San José State University

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The Advanced Technology of Ancient China

An Overview

Around 2500 years ago, when no one in Europe or the Middle East could melt even one ounce of iron the Chinese were casting multi-ton iron objects. It was not until the mid-1700's in Europe that such feats of metallurgy were achieved in Britain, the technically most advanced country of Europe. The early success in iron-casting in China was due j n large part to a superior form of bellows that delivered a continuous stream of air to a furnace instead of an interrupted stream as from the type of bellows used in the West. No one beforehand would have given much thought or attention to such a seemingly unimportant device as the Chinese bellows, but it turned out to be a crucial technological development.

The Chinese bellows expels air on the forward stroke and on the backward stroke. The Western bellows expels air only on the down stroke. In Western furnaces there was no air enhancing the fire about half of the time. The Chinese bellows had air enhancing the furnace fire continuously. This enabled the Chinese furnaces to reach temperature hot enough to melt iron into a liquid state.

But ancient China was not just technically advanced in iron-making. In a wide variety of technical fields China of 300 BCE was many centuries ahead of Europe and the Middle East. And what happened to China is that it stagnated technologically so that by the nineteenth century it was so far behind the West that it was weak and primitive. China had regressed so much that almost everyone, in China as well as the West, had forgotten that China was once technically far advanced compared to the West.

The answer is that Qin Shihuang, the king of the state of Qin (Ch'in) in western China, conquered the six other Chinese kingdoms, uniting them into one empire and created a class of bureaucrats to run and regulate it. He created this bureaucracy to centralize control and break the power of feudalists who were always usurping the power of the central authorities. The Qin Empire did not last long after the death of its founder.

The Qin bureaucrats were of a different type than the bureaucrats who were later chosen under the Han Empire. The Qin bureaucrats were hard-nosed administrators who adhered to a philosophy of administration called Legalism. Legalism was a totalitarian ideology that, among other things, held that books and scholarship were a waste of resources. They burned books and buried some scholars alive to discourage that waste of time.

After the Qin Empire collapsed the State of Han rose to power but kept some of the institutions of the Qin. Their empire also was to be run by bureaucrats but the Han bureaucrats, called mandarins, were to be followers of the Confucian doctrines and were chosen through a competitive examination based upon history, literature and philosophy.

Instead of being ruled by feudalists the China of the Han Empire and thereafter was ruled by scholar-bureaucrats who over time stultified the civilization. The Mandarins were a privileged class and did not want anyone disturbing their status quo and endangering the system. Over the centuries the heavy hands of these bureaucrats slowed the previously dynamic society of China to a standstill and ultimately caused it to regress. But before considering the stagnation and regression it is enlightening to review how stunning was the ancient flowering of Chinese civilization.

A Review of the Record

Metal Smelting: The technology for smelting copper developed very early in China, at least before 1800 BCE. Later when the superiority of iron over bronze was recognized superior blast furnaces were developed. These furnaces achieved high enough temperatures that the iron flowed like water and could then be cast. In the West there were blast furnaces that smelt iron from its ores but the temperature was only high enough to produce a mass of iron and slag fused together. This mass had to be hammered to consolidate the iron and drive out the rock-like slag. It was thus known as wrought iron. In China the blast furnaces could produce liquid iron which could then be cast into molds.. Cast iron has one disadvantage; it has such high carbon content that it is relatively brittle. The Chinese learned to reduce the carbon content to a level such that the metal was strong and resilient instead of being brittle. This is called steel . Wrought iron has virtually no carbon was softer and more malleable. The Chinese produced steel by melting cast iron and wrought iron together. In the West this technique for producing rediscovered in Germany about 1863 by the Siemens company. Centuries later (120 BCE) other processes were developed for reducing the carbon content of iron. One involved blowing air on molten cast iron. Such a method did not materialize in the West until 1852 when William Kelly achieved it with the assistance of four Chinese workmen. Four years later Henry Bessemer achieved it by blowing air through molten iron.

iron. In China the blast furnaces could produce liquid iron which could then be cast into molds.. Cast iron has one disadvantage; it has such high carbon content that it is relatively brittle. The Chinese learned to reduce the carbon content to a level such that the metal was strong and resilient instead of being brittle. This is called . Metal Casting: Casting of bronze objects developed very early in the Shang Civilization of the Yellow River Valley of about 1800 BCE. Religious objects, as well as tools and weapons, of great artistic merit were cast. The casting of weapons drastically altered the social structure of China. Before this was available armies consisted of the wealthy elite who could afford to arm their selves. With cheap cast weapons available large numbers of the peasant male population could be inducted into a national army. Hua Jue-ming in an article in the January 1st, 1983 issue of Scientific American entitled "The Mass Production of Iron Castings in Ancient China" says By 500 B.C. the Chinese had developed stack casting: a high technology in which multiple castings are made by pouring iron into multiple molds designed to be stacked one on top of another.

Metal Tipped Ploughs

The Crossbow: The concept of the crossbow developed from animal traps. A bow was placed horizonally on the ground and secured. The bow string was pulled back and attached to a trigger mechanism. An arrow was put into placed so when the trigger mechanism was tripped the arrow would be shot into the creature who tripped it. The arrows could be tipped with poison. It is difficult to establish the date of the first development of the crossbow as a weapon but an archaeologist named E.M. Grosser discovered a bronze pistol-like version which Robert Templel says could have been from the "eighth or ninth century BC or even earlier." There are references to the crossbow in China in the sixth century BC. By the fourth century BC military leaders were relying strongly on crossbow-armed forces. One Han prince spoke in 336 BC of having thousands of crossbows for his army. In 209 BC the Han emperor boasted of having regiments of fifty thousand armed with crossbows. In 157 BC the Han prince in charge of the Empire's arsenal said the arsenal contained several hundred thousand crossbows. The crossbow had not only the advantage of sending an arrow with enough force to pierce body armor but its arrows, being short, could not be shot back by archery bowmen. In archery battles each side replenished their opponent's stock of ammunition. Over the decades the crossbow was improved upon. The trigger mechanisms were cast out of bronze and became as sophisticated as those of a modern rifle. Rectangular frames were attached to the front and back of the crossbow as sights to make it easier to aim. The strength of the bow on a crossbow made it difficult to prepare for firing. Stirrups were attached to aid in pulling back the string. Metal belt buckles have been found that have a prong sticking out. This device enabled the bowman to hook the bow-string over the prong and use his legs to push against the bow. There were also winch devices to use to pull back the bow-string but these took longer. Later larger crossbows were built to shoot multiple arrows at a time. These bordered on effectively being virtually canons. Another innovation involved a magazine of arrows mounted over the crossbow which dropped a new arrow in place for firing as the crossbowman pulled a lever to pull back the bow-string. Such a crossbow was like a machine gun. A crossbowman could fire 20 arrows in 15 seconds. China used crossbows militarily as late as 1895 in its war with Japan.

The Compass: The compass was invented in ancient China. People learned to use naturally occurring magnets, called lodestones, to magnetize an iron pointer. The first pointers had a shape somelike a balanced spoon. The handle of the spoon pointed to the south rather than to the north. The early compasses that were borrowed in the West also pointed to the south and only later were modified to point to the north. The Chinese compasses were used in the geomancy called Feng Shui as well as in navigation.

as well as in navigation. Paper: The first paper was made from fiber obtained by pounding linen cloth. Initially it was used for clothing rather than writing material. It was even used to make body armor for soldiers. A thick layer of cotton was enclosed between two layers of the tough rag paper. Some soldiers preferred it to the heavy, awkward metal armor.

Gunpowder: Gun powder developed out of the experiments of Chinese shamans in throwing mineral powders into fires to produce interesting effects in terms of colors and enhancements of the flames. Later the gunpowder was used for making fireworks. The use of gunpowder as an explosive came after its use was borrowed by the West.

Deep drilling and the use of natural gas: In the search for salt wells the ancient Chinese developed a technology of driving bamboo poles deep into the earth. Depths up to a kilometer were achieved through this technique. In addition to brine this drilling also often tapped into reservoirs of natural gas. This natural gas was captured in barrels and used as fuel to evaporate the water from brine to produce salt.

Mechanical clock mechanisms: Accurate mechanical clocks were developed in ancient China because of a belief in a form of astrology that was based upon the moment of conception rather than the time of birth. Retainers listened outside the royal bedrooms to record the possible times of conception of royal children. This was considered important enough that considerable effort was devoted to developing accurate timing mechanisms. These clock mechanisms were borrowed in the West and perfected for other purposes. When Jesuits presented such mechanical clocks to the Chinese emperor many centuries later the technology had been forgotten in China and no one knew that the mechanical clock had been invented in China.

Row crop farming: In ancient times field were planted by broadcasting (throwing) the seed randomly. It was the Chinese who in ancient times realized that if the seeds were planted in separated rows the plants could be irrigated more effectively and the weeds could be chopped down with a hoe. This greatly increased the crop yields.

Silk: The discovery that the cocoons of silk worms could be unwound and the filaments used to weave an especially light, strong and beautiful cloth was of course made in China.

Porcelain: In very ancient times the Chinese discovered that with the right choice of clay and firing techniques pottery could be made so thin that it was translucent. Such porcelain became universally known as china .

. Rudders for navigating ships:

Suspension bridges:

Wheelbarrows:

These are just some of the technological acheivements of ancient China. There were also major early developments in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and literature. There were also numerous inventions of less technological significance such as kites. There are some technologies that are important in China that were never adopted in the West such as bamboo scaffolding in building construction and renovation.

Dr. Joseph Needham was a British official who discovered the nearly forgotten history of science and technology in ancient China. He found numerous individuals who each knew one part of the story. He put it all together in a work intended to have twenty five volumes. He entitled it Science and Civilization in China. A condensation is avaible in the book "The Genius of China" by Robert Temple.

Chinese technology did not immediately stagnate under the control of the Mandarins. In the fifteenth century China sent armadas of ships vastly larger than those of the Europeans. The story of the treasure fleets of the early fifteenth century is told elsewhere. Without a doubt that technology was explicitly destroyed by the Mandarins.

(To be continued.)

For more on the history of China see China.