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SCIENCE The Primacy of Chinese Inventions Brian McElney, Curator, Museum of East Asian Art, Bath, on 28 September 2001 The speaker said he would be reviewing some of the important Chinese scientific discoveries from times BC down to the mid-15th century, when knowledge of them was first transmitted to Europe and used there. He would also give a few thoughts as to the probable reasons for the comparative lack of scientific progress in China since the mid 15th century. The first European visitors to China who left written records were mostly monks seeking to introduce the Chinese to Catholic Christianity, and their writings are of 11th century date. Interestingly they called the country Cathay, a corruption of the name of the ruling tribe, the Khita, of the Liao dynasty (917-1127), who ruled a large swathe of what is now Manchuria, Inner and Outer Mongolia and part of Siberia in the 11th century. These Europeans must therefore have entered China from the North. When they arrived they found that Nestorian Christianity was being practised by the Ongut mongols, who controlled parts of the northern regions during the 10th-12th centuries, so a form of Christianity was not a wholly alien religion to the Chinese at that time. In the 13th century the conquest of much of Asia by Genghis Khan and his immediate successors, established the most extensive empire the world has ever known, stretching from Mongolia right up to the River Elbe in Germany at its greatest extent (c.1240); whilst in the West its borders soon contracted to within the boundaries of modern Russia, in the east China was added to the Mongol empire by Kublai Khan in 1279; the imposition of the Pax Mongolica over this vast empire greatly facilitated travel and several European visitors to China are recorded from then on; whether Marco Polo ever visited China, living there between 1275-1292 as he stated, is still hotly debated and his work may be just a pastiche of the reports of several lesser known visitors down to the time of his writing in 1295. What is certain is that there were sufficient Christians in Zayton, the chief port in Fujian in the early 1300s, for no less than 3 successive Catholic bishops to be appointed to minister to the Christian churches there. Most of the early European visitors who wrote reports on China, expressed their amazement at the strange things they saw there and the advanced scientific processes available; Even to this day Europeans still think of Chinese culture as being strange and exotic. China has always been a heavily populated country with an extensive agricultural base. The Daoist religion encouraged a deep study of nature and this lead to all sorts of discoveries, which the Chinese immediately put to practical use. In many cases the scientific basis of their discoveries was unknown to them until many years after the discovery was first described and put to practical use. For instance Shen Gua, born 1030AD, described fossils and realised that they had been animals in the remote past. The number of important Chinese inventions, knowledge of which eventually made it to Europe (sometimes only centuries after their discovery by the Chinese) is truly enormous. A list of some of these Chinese inventions, and the time lag when the invention arrived in Europe taken from Dr Needham great work The History of Science and Civilisation in China is appended to this report, which also includes the very small number of significant inventions where the invention occurred in the West, with knowledge in those cases moving from West to East. Many inventions, such as the magnetic compass, discovered by the Chinese and used originally for geomancy at the latest by the 5th century AD, but later for navigation at the latest by 1086 but probably first about a century earlier than that, and gunpowder, a Chinese discovery of the 11th century AD, are particularly well known. These discoveries did not reach Europe until the late 12th century. In the amount of time available in this talk, I have to concentrate on a few specific areas of science and I have chosen just 5 areas, to illustrate China's scientific primacy in those areas, their significance and when they came to be adopted in Europe. The areas chosen are:- 1 transportation canals and associated engineering work; 2 sericulture; 3 the cross bow; 4 horse harness improvements; 5 nautical matters and geography Finally I wish to conclude with a few remarks
The extensive use of canals for both irrigation and transportation immediately struck early European visitors to China. Indeed many of China's canals, some developed over 2000 years ago, are still in use to-day. As Bath's and this part of England's history is bound up with the early development of canals in UK I thought tonight's audience would be interested in China's scientific developments in this area. It should be noted here that whilst China's population is approximately 20% of the world's total, its irrigated area approximates to 1/3rd of the total of all the world's irrigated areas. China's expertise in matters of hydraulic engineering is truly awesome and is of extremely long standing. Canals both large and small were built in China for both irrigation and transportation purposes from a very early date with most, if not all, provinces having their examples. The earliest reference to an irrigation canal dates back to the 8th century BC. In this brief talk I want to mention just two examples of transportation canals. Firstly, the Magic Transport Canal, this is a contour canal, which, besides assisting irrigation, enabled the transportation of freight across one of the principal mountain ranges in China from the South to the North. This canal connected two rivers in Guangxi Province one flowing north and one south and enabled through transport between the Yang River, the Dongting lake and the West River flowing down to Canton. It was built in about 219BC to enable the first Emperor's army to be supplied for the conquest of the State of Yue at that time. This canal has been repaired and set in order several times (including in the 19th century) and it is still in use to-day. The second canal is the Grand Canal, which in its final form stretched from the Lower Yangzi valley to Beijing a total length of 1770 kilometres, equivalent to the distance between Florida and New York. This canal enabled enormous quantities of produce and tax grain to be moved from South China to the capital cheaply (horse-drawn barges can carry 15 times the load of the horse) and this canal system is still used to-day by thousands of barges. Parts of the Grand Canal are very ancient, such as the section, which incorporated and upgraded the ancient Canal of the Wild Geese connecting the Yellow River near Kaifeng with the Bian and Si Rivers. This ancient canal had been used for both irrigation and transportation and the precise date of its construction is unknown, but, as it is first mentioned by Su Qin in 330BC it must antedate that date; it was incorporated into the Grand Canal after improvements. The Grand Canal involved the work of combining pre-existing sections into one unified whole and this was done in two stages; the first under the Sui emperors (completed in 610AD) from the Lower Yangzi valley to the Sui capital at Luoyang and secondly under the Yuan dynasty taking the Canal from Luoyang to the Yuan dynasty's capital at Beijing completed in 1293AD. By combining the use of the Grand Canal with the Magic Transport Canal it was possible, after1293, to move produce all the way from Canton to Beijing. Chinese canals enabled the rulers of the Han dynasty by about 200BC to have a single trunk waterway from the 40th to the 22nd degree of latitude a distance of 2000 kilometres in a direct line. The Chinese also seem to have used sluice and lock gates from the first century BC at the latest and the Canal of the Wild Geese had flash lock gates in the 1st century BC. The earliest pound lock in China was built as an anti-corruption measure by Qiao Weiyao on the West River near Huiaiyin in 984AD,as is recorded in the History of the Song Dynasty. The Encyclopaedia Britannica wrongly credits the Dutch with the invention of the pound lock in 1373. In contrast to China the earliest canals in Europe seem to date from the 12th century, Elsewhere the earliest transportation canal seems to have been built by Darius I from the Nile to the Red Sea c.510BC, but this had silted up and fell out of use at an early date. All of China's canals and rivers were spanned by bridges and the Chinese expertise as regards bridge construction was very advanced; By the 1200s they had cantilever, suspension and free standing segmental arch bridges all in use. The Anji bridge built in 610AD is the world's oldest segmented arch bridge and is still standing (see photo 1). The earliest free standing segmented arch bridge in Europe is 14th century.
Fig.1 The Anji Bridge (see ref.1)
As regards suspension bridges these were common in the Himalayan regions with early examples possibly going back to the 3rd century BC. Originally they had bamboo suspension cables but by the end of the 6th century AD at the latest they were being built using wrought iron cables. In all probability such cables had been used from the 1st century AD. In Europe Faustus Verantius proposed building one in 1595 but it seems the Winch Bridge over the Tees for pedestrians was the earliest actually built in Europe in 1741, with Telford's bridge over the Menai Strait in 1819 being the first suspension bridge to carry vehicular traffic.. We know that Chinese suspension bridges had a great influence on the European engineers as Martin Martini referred to the Chinese iron chain Jingdong suspension bridge in 1655 and this was referred to again and again in later writings and seems to have been the inspiration of later Europeans engineers.
The production of silk in China goes back to the remote past, though precisely when it started is unknown. Chinese silk garments have been found in European tombs from the 4th century BC onwards. The Chinese themselves traded extensively with the Roman empire in the Han dynasty and thereafter through middlemen over the famed Silk Road . Indeed it has been suggested that one of the reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire was the shortage of coinage in the 3rd and 4th centuries as much of the silver coinage of the Roman empire was sent to China and such middlemen to pay for the Chinese silk so beloved of the Roman matrons; this shortage of coinage led to massive inflation in the Roman empire and collapse of the economy ,which Gibbon considered one of the chief reasons for the Empire's decline at that time.. Silk was one of the foundations of Byzantine prosperity and Justinian nationalised the Byzantine silk trade in 542AD. Because the Byzantines were frequently at war with Persia, through whose territory the Silk Road passed, there were frequent interruptions of supply. In 552AD silk worms, however, were introduced into Europe and the technology of silkworm cultivation must have arrived at virtually the same time, as Europe soon developed a silk industry of its own.
The use of the bow and arrow goes back to neolithic times all over the world but the cross bow as an individual arm was a Chinese invention of no later than the 4th century BC; though as a catapult device its history in China goes back a lot further. The Museum of East Asian Art in Bath has a cross bow trigger mechanism of the 3rd century BC. When the individual cross bow arrived in Europe it enabled the peasant to shoot down the fully armoured knight, so the rulers of the time got the Pope, by the Lateran Council of 1215, to decree excommunication of anyone using a crossbow. Its adoption in Europe was postponed for some time, though its use at Crecy in 1346 is well attested. Similar attempts at suppression of nuclear weapons are being made to-day with non proliferation treaties sponsored by the UN and I hope they are more successful than the Pope's attempt at controlling the use of the cross-bow.
The ancient method of harnessing a horse or other draught animal was by a throat and girth harness but this had the disadvantage of practically throttling the animal if used as a draught animal, and its effectiveness was severely limited. The Chinese adopted two innovations in this regard namely a) the breast strap harness first introduced between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC; this multiplied the efficiency of the harness 4 to 5 times; the earliest evidence of the use of this harness in Europe is the 8th century AD, though its use in the 5th or 6th century AD has been postulated;
Fig 2 Horse harnesses (see ref.1)
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