Every civilization on Earth has left a legacy. The legacies may be good or bad, important or unimportant, and sometimes barely heard of. Many everyday tasks and entertainment of ours would be impossible without these legacies, such as the task of completing assignments of hundreds of words in an afternoon or transporting numerous goods over huge distances. And fitting these descriptions, are three legacies of the ancient Chinese civilization, that changed three of the most fundamental aspects of civilization. The inventions of the Chinese Civilization, paper, the compass, and paper money changed the areas literature, exploration, and trade forever and by present day, has affected the lives of almost everyone on Earth.

Production of Paper in Ancient China: Wikimedia Commons

The invention of paper came in a time when writing materials were either impractical or rare, and a privileged few held access to them. In China, writing material such as papyrus was very uncommon, causing the civilization to be lagging behind in literacy, which changed in 105 AD, when Cai Lun, a eunuch during the Eastern Han dynasty, invented a method to make paper out of old fishnet, bark, hemp waste, bast fibers, and rag cloth, materials very cheap and in immense quantities, allowing for limitless amounts of paper. According to Timothy Hugh Barret (2008) and many others, this was a turning point in Chinese written culture. The technology exploded and literary works were recorded on almost infinite paper, making literary works easier to access and letting knowledge and skill spread faster. China dominated in literary advantage from the rest of the world, able to write thousands of books, and providing work for hundreds of thousands of Chinese families. Endymion (2012) has stated that China rapidly began to overtake Mediterranean Empires in book production. Later, though China guarded the secret heavily, papermaking spread to neighboring nations such as Vietnam, Korea, and Japan by 7^th century AD (Brian Hoey 2016)  as well as India by Buddhist monks. In 751, after Muslims captured Chinese papermakers in the battle of Talas and learned the process of papermaking, they quickly spread the technology around the empire and set up numerous paper mills, upgrading the process of making the paper as well, and by 1100 it had spread to Fes, Morocco. In the next few hundred years, the technology of papermaking spread throughout Europe and North America, and European papermaking spread to America in Mexico by 1575, and Philadelphia by 1690. Papermaking also exploded the number of books that could be written, bound, and published, and book collections all over the world exploded. Today, the invention of paper almost undoubtedly has impacted civilization as much as the wheel, and where the wheel transported goods, paper transported knowledge across millions of miles and boosted the literary culture of almost the entire planet to where there used to be only a few thousand books in royal libraries, to there being over a million titles in an average local library. Today, more than ever, it is easiest to gain knowledge and hundreds of thousands of books at the fingertips of most people.

Ancient Chinese Compass, used for Fortune-telling: Wikimedia Commons

According to an article on ThoughtCo. by Mary Bellis (June 30, 2018), the compass, invented in China, was originally a device for fortune-telling and geomancy, until the Ancient Chinese also realized the device could be used to find the directions. The spoon-shaped device crafted out of magnetite or lodestone was placed on a bronze plate which had cardinal directions and constellations marked on it and was apparently used by the first Chin emperor to affirm his right to the throne. (Silverman, Chinese Compass 270 C.E.) Eventually, the compass was used for navigation orienteering and naval orienteering by the Chinese military, and several versions of the compass were developed. There were wet compasses which had a ‘south-pointing fish’ floating in a bowl of water, and dry compasses with a magnetized needle inside a wooden turtle, on a bamboo needle, fixed with wax and left to move freely and point North. The invention of the compass and its spread through the trade routes of the world soon opened the path for a prolonged and easier voyage. Though in places like Arabia, sailor and navigators relied mostly on clear skies and constellations to find their way, but in places like the Mediterranean Sea, the compass gave the sailors the ability to start the sailing season earlier and finish it off later, giving them a few months advantage and boosting the area’s economy. (New World Encyclopedia 2019) As it spread around the world, sailing and geography overcame immense problems and coupled with the sextant, the compass could pinpoint one’s location anywhere in the world, and enabled civilization to the reach the furthest corners of our planet. Today, if it were not for the compass, then lands such as America, Hawaii, and Easter Island may have been unknown and unreachable to us. In short, the compass and resulting technology made the world a much smaller place.

Ancient Chinese Promissory Note from Song Dynasty: Wikimedia Commons

According to historians, paper Money was invented in  China, during the Tang dynasty (618 AD – 907 AD), when merchants often dispensed coins in a central depository, and obtained slips of paper, to conduct trading. Scholars such as Jacques Gernet (1962) say this occurred due to the fact that some transactions dealt with thousands of coins, an amount that is difficult to carry around, and others point out, much prone to robbery. However, if merchants dealt through a trustworthy, third-party which issued the slips, then trading could be made much more, easier. The later Song dynasty adopted the system under their wing, encouraging merchants to deposit their wealth in the Empire’s coffers and obtain a promissory note, enabling the depositor to collect their wealth whenever they please. These notes are considered the first legal tender (Coralie Boeykens 2007), and the system was immensely successful until the Mongol invasion of the Southern Song Dynasty. The incoming Yuan dynasty adopted this system too, and it was so successful, that the Records of the Venetian traveler Marco Polo, dedicate an entire chapter to the topic of paper money. Excerpted from the accounts, “It is in the city of Khanbalik that the Great Khan possesses his Mint. (…) In fact, paper money is made there from the sapwood of the mulberry tree, whose leaves feed the silkworm. (…) On each sheet which is to become a note, specially appointed officials write their name and affix their seal. (…) the chief impregnates his seal with pigment and affixes his vermillion mark at the top of the sheet. (…) This paper currency is circulated in every part of the Great Khan’s dominions, nor dares any person, at the peril of his life, refuse to accept it in payment.” (Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?). Through extensive trading with surrounding nations of China, and through the spread of the idea through travelers like Marco Polo, Europe soon followed in the system of promissory notes, slips, banks, depositories and the such. By 1660, goldsmiths in England were issuing certificates that were backed in gold, which were soon used and currency in itself, as they were worth their say in gold or silver (Mike Hewitt 2009). By 1680, the concept of paper money spread all over Europe and even in the New World, the Americas. All around the world, merchants and nations traded in currency, backed by gold. However, after WW1 and WW2, most of the world’s gold had been traded to the USA to finance wars all around the world. According to Nick K. Lioudis (2019), as the WW2 drew to a close, the dominant western leaders created the Bretton Woods Agreement, where the all the world’s currencies would be backed by the US dollar, and in turn, the dollar would be backed by gold. However, by 1976, the US dollar was taken off the Gold standard, and the world’s currencies were now fiat money, a means with which goods were traded, not a good for which one traded.

So, in conclusion, Paper, the compass, and paper money, were three of China’s most world-changing legacies, transforming literary culture, exploration and navigation, and finally commerce and trading. Three areas of human civilization that were essential to the progression of mankind and all three were first developed in the Far East Kingdoms of Ancient China. Because of these technological advancements, we are able to access millions of books at public libraries, navigate our world without losing our way, and able to conduct transactions with carrying around several hundred kilos of metal around every time. In short, though they may not be as infamous as the wheel or as devastating as guns, they nonetheless had no less effect or legacy in the course of human history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barrett, Timothy Hugh (2008), The Woman Who Discovered Printing, Great Britain: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-12728-7

Wilkinson, Endymion (2012), Chinese History: A New Manual, Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute

Brian Hoey (October 27, 2016) A Brief History of Papermaking. Books Tell You Why.com. Retrieved February 5, 2019, https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/a-brief-history-of-papermaking

Mary Bellis (July 30, 2018) The Compass and Other Magnetic Innovations. ThoughtCo. Retrieved February 5, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/compass-and-other-magnetic-innovations-1991466

Susan Silverman, AC. “Chinese Compass 270 C.E.” Smith College Museum of ancient inventions.Retrieved February 5, 2019, https://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html

History of Compass (2019) Facts and History of the Compass. Retrieved February 5, 2019. www.historyofcompass.com.

New World Encyclopedia (2019) Compass. Retrieved February 5, 2019, http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Compass

Gernet, Jacques (1962). Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250–1276. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0720-6.

Coralie Boeykens (September 5, 2007) Paper money, a Chinese invention? National Bank of Belgium. Retrieved February 6, 2019, https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2007/09/chinese-invention.htm

Polo, Marco, 1254-1323? The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East. New York: Scribner, 1929.

Mike Hewitt (January 7, 2009) A History of Paper Money. BullionVault. Retrieved February 6, 2019, https://www.bullionvault.com/gold-news/paper_money_010720091

Nick K. Lioudis (February 3, 2019) What is the Gold Standard? Investopedia. Retrieved February 6, 2019, https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/gold-standard.asp

In this blog, I will show three artifacts representing the decline of the Song dynasty of China. The first artifact are fire arrows, and other gunpowder-propelled weaponry from the Song dynasty representing when the Song dynasty of China faced the Jurchen people from the northern steppes in what is known as the Jingkang incident, and Chinese soldiers used gunpowder powered weapons to drive away the invaders in vain.  The second artifact is the “thunder-crash bomb” representing the course of the battles with the Song as the Song tried to repel the Mongol invasion of China. The third artifact is the counter-weight trebuchet represented by 13^th century AD illustration of a Mongol attack on a walled city with a trebuchet with a Muslim engineer handling the ammunition, representing how the Mongols finally had to use every single resource available to them at the time bring the Jin and Song to an end.

In 1120, the Jurchen horsemen tribes and the Son.g dynasty, both attacked the Liao dynasty of China in hopes of dividing the territory between themselves. Having successfully conquered the defeated Liao dynasty, the split the land with the Song dynasty buying the Sixteen Prefectures from the Jin, in 1123, a Jin general and governor of a prefecture North of the sixteen prefectures, Zhang Jue defected to the Song Dynasty, provoking the Jin Dynasty. The Song first accepted the general with open arms, but quickly realized the aggression it would provoke from the Jin in the North. Zhang Jue was executed in winter 1123 but not fast enough to turn away Jin retaliation. By October 1125, Jin forces attacking from the west and north, with the northern army sacking Qinhuangdao, and proceeding to sack Baoding, Dingzhou, Zhengding, and Xingtai by January 1126. The Jin army crossed the Yellow river and besieged the capital of the Song dynasty, Bianjing. It was a difficult siege for both parties and north army was stuck at the capital as the western Jin army was still held up at Datong and Taiyuan. Emperor Qinzong’s brother Zhou Gou was sent to the enemy camp to talk peace where he was arrested and held for ransom. After paying the ransom of Zhou Gou and giving the city Taiyuan to the Jin as a gesture of good faith, the Jin northern army retreated. However, three months later Emperor Qinzong tried to turn two Jin ambassadors from the former Liao Dynasty against the Jin, a treachery that the ambassadors revealed directly to the Emperor Taizong of Jin. The armies of the Jurchen were quickly remobilised and in September 1126, the western and northern armies entered the song territory and quickly sacked the cities and cleared the path to Bianjing (Kaifeng) by the end of December 1126. The Song, who had been long experimenting with gunpowder, making fireworks since 900 AD, tried to repel the besieging Jin forces with fire arrows, rockets and lances and parcels of gunpowder in bamboo or paper tied with a string to make an early bomb. The Song had introduced the world to a weapon that would eventually be used against them. However, no help arrived for the smothered Song defenders and Kaifeng fell mid-January 1127. The residents of the city and even the Song royal family were abducted, raped, tortured and sold into slavery. The remainder of the Song royal house formed the Southern Song dynasty with Northern China under Jin control.

For Video Documentary, Click Link:

Discovery UK (November 5, 2012), Chinese Rockets, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCymr-xEykk

The Northern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty remained in an uneasy peace until 1211, when Genghis Khan invaded the Jin Dynasty with his Mongol horde. Victorious in the field, and using logics and calculation, as well as Chinese and Muslim engineers to crack open Jin fortresses and walled cities, the Mongols ripped through Jin China and conquered the entirety of it by 1234. During this period, Mongol troops were the most successful besiegers in the history of warfare due to techniques, tactics and weapons of their own as well as borrowed from the Arabs, Persians, and the Chinese. Genghis Khan employed Muslim, and Chinese engineers to solve the initial problem of cracking heavily fortified cities, in response of which, counter-weight trebuchets and the “Muslim phao” were developed which threw projectiles distances of 300 m, a distance unmatched by the siege-engines of old. In addition, the Mongols also had adopted Chinese gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, thunder crash bombs etc. and by 1213, Genghis Khan had conquered Jin territory all the way to the Great Wall of China, and then crossed it. With the help of Han Chinese defectors such as Chenyu Liu and the Song Dynasty who was still bitter with the Jin, Genghis Khan and his horde eventually brought the North to its knees by 1234. The Song began their eventual downfall when the Song tried to occupy some of their former territories from the fallen Jin in Mongol territory and later killed a Mongol ambassador. The Mongols then quickly mobilized and besieged the Song until they drove them back to the Yangtze river and started a campaign against the Song Dynasty that would last till 1279 when the last Song emperor and his entourage jumped into the ocean following the Battle of Yamen ending the Song Dynasty and starting the Yuan Dynasty.

Ceramic thunder crash bomb excavated from Takashima shipwreck, October 2011, dated to the Mongol invasions of Japan (1271-1284 AD)

Source taken from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

By 1240 and beyond, the Song army was holding its ground under command of Meng Gong, Yu Jie, and other generals. Three battles were significant to the overall battle of the Song and the Mongols, the Siege of Diaoyu Castle, the Battle of Xiangyang, and the Battle of Yamen. However, we will discuss in detail only the battle of Xiangyang as after the fall of Xiangyang as a Song stronghold, the Mongol army was free to conquer the rest of China and some may claim China’s fate was sealed when Xiangyang fell. After Mongke Khan’s death during the Siege of Diaoyu Castle in 1258, Mongol forces had left the Song territory and returned in force in 1267 ordered by Kublai Khan and commanded by the Mongol general and chancellor Agu and Song defector Liu Zheng to attack the cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng. The Mongol army brought the technologically advanced siege engines that it had developed when taking over the Jin Dynasty, but the Song cities were prepared for this and extended their moat to 150 m in width and covered the walls thickly clay and nets 10 cm thick and 10 m in length. The Mongol siege machines were rendered useless. The Song Chinese and Mongols both used “thunder-crash bombs” and the defenders lobbed the bombs at the Mongols with their own counter-weight trebuchets. The Mongols finally surrounded the Chinese cities and cut all supply to them in hopes of starving them out, but the cities still had provisions in 1271. After many failed attempts to resupply Xiangyang, one Chinese force got through the Mongol blockade and resupplied the city. However, in 1272 Kublai Khan ordered two Iraqi engineers, Ismael, and Al al-Din to be sent to China to build a new superweapon to breach the Xiangyang walls. The Muslim engineers constructed the new weapon, a counter-weight trebuchet capable of throwing 300 kg projectiles 500 m, throwing them with much more accuracy than older weapons. Viewing the success of this weapon, the Mongols constructed about 20 of them and started the siege with Fancheng, felling the city within a few days with giant rocks flying over the walls and destroying homes inside while the Mongols quickly filled the moat and followed up by a cavalry charge. The commander of Xiangyang, Lv Wenhuan, quickly sent word to Emperor Duzong of Song for reinforcements but the Emperor considered the city lost after hearing of the new trebuchets. In February, the Mongol force started to bombard the city felling city structures and severely damaging castle walls towers. Lv Wenhuan, seeing no other choice surrendered the city to the Mongols on March 14, 1273, and was made the governor of Fancheng and Xiangyang as part of the terms. The backbone of Song China had fallen and now the rest of China was soon to follow as Kublai Khan marched in with his Mongol hordes.

A city under Mongol siege. From the illuminated manuscript of Rashid ad-Din’s Jami al-Tawarikh. Edinburgh University Library. Retrieved on January 10, 2019, from http://www.karakalpak.com/mongols.html#g

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Encyclopedia Britannica (2019), The Invasion of the Song State, www.britannica.com, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from https://www.britannica.com/place/China/Invasion-of-the-Song-state

R.G. Grant (2019), Jingkang Incident, Encyclopedia Britannica, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from https://www.britannica.com/event/Jingkang-Incident-1126-1127

Travel Guide China (November 13, 2017), Mongol Conquest of Yuan Dynasty, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from https://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/history/yuan.htm

Jeffrey Hays (2013), Mongol Army: Tactics, Weapons, Revenge and Terror, factsanddetails.com, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from http://factsanddetails.com/asian/cat65/sub423/item2696.html

nagaap (March 9, 2011), The Fall of the Xia Dynasty, www.wordpress.com, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from https://nagaap.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/the-fall-of-the-xia-dynasty/

Oxford University Press (2019), Song Dynasty falls as Mongols complete conquest of China, blog.oup.com, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from https://blog.oup.com/2012/03/song-dynasty-mongols-conquest-china/

David, Sue Richardson, (2005 – 2015), The Mongols, www.karakalpak.com, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from http://www.karakalpak.com/mongols.html#g

 

Sandra Alvarez (May 11, 2014), The Mongol Siege of Xiangyang and Fan-ch’eng and the Song military, deremilitari.com, retrieved on January 10, 2019 from http://deremilitari.org/2014/05/the-mongol-siege-of-xiangyang-and-fan-cheng-and-the-song-military/

Paper, which boosted the literary culture of China, silk, which drastically changed the economy and trade standing of China and surrounding civilizations, and gunpowder, which was invented by accident and quickly incorporated into weapons of war, were the most important inventions for the civilization of China and the inventions that changed the world the most.

Paper in invented in China in the 2^nd Century by Cai Lun or Ts’ai Lun, an official in the Han court. According to legend, he was inspired by bees and wasps chewing up plant fibres to make their nests. Cai Lun presented papermaking to the Emperor He of the Han Dynasty, as an alternative to other costly and cumbersome mediums such as silk, bone, bamboo, and bark[i]. Cai Lun was revered then by the Emperor and later after his death by countless Chinese papermaking families. Before the invention of paper, not everyone was able to take part in literary culture which changed by paper providing an almost unlimited supply of convenient writing material and boosting China’s literary culture much faster than would have been possible through writing on bamboo and expensive silk. Majority of previous ancient literary works were recorded on paper and became readily available to the populace, and the holy books of the world religions could now also be printed down, and mass produced, boosted religious knowledge. It was easier to teach many pupils to read and write at one time and anyone with the knowledge could proceed to pursue this culture. Within 500 years, papermaking spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, and after Arabs captured Chinese papermakers at the battle of the Talas river[ii], it spread all the way to Europe by the 12^th century, properly changing the world.

1. 1. Papermaking, http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/en-us/articles/the-four-great-inventions-of-ancient-china/3/ , retrieved October 17, 2018

One of the most sought-after items on the land and sea routes of the Silk road were what gave the roads their name: Silk. The technique of making silk was perfected in China thousands of years prior and China managed to keep these techniques for a millennium after opening trade with other civilizations, giving itself the global monopoly on silk. Chinese legends give Leizu, wife of the Yellow Emperor, credit for discovering the techniques to making silk, and for inventing the silk loom in the 27^th century BCE[iii]. Silk was first confined to the use of the emperor and his immediate family and friends but eventually was available to the average citizen. Eventually, ancient civilizations started to trade through nomads and steppes people living beside them and goods spread all over the known world over the slowly established ‘silk’ roads, to places such as Egypt, Rome, and India, among places. The Roman empire temporarily banned silk because of the trade deficit caused by the interest in the cloth. Silk’s booming popularity caused many Chinese families to join the silk industry, and in spite of deep secrecy around the techniques, and death sentence for smugglers, the silk-making spread to surrounding countries and remained part of Asian culture ever since. The Silk roads are the perfect example of interaction between ancient civilizations and the spread of goods, ideas, technology, and religious ideas, and without the influence of the desert roads and ocean routes, the world would be radically different from what it is today.[iv]

2. 2. Silk Making, https://worldhistory.us/general/the-history-of-silk-production-silk-stands-the-test-of-time.php , retrieved October 17, 2018

Around 850 CE, Chinese alchemists inadvertently invented gunpowder while trying to discover the secret to immortality. Instead, they found a substance which was extremely flammable or explosive in right quantities, as was found when the scientists scarred by the flammable powder and their homes burned down[v]. The scientists considered it a failure, but gunpowder was incorporated into fireworks and signal rockets soon after it was invented. Though origins of gunpowder were nothing violent, military strategists soon found many uses for the flaming substance. Fire arrows and fire lances were the first of a revolutionary line of weapons, developed in the 10^th to 12^th centuries, which would eventually evolve and grow into the deadliest modern weapons we know of today. Fire lances were hollow tubes, first made of bamboo, filled with powder and projectile that were ignited to fire the projectiles at the enemy at very close range. These were later made of bronze. By the late 13^th century, the Chinese had employed true guns which were cast of bronze or iron[vi]. Most of the newfound weapons were used to repel Mongol invasion, but working only temporarily, it fueled Mongol curiosity, and China was conquered by its own weapon. Arabs had spread the invention to the west by 1304, the Ottoman empire used cannons to take the city of Constantinople, and the West turned to firearms and gunpowder in the 14^th century, radically changing the world. This artifact caused a wildfire of new technology to deal with outside dangers and dangers within themselves. Fear of danger and need to protect themselves, resulted in the adoption of an accidental invention to change the face of warfare forever and change society and history forever.

3. 3. Gunpowder Rockets, http://fourriverscharter.org/projects/Inventions/pages/china_gunpowder.htm , Retrieved October 17, 2018

[i] ^{Papermaking, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/technology/papermaking : Secondary Resource}

^{Wilkinson, Endymion (2012), Chinese History: A New Manual, Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute}

[ii] ^{Quraishi, Silim “A survey of the development of papermaking in Islamic Countries”, Bookbinder, 1989 (3): 29–36.}

[iii] ^{Lei Zu, The Amazing Bible Timeline with History, https://amazingbibletimeline.com/blog/leizu/}

^{Chinese Empress Discovers Silk-Making, ThoughtCo., https://www.thoughtco.com/chinese-empress-discovers-silk-making-3529402}

[iv] ^{Silk Production and Trade in Medieval Times, ThoughtCo., https://www.thoughtco.com/silk-lustrous-fabric-1788616}

[v] ^{How Gunpowder Changed the World, LiveScience, https://www.livescience.com/7476-gunpowder-changed-world.html}

[vi] ^{Gunpowder| explosive, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/technology/gunpowder}

 

Bibliography:

Papermaking, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/technology/papermaking : Secondary Resource

Wilkinson, Endymion (2012), Chinese History: A New Manual, Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute

Quraishi, Silim “A survey of the development of papermaking in Islamic Countries”, Bookbinder, 1989 (3): 29–36.

Wikipedia, the History of Paper, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper

Wikipedia, Papermaking, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papermaking

Lei Zu, The Amazing Bible Timeline with History, https://amazingbibletimeline.com/blog/leizu/

Chinese Empress Discovers Silk-Making, ThoughtCo., https://www.thoughtco.com/chinese-empress-discovers-silk-making-3529402

Silk Production and Trade in Medieval Times, ThoughtCo., https://www.thoughtco.com/silk-lustrous-fabric-1788616

Gunpowder, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#History_of_gunpowder

Gunpowder| explosive, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/technology/gunpowder

How Gunpowder Changed the World, LiveScience, https://www.livescience.com/7476-gunpowder-changed-world.html

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton