Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
there was finally something of an intellectual rebellion against
Buddhism among many of China's intellectuals (see Chapter 4).
Technological Innovations
China saw a staggering number of technological innovations
during the Han dynasty and even during the chaotic Period of
Division that followed it. The Chinese were the first people in the
world to harness the power of rushing water in streams and rivers,
and they did so 1,200 years before the Europeans. In A.D. 31 a
regional government official invented a waterwheel that transmitted
power from a running stream to the large bellows (devices that blow
air) of an iron-casting operation. The forced air from the bellows was
used to heat up the temperature of charcoal fires until they were hot
enough to melt iron. This was, of course, an important innovation in
Chinese metallurgy.
The Chinese also built the first suspension bridge in the world,
1,800yearsbeforesuchbridgeswereknownintheWest.(Asuspen-
sion bridge is a structure that holds a roadway or walkway on ropes
or cables.) The first mention in Chinese historical materials of such a
bridge, which dates back to Han times in 25 B.C., describes a suspen-
sion bridge in the Himalayas. A Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled
to India at the end of the fourth century A.D. mentions crossing it
along his journey. This was likely a catenary bridge, which means that
the planked pathway of the bridge followed the curved contours of the
suspended rope and did not constitute a flat passage surface. True
non-catenary suspension bridges were made possible by the Chinese
when they invented iron-chain suspension techniques. The first such
bridge in Europe was not built until the eighteenth century.
Everyone knows that the Chinese invented paper, but it was not the
flimsy stuff pounded from wood fibers and shaped into thin sheets
like the pages of this topic. Paper is actually the substance left behind
when any loose and finely pounded fibers are suspended in a con-
tainer of solution, allowed to settle to the bottom in thin deposits,
and then allowed to dry after the solution is drained away. For centu-
ries, paper in Europe was made of linen and was exceptionally strong
and enduring, as an inspection of a European topic printed the 1600s
and 1700s will reveal. (In fact, the pages of these topics will outlast
their covers and will still be around long after the highly acidic paper
used in some early twentieth-century topic publishing has literally
crumbled and cracked into dust.) The oldest piece of paper in the
world, found in China this century, dates back to the second or first
