1125) and his court, accompanied by dancers moving through colored smoke.[284] In 1264, Empress Dowager Gong Sheng became frightened during a feast held in her honor (by her son Emperor Lizong) when a fast rocket-propelled "ground rat" was lit off.[285] Rocket propulsion was soon applied to warfare, and by the time of the mid 14th century there were many types of rocket launchers available.[286]
  • Fishing reel: In literary records, the earliest evidence of the fishing reel comes from a 4th century AD[287][288] work entitled Lives of Famous Immortals.[289][290] The earliest known depiction of a fishing reel comes from a Southern Song (1127–1279) painting done in 1195 by Ma Yuan (c. 1160–1225) called "Angler on a Wintry Lake," showing a man sitting on a small sampan boat while casting out his fishing line.[291] Another fishing reel was featured in a painting by Wu Zhen (1280–1354).[291] The book Tianzhu lingqian (Holy Lections from Indian Sources), printed sometime between 1208 and 1224, features two different woodblock print illustrations of fishing reels being used.[291] An Armenian parchment Gospel of the 13th century shows a reel (though not as clearly depicted as the Chinese ones).[291] The Sancai Tuhui, a Chinese encyclopedia published in 1609, features the next known picture of a fishing reel and vividly shows the windlass pulley of the device.[291] These five pictures mentioned are the only ones which feature fishing reels before the year 1651 (when the first English illustration was made); after that year they became commonly depicted in world art.[291]

G

  • Gas cylinder: From deep boreholes drilled during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), the Chinese had used bamboo pipelines to transport natural gas to stoves where cast iron pans were used to boil brine and extract salt.[297] A gazetteer written before the 10th century during the Tang Dynasty (618–907) stated that a 'fire well' of Linqiong in what is now Sichuan reached depths of 182 m (600 ft) and spouted flames at the top.[298] It stated that people used the gas from this 'fire well' to fill portable tubes which could be carried around over a hundred li (dozens of km or mi) and still be lit at the end to produce a flame.[298] Robert Temple assumes that some sort of tap was used for this.[299] A 17th or 18th century gazetteer from the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) states that a leather bag could be filled with natural gas, punctured with a tiny hole, touched by fire, and instantly give heat and light.[300] A Song Dynasty (960–1279) book of 980 also records the use of petroleum (which the Chinese called "stone lacquer") in portable bamboo tubes which could be used for lighting at night "in the same manner as ordinary people carry torches."[299] A 16th century book from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) also states that petroleum was used as fuel in lamps which could substitute for candles.[299]
  • Gimbal ('Cardan' suspension): Around 180 AD, the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) inventor Ding Huan (丁緩)—who also created a rotary fan and zoetrope lamp—invented a 'Perfume Burner for use among Cushions', or 'Bedclothes Censer'.[304] This incense burner had a series of metal rings which could be moved in any direction while the burner in the middle remained constantly level.[304] This is the first clear reference to the gimbal, although there is a hint in the writing of Sima Xiangru (179–117 BC) that this device existed in the 2nd century BC (i.e., 'the metal rings burning perfume').[305] The gimbal incense burner is mentioned in subsequent dynasties, while silverwork specimens of gimbal incense burners from the Tang Dynasty (618–907) still exist.[306] In the Liang Dynasty (502–557) there is mention of gimbals used in hinges for doors and windows, while an unnamed artisan presented a warming stove to Wu Zetian (r. 690–705) in 692 which employed gimbals to keep it constantly balanced.[307] Gimbals used for portable stoves were known in the Islamic world and Medieval Europe by the 13th century, and were even mentioned in the work of Villard de Honnecourt (c. 1237).[308] Earlier in the 9th century a recipe book called Little Key of Painting (Latin: Mappae Clavicula) mentioned a vase surrounded by rings which allowed it to be undisturbed when in a rolling motion.[309] In about 1500, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) sketched a set of gimbals in a plan for a ship's compass, while such a design became common in the 17th century.[308] An azimuth compass with an adjustable gnomon mounted in gimbals was used in China by at least the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), which could allow navigators to precisely determine magnetic declination at sea.[310] The gimbal is also known as the 'Cardan' suspension after Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576).[311]

H

  • Hand cannon: The earliest metal-barrel hand cannons dating to the 13th century are attested to by archaeological evidence from a Heilongjiang excavation as well as written evidence in the Yuanshi (1370) concerning Li Tang, an ethnic Jurchen commander under the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) who in 1288 suppressed the rebellion of the Christian prince Nayan with his "gun-soldiers" or chongzu, this being the earliest known event where this phrase was used.[316]
  • Heavy moldboard iron plow: Although use of the simple wooden ard in China must have preceded it, the earliest discovered Chinese iron plows date to roughly 500 BC, during the Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC) and were flat, V-shaped, and mounted on wooden poles and handles.[317][318] By the 3rd century BC, improved iron casting techniques led to the development of the heavy moldboard plow, seen in Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) artwork such as tomb carved bricks.[317] The moldboard allowed the Chinese to turn farm soil without clogging the plowshare with dirt, which was flung off the wheelbarrow via slanted wings on both sides.[319] While the frame of excavated plowshares dating to the Warring States Period (403–221 BC) were made mostly of perishable wood except for the iron blade, the frame of excavated plowshares dating to the Han Dynasty were made entirely of solid iron with the moldboard attached to the top to turn the soil.[320]
  • Horse collar: A significant improvement of the ancient breast harness was the horse collar. Robert Temple speculates that a Han Dynasty brick from the 1st century BC shows the first depiction of a horse collar.[322] It was certainly depicted in a Northern Wei (386–534) mural at Dunhuang, China, dated 477–499; the latter artwork does not feature the essential collar cushion behind the cross bar, though, while a later Tang Dynasty (618–907) mural of about 851 AD accurately displays the cushioned collar behind the cross bar.[323][324] It should be noted that an earlier painting of the Sui Dynasty (581–618) accurately depicted the horse collar as it is seen today, yet the illustration shows its use on a camel instead of a horse.[325]
  • Horse harness, ("trace" or "breast"): Throughout the ancient world, the 'throat-and-girth' harness was used for harnessing horses that pulled carts; this greatly limited a horse's ability to exert itself as it was constantly choked at the neck.[326][327] A painting on a lacquerware box from the State of Chu, dated to the 4th century BC, shows the first known use of a yoke placed across a horses's chest, with traces connecting to the chariot shaft.[328][329] The hard yoke across the horse's chest was gradually replaced by a breast strap, which was often depicted in carved reliefs and stamped bricks of tombs from the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD).[330] Eventually, the horse collar was invented in China, at least by the 5th century.[323][331]
  • Hybrid rice: A team of agricultural scientists headed by Yuan Longping (b. 1930) developed a new type of rice called hybrid rice in 1973 which allows for roughly 12,000 kg (26,450 lbs) of rice to be grown per hectare (10,000 m2).[117] Hybrid rice has proven to be greatly beneficial in areas where there is little arable land, and has been adopted by several Asian and African countries.[117]

I

  • Inoculation, treatment of smallpox: After smallpox caused the death of the eldest son of Wang Dan (957–1017), a chancellor of the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the latter summoned various physicians and holy men to the capital at Kaifeng to find a cure for the disease.[340] Purportedly a Daoist hermit from Mount Emei in Sichuan introduced to the capital region the 'inner alchemy' technique of inoculating people with small traces of smallpox in order to contract a less severe form (i.e. Variola minor) of the disease and thus never contract it again (as discovered much later, this is due to the permanent check by the body's immune system).[341] However, as written by Yu Tianchi, the technique of inoculation to avoid smallpox was not widespread in China until the reign of the Longqing Emperor (r. 1567– 1572) during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).[342] The process of inoculation was also vividly described by Yu Chang in his Miscellaneous Ideas in Medicine published in 1643, and Zhang Yan in his Transplanting the Smallpox in 1741.[343] The Chinese method was to avoid using smallpox material of those who had the full-blown disease (i.e. Variola major) due to the risk of transmitting it; instead they used a cotton plug inserted into the nose of an already inoculated person with minor scabbing (i.e. Variola minor) to obtain their material.[341]

J

  • Jacob's staff: The Song Dynasty (960–1279) official Shen Kuo (1031–1095), an antiquarian who pursued studies of archaeological finds, unearthed an ancient crossbow-like mechanism from a garden in Jiangsu which had on its stock a graduated sighting scale in minute measurements.[344] He wrote that while viewing the whole of a mountain, the distance on the instrument was long, but while viewing a small part of the mountainside the distance was short due to the device's cross piece that had to be pushed further away from the observer's eye, with the graduation starting on the further end.[344] He wrote that if one placed an arrow on the device and looked past its end, the degree of the mountain could be measured and thus its height could be calculated.[344] Shen wrote that this was similar to mathematicians who used right-angled triangles to measure height.[344] Joseph Needham writes that what Shen had discovered was Jacob's staff, a surveying tool which was not known in Europe until the Jewish mathematician Levi ben Gerson (1288–1344) of Provence, France described it in 1321.[345]
  • Jade burial suit: Burial suits made of jade existed in China since at least the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). Confirming ancient records about Han royalty and nobility buried in jade burial suits, archaeologists discovered in June of 1968 the tombs and jade burial suits of Prince Liu Sheng (d. 113 BC) and his wife Dou Wan in Hebei province.[346] Liu's suit, in twelve flexible sections, comprised 2,690 square pieces of green jade with holes punctured in the four corners of each piece so that they could be sewn together with gold thread.[347] The total weight of the gold thread used in his suit was 1,110 g (39 oz).[348] Princess Dou Wan's suit had 2,156 pieces of jade stitched together with 703 g (24.7 oz) of gold thread.[348]

K

  • Kite: As written in the Mozi, the philosopher, artisan, and engineer Lu Ban (fl. 5th century BC) from the State of Lu created a wooden bird that remained flying in the air for three days, essentially a kite; there is written evidence that kites were used as rescue signals when the city of Nanjing was besieged by Hou Jing (d. 552) during the reign of Emperor Wu of Liang (r. 502–549), while similar accounts of kites used for military signalling are found in the Tang (618–907) and Jin (1115–1234) dynasties; kite flying as a pastime can be seen in painted murals of Dunhuang dating to the Northern Wei (386–534) period, while descriptions of flying kites as a pastime have been found in Song (960–1279) and Ming (1368–1644) texts.[355][356]

L

  • Land mine: Textual evidence suggests that the first use of a land mine in history was by a Song Dynasty (960–1279) brigadier general known as Lou Qianxia, who used an 'enormous bomb' (huo pao) to kill intruding Mongol soldiers invading Guangxi in 1277.[357] However, the first detailed description of the land mine was given in the Huolongjing text written by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Ji (1311–1375) during the late Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) and early Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).[358] Jiao and Liu wrote that land mines were spherical, made of cast iron, and their fuses ignited by a mechanism tripped by enemy movement; although Jiao and Liu did not describe this trip mechanism in full detail, a later text of 1606 revealed that enemy movement released a pin that allowed hidden underground weights to fall and spin a chord around an axle that rotated a spinning wheel acting as a flint to spark a train of fuses.[359]
  • Liubo: The now defunct board game liubo for the most part remains an enigma for modern scholars still deciphering exactly how it was played; its association with both gambling and divination make it a unique game.[360][361] It has existed since at least the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD);[362] an argument over the divination portents of the game as a result of a playing session led to a fight between a Western Han crown prince and Liu Xian (劉賢), where the latter was killed in the scuffle which (in part) prompted his father Liu Pi (劉濞), the King of Wu, to rebel against central Han authority in the Rebellion of the Seven States (154 BC).[363] The historian Michael Loewe asserts that the set pieces of liubo were symbolic of the forces of the Chinese Five Elements, wu xing.[361]

M

  • 'Magic mirrors': In about 800 AD, during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), a book entitled Record of Ancient Mirrors described the method of crafting solid bronze mirrors with decorations, written characters, or patterns on the reverse side that could cast these in a reflection on a nearby surface as light struck the front, polished side of the mirror; due to this seemingly transparent effect, they were called 'light-penetration mirrors' by the Chinese.[364] Unfortunately, this Tang era book was lost over the centuries, but magic mirrors were described in the Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo (1031–1095), who owned three of them as a family heirloom.[365] Perplexed as to how solid metal could be transparent, Shen guessed that some sort of quenching technique was used to produce tiny wrinkles on the face of the mirror too small to be observed by the eye.[365] Although his explanation of different cooling rates was incorrect, he was right to suggest the surface contained minute variations which the naked eye could not detect; these mirrors also had no transparent quality at all, as discovered by William Bragg in 1932 (after an entire century of them baffling Western scientists).[366] Robert Temple describes their construction: "The basic mirror shape, with the design on the back, was cast flat, and the convexity of the surface produced afterwards by elaborate scraping and scratching. The surface was then polished to become shiny. The stresses set up by these processes caused the thinner parts of the surface to bulge outwards and become more convex than the thicker portions. Finally, a mercury amalgam was laid over the surface; this created further stresses and preferential buckling. The result was that imperfections of the mirror surface matched the patterns on the back, although they were too minute to be seen by the eye. But when the mirror reflected bright sunlight against a wall, with the resultant magnification of the whole image, the effect was to reproduce the patterns as if they were passing through the solid bronze by way of light beams."[365]
  • Map, oldest printed: As proven by archaeological excavation in China, the oldest known Chinese maps were made by cartographers of the State of Qin during the 4th century BC,[368] yet maps were not printed for the first time until the Song Dynasty (960–1279) encyclopedist Yang Jia included one in his printed encyclopedia of 1155 AD.[369]
  • Match, non-friction: The earliest type of match for lighting fire was made in China by 577 AD, invented by Northern Qi (550–577) court ladies as they desperately looked for materials to light fires for cooking and heating as enemy troops of Northern Zhou (557–581) and the Chen Dynasty (557–589) besieged their city from outside.[370] Early matches in China were made of pinewood sticks impregnated with sulfur and needed a slight touch of an already existing flame to light.[370] This was written in the Records of the Unwordly and Strange by Tao Gu in 950 (Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period), who also wrote that they were once called "light-bringing slaves" before they were commercially marketed as the 'fire inch-stick'.[370] The self-striking, friction match was not made until 1827, an invention of John Walker.
  • Mechanical theater, carriage-driven: The inventors of the field mill mentioned above, Xie Fei and Wei Mengbian of the Later Zhao (319–351 AD), also invented an intricate mechanical theater mounted on a carriage, its figures operated by motive power (i.e. simply advancing the carriage forward).[371] From 335 to 345 AD, they worked at the court of the ethnic-Jie emperor Shi Hu (334–349).[371] The vehicle they crafted was a four-wheeled and 6 m (20 ft) long carriage that was about 3 m (10 ft) wide.[371] On it rested a large golden Buddha statue with a Daoist statue continually rubbing his front with his mechanical hand.[371] The Buddha was also surrounded by ten wooden Daoists who rotated around him in a circuit, periodically bowing to him, saluting him, and throwing incense into a censer.[371] Above the Buddha were nine dragon-headed faucets which spouted water.[371] Like the field house and the pounding cart of these two inventors, when the carriage halted, so did all of its moving components of mechanical statues and spouting faucets.[372]
  • Mechanical cup-bearers and wine-pourers on automatic-traveling boats: The mechanical engineer Huang Gun served the court of Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–617) and wrote the book Shuishi Tujing on his inventions, which his colleague Du Bao enlarged and commented on.[373] He constructed seven small boats (called "wine boats") that were as large as 3 m (10 ft) long and 1.8 m (6 ft) wide which supported a number of mechanical figures of wooden statues called "hydraulic elegances", each about 0.6 m (2 ft) tall, some of them animals but most in human form consisting of singing girls, musicians playing actual instruments, dancers and tumblers, oarsmen busy rowing, cup-bearers, and wine-pourers all moving simultaneously as if alive.[373] These boats were set to travel at timed intervals along circuits made of winding stone channels and canals in palace courtyards and gardens (designed by Tang Haogui), where guests would gather for special occasions.[373] The cup-bearer stood at the bow of each ship and beside him the wine-pourer; when the ship made automatically-timed periodic stops where guests were seated, the cup-bearer automatically stretched out his arm with a full cup of wine.[373] When the guest was done emptying his cup, he placed the cup back into the figure's hands; the latter then waited as the wine-pourer filled a second cup to be emptied.[373] When this guest had been served, the wine boat automatically moved onwards to the next stop.[373] Joseph Needham speculates that the "wine ships" may have been paddle-wheel-driven, yet the first clear evidence of paddle-wheel ships used in China comes from an account made between 782 and 785 in regards to the Tang Dynasty (618–907) Prince Li Gao.[374]
  • Multistage rocket: Although there is still some ambiguity as to whether the earliest rockets of the 13th century were first developed in Europe (i.e. 'ignis volantis in aere' in the work of Marcus Graecus around 1232, although Needham and Davis assert it was most likely a fire lance), the Middle East (i.e. 'sahm al-Khitāi' or 'arrows of China' as referred to by Hasan al-Rhammāh in 1280) or China (i.e. 'di lao shu' or 'ground rat' mentioned in 1264 or the 'chong' mortar used by the armies of the Song Dynasty and invading Mongols during the 1270s), sometime during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) the term 'fire arrow' once implied to mean incendiary arrows during the Tang Dynasty was then used to describe the true rocket, producing a headache, as Needham says, for historians;[381][382][31] the Huolongjing written by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Ji (1311–1375) during the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) described several types of rockets,[383] one of them being a multistage rocket known as the 'huo long chu shui' or 'fire dragon issuing from the water' which, despite its name, was not launched from beneath the water from a primitive submarine but rather at near water-level maintaining a flat trajectory; defined as a two-stage rocket, it employed booster rockets that, when about to burn out of use, ignited a swarm of smaller rocket arrows fired from the front end of the missile shaped as a dragon's mouth.[384]

N

  • Natural gas as fuel: Robert Temple asserts that the 4th century BC (Warring States Period) is a conservative estimate for the time in which the Chinese began using natural gas as fuel and light.[385] He states that systematic borehole drilling for brine extraction by the 1st century BC (Han Dynasty) led to the discovery of many "fire wells" in Sichuan which yielded natural gas.[385] As recorded in the 2nd century AD, this led to a systematic search for natural gas.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). To remedy this, the Chinese piped the gas first into a large wooden, cone-shaped chamber placed 3 m (10 ft) below ground level where another pipe could convey air, thus turning the chamber into a large carburetor.[297] To avoid fires from a sudden surplus of gas, an additional "sky thrusting pipe" was used as an exhaust system.[386]
  • Naval mine: The Huolongjing military manuscript written by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Ji (1311–1375) also describes naval mines used at sea or on rivers and lakes; made of wrought iron and enclosed in an ox bladder, it was a timed device in that a burning joss stick floating above the mine determined when the fuse was to be ignited; the text explicitly mentions that without air and doused in water the fuse would not burn, so the fuse was protected by a long waterproof tube made out of goat's intestine; a later model shown in Song Yingxing's (1587–1666) encyclopedia of 1637 shows the ox bladder replaced with a lacquered leather bag while the mine is ignited by a rip cord pulled from the shore to rotate a flint-and-steel firing mechanism.[387]

O

  • Open-spandrel segmental arch bridge, fully stone: The earliest known fully-stone open-spandrel segmental arch bridge is the Zhaozhou Bridge in southern Hebei province, China, completed in 605 by the Sui Dynasty (581–618) engineer Li Chun.[390][391][392] The bridge span is 37.5 m (123 ft) and the structure relatively light in weight due to the four semi-circular arch spandrels which allow for additional flood waters to pass through.[392] Other Chinese bridges would be influenced by this design, such as the Yongtong Bridge of Zhaoxian, Hebei built in 1130,[393] and the Lugou Bridge built in 1698 (originally in 1189).[394] The latter, located just west of Beijing, features eleven segmental arches, each with a span of 18.8 m (62 ft) in a total bridge span of 213 m (700 ft).[395]

P

  • Pinhole camera: The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) observed that the spaces between the leaves of trees acted as tiny pinholes which cast the image of a partial solar eclipse onto the ground.[406] He also used a metal plate with a small pinhole to project an image of a solar eclipse onto the ground.[406] The ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi (c. 470 BC – c. 391 BC)—founder of Mohism during the establishment of the Hundred Schools of Thought—lived just before the time of Aristotle and it was in his Mojing (perhaps compiled by his disciples) that a pinhole camera was described.[407] The Mojing stated that the "collecting place" (pinhole) was an empty hole "like the sun and moon depicted on the imperial flags," where an image could be inverted at an intersecting point which "affects the size of the image."[407] The Mojing seems to be in line with the Epicurean theory of light traveling into the eye (and not vice versa like in Pythagoreanism),[408] since the Mojing states that the reflected light shining forth from an "illuminated person" becomes inverted when passing through the pinhole, i.e. "The bottom part of the man becomes the top part (of the image) and the top part of the man becomes the bottom part (of the image)."[407] In his Book of Optics (1021), Ibn al-Haytham (965–1039) wrote of his experimentation with camera obscura, which was followed by Shen Kuo (1031–1095), the latter who alluded that the Tang Dynasty (618–907) author Duan Chengshi (d. 863)—in his Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang—described inverted images of Chinese pagodas.[409]
  • Playing cards: The first reference to the card game in world history dates no later than the 9th century, when relatives of a Tang Dynasty (618–907) princess played a "leaf game".[410] The Yezi Gexi was a book on the card came which was allegedly written by a Tang woman and commented on by Chinese scholars in subsequent dynasties.[411][412] The Song Dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserted that playing card games existed since the mid Tang Dynasty and associated this invention with the simultaneous evolution of the common Chinese writing medium from paper rolls to sheets of paper that could be printed.[411][412] During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), characters from popular novels such as the Water Margin were widely featured on the faces of playing cards.[411][412] By the 11th century playing cards could be found throughout the Asian continent.[413] Playing cards were some of the first printed materials in Europe, appearing by the 14th century (i.e. in Spain and Germany in 1377, in Italy and Belgium in 1379, and in France in 1381) and produced by European woodblock printing before the innovation of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–1468).[413][414]
  • Porcelain: Although glazed ceramics existed beforehand, S.A.M. Adshead writes that the earliest type of vitrified, translucent ceramics that could be classified as true porcelain was not made until the Tang Dynasty (618–907).[415] Nigel Wood states that true porcelain was manufactured in North China from roughly the beginning of the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century, while true porcelain was not manufactured in South China until about 300 years later, during the early 10th century.[416]
  • Pound lock: Although the one gate canal flash lock existed in China beforehand, the two-gate pound lock was invented in China in 984 by an official and engineer named Qiao Weiyo, during the early Song Dynasty (960–1279), so that ships could safely travel along canal waterways having gated and segmented chambers where water levels could be regulated.[417][418] The economic and transport benefits of this innovation were described by the polymath official and inventor Shen Kuo (1031–1095) in his Dream Pool Essays.[417]
  • Puppet theater, waterwheel-powered: The mechanical toys of Roman Egypt, especially the weight-driven puppet theater of Heron of Alexandria (c. 10–70 AD), are well known and discussed by historians such as Beck, Prou, and de Rochas d'Aiglun.[419] In China, Zhang Heng (78–139) wrote of plays with artificial fish and dragons, while a 6th century text Xijing Zaji states that when Liu Bang (reigned as Emperor Gaozu of Han from 202–195 BC) came upon the treasury of the deceased Qin Shihuang (r. 221–210) in 206 BC, he found an entire mechanical orchestra of 1 m (3 ft) tall puppets dressed in silk and playing mouth organs, all powered by pulling ropes and blowing into tubes.[420] As written in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the engineer Ma Jun (fl. 220–265)—already associated with the differential gear system of the South Pointing Chariot—invented a mechanical theater powered by a rotating wooden waterwheel for the entertainment of Emperor Ming's (r. 226–239 AD) court.[420] With the waterwheel in motion, a number of mechanical puppets performed tricks, such as singing girls who played music and danced, other puppets who would beat drums and sound flutes when one puppet entered the scene, puppets dancing on balls, throwing swords, hanging upside down on rope ladders, etc.[420] Other mechanical puppets dressed as government officials did tasks in their offices, puppets dressed as laborers did jobs of pounding and grinding (trip hammer and millstone), while others watched cockfighting, all moving simultaneously.[420] Water-powered puppet theaters in the tradition of Ma Jun were created in later dynasties as well.[421]

Q

R

  • Raised-relief map: In his 1665 paper for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, John Evelyn (1620–1706) believed that wax models imitating nature and bas relief maps were something entirely new from France.[422] Some later scholars attributed the first raised-relief map to one Paul Dox, who represented the area of Kufstein in his raised-relief map of 1510.[422] The 20th century historian G. Sarton pointed to the writing of Ibn Battuta (1304–1368 or 1377), the latter who witnessed a raised-relief map while on Gibraltar in the 14th century.[422] However, the raised-relief map was actually known in China by at least the 11th century.[422] While on a court assignment of inspection along the Song Empire's (960–1279) frontier, the polymath scholar and official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) created a three-dimensional, raised-relief map depicting miniature roads, rivers, mountains and passes composed of wood, glue-soaked sawdust, beeswax, and wheat paste.[423][424][425] His wooden model pleased Emperor Shenzong of Song (r. 1067–1085), who later ordered that all the prefects administering the frontier regions should prepare similar wooden maps which could be sent to the capital and stored in an archive.[425] In 1130, Huang Shang made a wooden raised-relief map which later caught the attention of the Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200), who tried to acquire it but instead made his own map out of sticky clay and wood.[425] The map, made of eight pieces of wood connected by hinges, could be folded up and carried around by one person.[425]
  • Restaurant menu: During the early Song Dynasty (960–1279), urban shopkeepers of the merchant middle class often had little time to eat at home, so they ventured out to eat at a variety of places such as temples, taverns, tea houses, food stalls, and restaurants which provided business for nearby brothels, singing-girl houses, and drama theatres; this along with traveling foreigners and Chinese who migrated to urban centers from regions with different cooking styles encouraged a demand for a variety of flavors served at urban restaurants, giving rise to the menu.[426][427]
  • Rudder: Lawrence V. Mott, who defines a steering oar as a rudder, states the ancient Egyptian use of stern-mounted rudders can be traced back to the 6th dynasty (2350-2200 BC).[431] Mott states that the method of attachment for rudders in the Arab, Chinese, and European worlds differed from each other, leading him to doubt the spread of the Chinese system of attachment by socket-and-jaws or block and tackle (versus European pintle-and-gudgeon invented by c. 1180 AD).[431][432] In regards to Mott's definition of a steering oar as a rudder, Joseph Needham, Richard Lefebvre des Noëttes, K.S. Tom, Chung Chee Kit, S.A.M. Adshead, Paul Johnstone and Sean McGrail state that a steering oar is not a rudder; the steering oar has the capacity to interfere with handling of the sails (limiting any potential for long ocean-going voyages) while it was fit more for small vessels on narrow, rapid-water transport; the rudder did not disturb the handling of the sails, took less energy to operate by its helmsman, was better fit for larger vessels on ocean-going travel, and first appeared in China.[433][434][435][436][432] Leo Block writes of the use of the steering oar in the ancient Mediterranean world (specifically in regards to the Phoenicians, 1550–300 BC): "A single sail tends to turn a vessel in an upwind or downwind direction, and rudder action is required to steer a straight course. A steering oar was used at this time because the rudder had not yet been invented. With a single sail, a frequent movement of the steering oar was required to steer a straight course; this slowed down the vessel because a steering oar (or rudder) course correction acts like a break."[437] The oldest depicted rudders at the back of a ship, without the use of oars or a steering oar, comes from several ceramic models of Chinese ships made during both the Western and Eastern eras of the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD).[438][439][440][441] According to the scholars Zhang Zunyan and Vassilios Christides, there is literary evidence to suggest that the axial stern rudder existed in China since the 1st century BC,[442] while Gang Deng asserts the first reference was made in the Huainanzi of the 2nd century BC,[441] and K.S. Tom says the first clear reference dates to the 5th century AD.[435] However, K.S. Tom points to the fact that all Chinese pottery models of ships before this Guangzhou tomb model show steering oars instead of a rudder, which he states is strong evidence for the rudder's invention only by the 1st century AD.[443] Jacques Gernet states that while the Chinese had invented the rudder in the 1st century AD, it was not completely fixed to the sternpost of Chinese ships until the end of the 4th century.[444] The bulkhead ship design of the junk, which appeared roughly the same time as the rudder, provided the essential vertical components for the hinged axial rudder.[354] Deng points out that an Eastern Han (25–220) model distinctly shows a rudder located in its own separate cabin, suggesting that helmsmanship had already become an established profession.[441] Following the invention of the balanced rudder pivoted on an axis, Tom and Deng state that the Chinese then innovated the fenestrated rudder by the Song Dynasty (960–1279), with deliberate puncturing and boring out of holes in shapes such as diamonds, which, according to Tom, made the rudder "easier to steer, reduced turbulence drag, did not affect efficiency and was hydrodynamically sound."[445][441]

S

A replica of Zhang Heng's (78–139 AD) seismometer that employed a pendulum sensitive to inertia of ground tremors; while placed in Luoyang in 133, it detected an earthquake 400 to 500 km (250 to 310 mi) away in Gansu
One of five printed star maps from Su Song's (1020–1101) celestial atlas, included in his book on horology first printed in 1094
Molten steel; the Chinese produced steel from cast iron in a process of decarburization since the 2nd century BC
Carved relief from the tomb of Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626–649) showing a horse with saddle and stirrups
The Luding Bridge in Sichuan, an iron-chain suspension bridge
A page of The Classic of Tea by the Tang connoisseur of tea, Lu Yu (733–804)
A woman with goiter; the Chinese treated goiter with iodine-rich thyroid hormones since the 7th century AD during the Tang Dynasty (618–907).
A Chinese Song Dynasty naval river ship with a Xuanfeng traction trebuchet catapult, taken from the Wujing Zongyao, 1044 AD
Hydraulic-powered trip hammers, from a Ming Dynasty encyclopedia published in 1637 by Song Yingxing (1587–1666)
An ornate bronze bell belonging to Duke Mu of Qin (d. 621 BC) from the Spring and Autumn Period (722–481 BC)
The underwater salvage operation for the SS Andrea Doria, seen here sinking on July 25, 1956, was similar to the Song Dynasty (960–1279) Chinese underwater salvage of iron oxen statues from a river bed.
  • Seismometer: The official, astronomer, and mathematician Zhang Heng (78–139) of the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) invented the first seismometer in 132, a large metal urn-shaped instrument which employed either a suspended pendulum or inverted pendulum acting on inertia (i.e. ground tremors from earthquakes) to dislodge a metal ball by a lever trip device; this ball would fall out of dragon-shaped metal mouth into the corresponding metal toad mouth indicating the exact cardinal direction of where a distant earthquake had occurred in order for the state to send swift aid and relief to the affected regions; several subsequent recreations of his device were employed by Chinese states up until the Tang Dynasty (618–907), when use of the device fell into obscurity, a fact noted even by the writer Zhou Mi around 1290, during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368).[446][447][448][449][450][451][452][445]
  • South Pointing Chariot: Although the claim of Wei Dynasty statesman Ma Jun (fl. 220–265) that the South Pointing Chariot was first invented by the mythological Yellow Emperor are dubious, his South Pointing Chariot was successfully designed and tested in 255 AD with many later models recreated in subsequent dynasties; this device was a wheeled vehicle with differential gears that ensured a mounted wooden figurine would always point in the southern direction no matter how the vehicle turned, in essence a non-magnetic compass.[453][454][455]
  • Star catalogue: China's earliest known astronomers were Gan De of the Qi State and Shi Shen of the Wei State, who created the earliest known star catalogues during the 4th century BC, roughly two centuries before the star catalogue of the Greek astronomer and mathematician Hipparchus (c. 190–c. 120 BC).[456][10] The star catalogue became a permanent feature of Chinese astronomy and some were quite large, such as the star catalogue of Zhang Heng (78–139) who catalogued 14,000 stars (2,500 of these he placed in a 'brightly shining' category) and recognized 124 constellations.[122][457]
  • Star chart, oldest printed: Although certainly not the oldest existing star charts in the world, the star charts of the astronomer, official, and engineer Su Song (1020–1101) are the oldest printed star charts in the world.[458] His celestial atlas of five star charts were included in his book covering the workings of his clock tower, written by 1092 and published in 1094 with several later editions published in the 12th, 17th, and 19th centuries.[459] Su's star charts also feature the corrected position of the pole star as fixed by his contemporary Shen Kuo (1031–1095) by three degrees (i.e. halfway between -350 degrees and Polaris).[460]
  • Stirrup: There are authors who point out that it is unclear whether stirrup was invented by northern nomads or the sedentary Chinese.[464] Liu Han (1961) credited the invention of the stirrup to nomadic invaders of northern China.[465] Archaeologial evidence shows that horse riders in India had a small loop for a single toe to be inserted by roughly the 1st century AD.[466] However, the first true depiction of the stirrup is featured on a Jin Dynasty (265–420) Chinese tomb figurine dated 302 AD, yet this was a single stirrup and was perhaps used only for initially mounting the horse.[467] It should be noted that the latter was found in Changsha, Hunan, far from the northern border.[468] The first validated depiction of a rider with a pair of saddle stirrups for both feet comes from a Jin Chinese tomb figurine dated 322.[467] The first actual specimens of stirrups comes from a Chinese tomb in southern Manchuria that is dated 415.[467] The stirrup was not widely used by Chinese cavalry until the 5th century.[466][469] By the 6th century, the use of the stirrup had spread as far west as the Byzantine Empire, where both the stirrup and Celtic horseshoe were adopted.[466]
  • Suspension bridge using iron chains: Although there is evidence that many early cultures employed the use of suspension bridges with cabled ropes, the first written evidence of iron chain suspension bridges comes from a local history and topography of Yunnan written in the 15th century, which describes the repair of an iron chain bridge during the reign of the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424); although it is questionable if Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) Chinese claims that iron chain suspension bridges existed since the Han Dynasty, their existence in the 15th century predates that of anywhere else.[470] K.S. Tom mentions this same repaired Ming suspension bridge described by Needham, but adds that recent research has revealed a document which lists the names of those who allegedly built an iron chain suspension bridge in Yunnan around the year 600 AD.[471]

T

  • Thyroid hormone, treatment of goiter: In 239 BC, Master Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals stated that where water is too light, people suffer widespread baldness and goiter.[481] It was not until the 1860 that Gaspard Adolphe Chatin (1813–1901) linked goiter with the lack of iodine in soil and water; iodine was discovered in the thyroid gland in 1896 by Eugen Baumann, while thyroid extract was used to treat patients in 1890.[481] Long before this the Tang Dynasty (618–907) physician Zhen Quan (d. 643 AD), in his Old and New Tried and Tested Prescriptions, stated that the thyroid glands taken from gelded rams were used to treat patients with goiter; the thyroid hormones could be swallowed in pill form (the body of the pill made from crushed jujube pulp) or as a solid thyroid gland with the fat taken off.[482] Another prescription by Wang Xi used air-dried glands ground into powder and taken with wine.[483] Zhen's contemporary Cui Zhiti (fl. 650 AD) distinguished in his written work between a tumor, which he described as an incurbale solid neck swelling, and a real goiter, which he described as curable and movable in the neck.[483] The Chinese also used the thyroid glands of pigs, water buffalo, and sika deer with success in treating goiter.[483] The Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly Husbandman asserted that iodine-rich sargassum was used to treat goiter by the 1st century BC (Ge Hong, 284–364, also suggested using a tincture derived from sargassum seaweed in about 340 AD),[484] a treatment unknown in the West until Roger of Palermo wrote his Practica Chirurgiae in 1180 AD.[485]
  • Trip hammer: The ancient Chinese used pestle and mortar to pound and decorticate grain, which was superseded by the treadle-operated tilt hammer (employing a simple lever and fulcrum) perhaps during the Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC) but first described in a Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) dictionary of 40 BC and soon after by Yang Xiong (53 BC–18 AD) in his Fangyan dictionary written in 15 BC; the next stage in this evolution of grain-pounding devices was to apply hydraulic power, which the author Huan Tan (43 BC–28 AD) mentioned in his Xinlun of 20 AD, although he also described trip hammers powered by the labor of horses, oxen, donkeys, and mules.[489] After Huan Tan's book was written, numerous references to trip hammers powered by waterwheels were made in subsequent Chinese dynasties and in Medieval Europe by the 12th century.[490] However, trip hammers were also attested by both literary (Pliny, Natural History 18.97) and archaeological evidence in fairly widespread use in the Roman Empire by the 1st century AD.[491][492]
  • Tuned bells: The earliest complete set of tuned bells, sixteen in all, were found in Tomb 8 of Marquis Su of Jin at Qucun, southern Shanxi.[493] A 355-character inscription on all sixteen bells collectively describes Marquis Su's participation in a military campaign led by the Zhou king.[494][495] The tomb has been dated by AMS radiocarbon techniques to 815–786 BC.[496] Tuned bells which could produce two precise musical pitches (if struck at the center or struck on one side near the edge) existed in China during the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1050–256 BC).[497] Of the sixty-four bronze bells found in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng interred by 433 BC, forty-seven of them produce two notes with minor third intervals while sixteen produce two notes with major third intervals.[159] Metal bells in China had their origins in metal grain scoops and measures; after the 6th century BC, the entire ancient Chinese system of measurement in standard length, width, weight, and volume was based on musical pitches of the tuned zhong vessel weighing 120 catties, as described in the Guoyu.[159] A 2.1 m (7 ft) long stringed tuner known as a jun was used to gauge the standard measure of length of the metal zhong.[159] Bells in ancient China served essentially as tuning forks in a standard set of twelve bells (one for each note), which were eventually replaced by twelve pitch pipes (easier to manufacture).[497] In order to craft properly-tuned bells, a set of conditions had to be met: specific proportions of different metals in the alloy; elasticity and thickness of material; the specific gravity; diameters at different points; the contours of the bells' curves; the temperature reached in casting the bell and the cooling rate, etc.[498]

U

  • Underwater salvage operations: In 333 BC, nine bronze tripods were lost in the Si River; in 219 BC, Qin Shihuang (r. 221–210 BC) assembled an expedition to salvage them from the river bed using a system of ropes, but it was unsuccessful (this was even made a subject of art in a bas-relief of the period).[501] In the 11th century AD, a successful underwater salvage operation in Song China (960–1279) would employ the use of buoyancy.[502] The Chinese understood the concept of buoyancy by at least the 3rd century AD; the short-lived child prodigy Cao Chong (196–208) weighed a large elephant by placing it on a boat in a pond and measuring the rise of the water level, then matching this weight with a boat loaded with numerous heavy objects which could be measured separately.[503] Between 1064 and 1067, the Pujin Bridge near Puzhou, a floating pontoon bridge built some 350 years earlier across the Yellow River, was destroyed in a flood.[155] This bridge was made of boats secured by iron chains which were attached to eight different cast iron statues located on each river bank, cast in the shape of recumbent oxen.[155] The flood pulled the oxen from the sandy banks into the river, where they sunk to the bottom; after this loss, the local officials issued a proclamation for submission of ideas on how to recover the statues.[155] The plan of the Buddhist monk Huaibing was accepted, which Robert Temple describes: "On his instructions, workers filled two large boats with earth, and divers attached cables from them to the oxen in the river bed. Then earth was gradually removed from the boats, which caused them to float higher and higher in the water. To everyone's delight, the buoyancy thus created lifted the oxen from the river bed. They were then dragged into shallower water simply by sailing the boats towards the shore."[502] This same technique was applied to salvage parts of the modern ocean liner SS Andrea Doria after it sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1956; instead of filling boats with dirt, water was used and progressively leaked out of ore ships which lifted the hulk from 68.5 m (225 ft) below the surface.[501]

V

W

One-wheeled Chinese wheelbarrow, from Zhang Zeduan's (1085–1145) painting Along the River During Qingming Festival, Song Dynasty
Chinese rotary fan winnowing machine, from an encyclopedia published in 1637 by Song Yingxing
Xiangqi board game
A modern replica of a Victorian zoetrope
  • Wheelbarrow: There is scanty linguistic evidence that wheelbarrows (i.e. the hyperteria monokyklou, or 'one-wheeler') might have existed in ancient Greece by the late 5th century BC,[504] but it has been commonly accepted that the wheelbarrow did not exist in Europe until the 13th century AD,[505] while their use in Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD) China by the 1st century BC is attested to by written evidence; illustrations of their use were depicted on tomb murals in China by the 2nd century AD, during the Eastern Han (25–220 AD).[506][507]
  • Wine server, artificial mountain with a puppet: In the early 8th century, a Tang Dynasty (618–907) engineer created an elaborate artificial mountain carved out of iron that was 0.9 m (3 ft) tall, sitting atop a lacquered-wooden frame shaped as a tortoise.[508] From the mountain, wine flowed down onto cups that tilted by force of gravity and spilled the liquid into an artificial lake of wine; a hydraulic pump siphoned the wine back into a hidden reservoir of the mountain that could store 15 liters (16 quarts) of wine.[508] The same pump was used to siphon wine through dragon-headed faucets which had a mouth with movable parts that could open when the wine was poured.[508] The wine from the faucet poured into a cup which could be left on a large iron platform shaped as a lotus leaf.[508] If the drinker was too slow in consuming the wine and placing the cup back in time, the door of a tiny pavilion on the top of the mountain opened automatically while a small puppet sprang forth holding a menacing bat to taunt the slow drinker.[508] Once the cup was placed back on the lotus leaf, the puppet with the bat returned inside the pavilion while the miniature doors closed behind him.[508]
  • Winnowing fan: Contemporary to the rotary air conditioning fan invented by Ding Huan (fl. 180 AD) is a pottery tomb model of a crank-operated rotary winnowing fan from the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), used for separating chaff from the grain.[509][510] The winnowing fan was first described during the Tang Dynasty (618–907) by Yan Shigu (581–645), in his commentary on the Jijiupian dictionary written earlier in 40 BC by Shi Yu; it was also mentioned in a poem by the Song Dynasty (960–1279) artist Mei Yaochen in about 1060.[511] The earliest known drawn illustration of the winnowing fan comes from the Book of Agriculture published in 1313 by Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333).[512]

X

  • Xiangqi: The exact origins of the Chinese chess board game known as xiangqi are ambiguous. Historian David H. Li asserts that it was first invented by Han Xin (d. 196 BC), a renowned military general of the early Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) who fell victim to a purge instigated by Empress Lü Zhi (d. 180 BC), who accused him of trying to rebel, hence his board game quickly came to be associated with his infamous legacy.[513] However, Li states that it was revived under a different, camouflaged name of xiangxi by Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou (r. 561–578), which to this day has made the two terms synonymous and interchangeable for the same game.[514] Playing of the game was banned during the Sui Dynasty (581–618), yet Emperor Taizong (r. 626–649) of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) became an enthusiast of the game and poets like Bai Juyi (772–846) even dedicated poems to it.[515]

Y

Z

  • Zoetrope: There is some evidence that the zoetrope, an primitive ancestor of the cinematograph which the Chinese called a "magic lantern", existed amongst the items of the treasury of the deceased Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BC) of the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC).[516][517] A magician named Shao Ong who staged a seance for Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BC) may have used a zoetrope in his performance of 121 BC.[517] The first clear evidence of the zoetrope used in China comes from the late Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), when the artisan Ding Huan (丁緩) made a 'nine-storied hill-censer' around 180 AD.[516][517] This featured figures of birds and other animals who moved when the lamp was lit; the convection of rising hot air currents caused the vanes at the top canopy of the lamp to spin, while the painted figures on paper attached to the side of the cylinder gave the impression that they were in movement.[516] This sort of toy was remade in subsequent dynasties as well.[518][519]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Bowman (2000), 104–105.
  2. ^ Levathes (1994), 37–38.
  3. ^ Hsu (1988), 96.
  4. ^ Bellwood (2006), 106.
  5. ^ Needham (2004), Volume 7, Part 2, 201.
  6. ^ Bray (1978), 24–26.
  7. ^ Bray (1978), 27–28.
  8. ^ Buisseret (1998), 12.
  9. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 1–2, 40–41, 122–123, 228.
  10. ^ a b Bowman (2000), 594.
  11. ^ a b Tom (1989), 99.
  12. ^ a b Day & McNeil (1996), 122.
  13. ^ Cotterell (2004), 11–13.
  14. ^ Cotterell (2004), 11.
  15. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 149–150.
  16. ^ a b c Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 151.
  17. ^ Ebrey (1999), 124–125.
  18. ^ Needham, Volume 5, Part 1, 201–202.
  19. ^ a b Gernet (1996), 335.
  20. ^ a b Bowman (2000), 599.
  21. ^ a b Day & McNeil (1996), 70.
  22. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 202.
  23. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 205–207.
  24. ^ Needham, Volume 5, Part 1, 212.
  25. ^ a b Bowman (2000), 601.
  26. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 203.
  27. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 227–229.
  28. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 1, 227.
  29. ^ Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 8–9, 80–82.
  30. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 7, 70–73, 120–124.
  31. ^ a b c Gernet (1996), 311.
  32. ^ Day & McNeil (1996), 785.
  33. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 7, 24–25, 345–346.
  34. ^ a b Li Shu-hua: “Origine de la Boussole 11. Aimant et Boussole,” Isis, Vol. 45, No. 2(1954), pp. 175-196 (180)
  35. ^ Carlson (1975), 753–760.
  36. ^ Carlson (1975), 755.
  37. ^ a b Gernet (1962), 77.
  38. ^ Tom (1989), 98–99.
  39. ^ Sivin (1995), III, 21–22.
  40. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 1, 279.
  41. ^ Elisseeff (2000), 296.
  42. ^ Gernet (1996), 328.
  43. ^ Day & McNeil (1996), 636.
  44. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 1, 252.
  45. ^ Sivin (1995), III, 21.
  46. ^ a b Huang (2002), 18–27.
  47. ^ Falkenhausen (1994), 132, Appendix I 329, 342.
  48. ^ Falkenhausen (1994), 134.
  49. ^ a b Wang (1997), 93–100.
  50. ^ Underhill (2002), 106.
  51. ^ Legge (2004), 525.
  52. ^ Watson (2003), 101.
  53. ^ Mair (1997), 336.
  54. ^ a b c d Luan (2006), 49–55.
  55. ^ More about Excavations at the Tomb of Marquis Yi. nga.gov. Retrieved on 2008-08-3.
  56. ^ Di Cosmo (2002), 274.
  57. ^ Liu (2007), 123.
  58. ^ Sterckx (2002), 125.
  59. ^ Porter (1996), 53.
  60. ^ Liu (2007), 122.
  61. ^ McNamee (2008), 156
  62. ^ Angier (2007), 142.
  63. ^ E. McGovern (2007), 314.
  64. ^ a b E. McGovern et al (2004), 17593.
  65. ^ Oldest Wine Comes From China. About.com. Retrieved on 2008-7-4
  66. ^ Chinese People Were Drinking Wine 9,000 Years Ago. Physorg.com. Retrieved on 2008-7-4
  67. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 6, Part 5, 105–108
  68. ^ Loewe (1968), 170–171.
  69. ^ Stark (2005), 30.
  70. ^ a b c Wang (1982), 80.
  71. ^ Loewe (1999), 178.
  72. ^ Temple (1986), 75.
  73. ^ Loewe (1968), 186–187.
  74. ^ Murphy (2007), 114, 184.
  75. ^ Sagart (2005), 21.
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  371. ^ a b c d e f Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 159.
  372. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 2, 160.
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  376. ^ Giles (2007), XIV.
  377. ^ Giles (2007), XI–XII.
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  379. ^ a b Greenberger (2006), 12.
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  382. ^ Crosby (2002), 100–103.
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  384. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 7, 505–510.
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  387. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 5, Part 7, 203–205.
  388. ^ a b c d Temple (1986), 141.
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  396. ^ Neehdam (1986), Volume 3, 99–100.
  397. ^ a b Berggren, Borwein & Borwein (2004), 27
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  399. ^ Wilson (2001), 16.
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  430. ^ Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 154.
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  432. ^ a b Adshead (2000), 156.
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  434. ^ Chung (2005), 152.
  435. ^ a b Tom (1989), 103.
  436. ^ Johnstone & McGrail (1988), 191.
  437. ^ Block (2003), 8–9.
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  439. ^ Fairbank (2006), 192.
  440. ^ Tom (1989), 103.
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  442. ^ Christides (1996), 66–67.
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  446. ^ Minford & Lau (2002), 307.
  447. ^ Balchin (2003), 26–27.
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  449. ^ Krebs (2003), 31.
  450. ^ Wright (2001), 66.
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  452. ^ Yan (2007), 131–132.
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  455. ^ Tom (1989), 98.
  456. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 3, 295.
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  460. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 3, 278.
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  470. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 4, Part 3, 196–197.
  471. ^ Tom (1989), 105–106.
  472. ^ Martin (2007), 8.
  473. ^ Heiss (2007), 4–6.
  474. ^ Needham (1986), Volume 6, Part 5, 513.
  475. ^ Wang (2005), 2–3, 11.
  476. ^ Wang (2005), 17–20.
  477. ^ Heiss (2007), 296–297.
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  479. ^ Needham, Volume 5, Part 1, 123.
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  487. ^ Turnbull (2001), 9, 45–46.
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  491. ^ Wilson (2002), 1–32.
  492. ^ Burnham (1997) 333–335.
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  505. ^ Lewis (1994), 453.
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