The Influence of Ancient China on the World

Ancient China can be accredited with many innovative inventions that, without which, world history would have been considerably different. In fact, there are so many inventions and improvements the Chinese have contributed to every facet of life imaginable, that I will focus on a few that I find interesting.

We certainly are familiar with a few well known inventions attributed to the Tang and Song Dynasties such as the compass, paper making, gunpowder, the rudder and the abacus but the Chinese also invented paper money, clocks, the seismograph, kites and pasta.

Paper money, called flying money, emerged in the eighth century during the Tang Dynasty. Chinese merchants and traders began printing and using paper money when finding that strings of copper coins were cumbersome and impractical to travel around with. This enabled banking to develop more rapidly and the Chinese employed the abacus to help them keep track of complicated transactions. The problem with paper money in commerce, however, was that it was not backed by coin or precious metal and therefore lead to price inflation.

The first clocks were devised to keep track of astronomical events to help the Emperor determine his heir. Part of the selection process involved knowing the precise time of conception of the child in question. Since the Emperor's life was planned out concurrent to astrological events, there had to be a way to determine the best time to try and conceive a child with him. Clocks helped to pinpoint these times so that the highest ranking wives and concubines had access to him at those precise moments. Later clocks, like Su Sung's Cosmic Engine in 1092 C.E. were mechanical in nature and were constructed of many components. The top of the clock was a spherical bronze mechanism that was used to check the position of the stars. That was driven by a chain-drive (also invented by the Chinese) powered by a water escapement wheel. This clock was the most precise time keeping device the world had known until Invading Tartars stole the clock in 1126 C.E. when they ended the Sung Dynasty.

 

The Dragon Jar was invented around 132 C.E. by Zhang Heng during the Han Dynasty. A large bronze vessel adorned with eight dragon heads representing the points of the compass at the top and below those at the foot of the jar were eight open-mouthed frogs. In the mouth of each dragon was a small ball that was released into the open mouth of the frog situated in the direction of an occurring earthquake. It is the assumption of scientists that some sort of pendulum device was on the inside of the jar which swung toward the location of the earthquake and prompted the dragon to release its ball. Voila! The world's first seismograph. Legend has it that Heng's Dragon Jar was able to detect an earthquake 400 miles from its location.

Travel to any beach in America or take a walk through your local park on a blustery day, kites are a favorite pastime amongst the old and young alike. Their colorful sails and serpentines make them a popular child's toy today. Kites have a long and beloved history in China, they were invented as early as 475 B.C.E and the earliest were made of wood. After the advent of paper, this was used to make them. The first kites were not toys at all but used by the military for communications and observation. According to one story, the Emperor Wudi of the Liang Dynasty used a kite to send an SOS, while engulfed by hostile troops at Taicheng. The people of the Tang Dynasty attached bamboo strips to the back of the kite which made noise while in the breeze and they called the kite Fenzheng. A zheng is a Chinese stringed instrument and fengzheng means wind zheng. In the Qing Dynasty, it was believed that flying a kite and letting it go would send off illness and bad luck but finding a lost kite and picking it up would bestow that bad luck upon the finder.

Pasta is another invention of the Chinese. Most people assume that the Italians are responsible for this staple of their diet but in fact, the Chinese introduced pasta too. There is evidence of the Chinese eating pasta dating back to 5000 B.C.E. The Chinese made their pasta with 2 kinds of millet as opposed to European pasta which we are accustomed to today made with wheat or flour. Scientists have determined that broomcorn and foxtail millets were ground into flour, made into dough and then rolled and stretched into noodle form. In 2005, a 4000 year old bowl of pasta that had overturned was found perfectly preserved in the Lajia archeological dig site in northwestern China

The fore mentioned articles don't begin to scratch the surface of what China has introduced to the world. China has also influenced art, culture, medicine, religion, commerce, agriculture, mathematics and science in a way that is woven through the fabric of our lives to this day and surely will continue to do so for many millennia to come.