Talk:Gunpowder/Archive 9

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For Ocanter

First off, wow. After reading all of the above arguments, I can see a lot has happened since I last took a peek at this talk page.

Anyways, to Ocanter's statement made previously [in this talk page's archive 7]: "and even this is assuming the dating of the guns is correct".

Besides the aid of carbon dating, we actually do know the exact date for the earliest bombard (1298 AD), of Chinese origin, because of the bronze-cast written inscriptions on its barrel, stating the year it was made (in Yuan Dynasty Chinese reign terms, of course, correlated with Christian era dating). Its inscription reads: "2nd year of the Dade era, Yuan Dynasty". As for the earliest gun (1288 AD) of Chinese origin, it was buried at Heilongjiang in a late 13th century tomb with objects that were very distinctive of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty period (ended in 1234), but there is further information of greater interest to its dating. From Needham's Volume 5, Part 7, pages 293-294:

It has to be from 1298; it says so! You've never heard of faking an inscription? Needham just dismisses the possibility that the inscriptions were fake, on the grounds that it "never would have occurred to any Chinese" to do such a thing! As for the carbon dates, you cannot carbon-date bronze, because it doesn't have any carbon in it. You can only carbon-date associated artifacts. The tomb is interesting, certainly, which is why it deserves attention--not blind faith, but careful scrutiny. Again, this is twenty years after Bacon's book. 171.64.141.148 16:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Not only does Needham accept this dating, but so do Chase (see above) and Kelly (2004:17). You are perfectly free to question the dating if you wish. But if you want the article to reflect your doubts, Ocanter, you need to cite a reliable source which shares them. JFD 22:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have not attempted to dispute the dating of the guns in the article. In fact, I think they're probably right. But I think you must be starting to see where Kelly and Chase are coming from. Ocanter 19:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Now the military history of this part of the world happens to be rather well known. From the Yuan Shih we learn that there were considerable combats, just in the region where the handgun was found, in 1287 AD and the following years. A rebellion initiated by a Mongol prince named Nayan was put down, not without a good deal of trouble, by Li Thing, a commander in the Yuan service who came of an old Jurchen Chin family called Phuchha. Nayan was a Christian prince, the descendant of Belgutai, half-brother of the great Chingiz, and after his revolt against Khublai, a revolt which a Korean brigade helped Li Thing to defeat, he was bloodlessly executed.

It is quite clear that during this campaign gunpowder weapons were much used. The Yuan Shi text tells us that towards the end of 1287 AD Li Thing equipped and led groups of foot soldiers carrying and using huo phao, so these could evidently not have been the heavy and unwieldy trebuchets of former times. We read that:

Li Thing personally led a detachment of ten brave soldiers holding huo phao, and in a night attack penetrated the enemy's camp. Then they let off the phao, which caused great damage, and such confusion that the enemy soldiers attacked and killed each other, flying in all directions.

This could of course be interpreted as an assault with grenades, but on the immediately following page there is a further statement concerning some time early in 1288 AD. It goes as follows:

Li Thing chose gun-soldiers (chhung tsu), concealing those who bore the huo phao on their backs; then by night he crossed the river, moved upstream, and fired off (the weapons). This threw all the enemy's horses and men into great confusion...and he gained a great victory.

Here we have such an explicit statement that handguns or portable bombards must have been involved rather than grenades or small bombs. Indeed this must be one of the earliest occurences of the term chhung anywhere in the literature.

I think you have answered your own argument with this reference to "the weapons," turning the "weapons" on yourself, so to speak. And again, the Chinese accounts lag Bacon by twenty years. 171.64.141.148 16:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

As for the effectiveness of the charge used for either gun or bombard, I would refer to Zhang Xian's poetic verse known as The Iron Cannon Affair, written in 1341 AD (merely 4 decades after the oldest extant Chinese bombard was cast). Zhang wrote that a cannonball could "pierce the heart or belly when it strikes a man or horse, and can even transfix several persons at once." I'd say a shot like that (felling several people at once) would need a pretty powerful gunpowder charge. Wouldn't you agree? Furthermore, the Huolongjing text of the mid 14th century attests to the destructive power of Chinese artillery, while Needham provides a rather lengthy list of known archeologically-excavated Chinese guns and cannons in Table 1 of pages 290-292 of Volume 5, Part 7. Thirty seven of these belong to the 14th century alone, and are located in various museums today, in China, Taiwan, and Europe.--PericlesofAthens 06:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

So what does the 1341 account tell us about the power of the 1288 technology? If I point out that a 1966 American vessel could carry men to the moon, are we to understand that a 1926 Chinese vessel had the same range? 171.64.141.148 16:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You're funny

Ocanter: Needham just dismisses the possibility that the inscriptions were fake, on the grounds that it "never would have occurred to any Chinese" to do such a thing!

What a rediculous thing to assume (especially without evidence or even a hint), that Chinese archeologists of the 20th century somehow tampered with this medieval bronze artifact in order to serve some ultra-nationalistic 'historical agenda'. Following that logic, I could easily assume that someone penned all of Roger Bacon's accounts of gunpowder centuries later with an impressive forgery. Although not as extreme, you're starting to remind me of that obnoxious Russian revisionist Anatoly Fomenko, who is trying to convince everyone that the empires of ancient Egypt, Greece, China, Rome, Persia, etc. did not exist, and human history did not start until about the 10th century (a huge conspiracy covered up by the Jesuits of course, in the 16th century, where they apparently tried to convince the Chinese of the Ming Dynasty that the Tang Dynasty existed!). Incredibly stupid, on an astronomical scale, lol.

I'm not sure what connection you're drawing there, between me and Comrade Fomenko, but if by "incredibly stupid," you were referring to me, rather than Fomenko, the Jesuits, or the Ming Chinese, I will just ask you to please be polite and refrain from calling those who disagree with you stupid. By the way, you spelled ridiculous wrong. Ocanter 19:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I was referring to Fomenko.

Furthermore, Needham didn't need to discuss the possibility of faked inscriptions, because Needham dealt with experts in their field who knew what they were talking about (and of course relayed this back to Needham), unlike us griping wikipedians on a scavenger hunt with limited amount of sources in hand.

If you would cite a few of these experts, with proper quotations relevant to the carbon dates and the basis of the association with the handgun, that would be just outta sight. Of course you realize that people are often buried with clothes that they had worn all their lives, which in turn were made from fabric that was made from living material that died necessarily some time prior to the knitting of the fabric. So a carbon date that suggests 1288 only means that the burial happened after 1288, not before. Anyway, as I understand it, the archaeologists weren't arguing from carbon dates, but from cultural cross-dating with other sites. Ocanter 19:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Wei Guochong (on page 52 of his book published in 1973) concluded that none of the objects found in the tomb where the 8 lb. bronze gun was found (in Banlachengzi village in Heilongjiang) could be no older than 1290 AD. In a very neat and orderly way, this fits in well with the recorded history of the years 1287-1288, where it refers to the use of the first handguns (refer to page 293 of Needham's Volume 5 Part 7). I don't have Wei's book, which is written in Chinese, but Needham refers to Wei (although writing in Chinese) as one of the best authorities on the subject of early Chinese artillery and guns since Partington (refer to page 63 of Needham's Volume 5 Part 7). Not surprisingly, Google search does not have any information on his book, but a whole lot of Needham (of course, because Needham writes in English).--PericlesofAthens 17:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Ocanter: As for the carbon dates, you cannot carbon-date bronze, because it doesn't have any carbon in it. You can only carbon-date associated artifacts.

Bingo.

I guess we both got a bingo on that one. The dating of any archaeological find is subject to the limitations of the science. In this case, we have Needham's opinion, but none others examined here in much detail. I'm not saying automatically that "somebody faked it!" I'm just saying that fakery is extremely common, and carbon-dating is not perfect, especially when dealing within a narrow range of twenty years. Ask any archaeologist. And the association with carbon-dated artifacts only tells us when the living material died. I'm just saying the archaeological dating should not be accepted without a grain of salt, or better yet, saltpeter. Ocanter 17:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Ocanter: And again, the Chinese accounts lag Bacon by twenty years.

(Drum-roll, audience holds breath)

And Ocanter's point is? ...that's your cue.

Thanks for the cue. My point is that saltpeter was used all over the Old World at that point, literally from England to China. So a Chinese recipe for something from the fourteenth century doesn't prove that Chinese invented it. Ocanter 17:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

That's not what I was getting at. What I was getting at was that they had it in the first place (due to your questioning about the power of the Chinese gunpowder charge in the said period, whether or not this is the weak stuff of Wujing Zongyao or the powerful stuff of the Huolongjing), not that they proceeded any contemporary civilization. Although the first Chinese fire lance is depicted in a Chinese painting of c. 950 AD, the Islamic world has one of about 1280 (in Hasan al–Rammah's book, which I should include in this article), which gives them gunpowder weapons firing flame and shrapnel by about the same time the Chinese are using their first bronze handguns (however effective they were, as texts allude). Although Europe had developed guns and cannons for more than 7 decades before 1396, that is the oldest date for Europe displaying the characteristic fire lance used by the early Song Chinese and known to be used in the Islamic world beforehand (appearing again in Taccola's work of 1449). I use this example to show that the Eurasian landmass is a mysterious thing, and I do not claim to know every specific thing or everything about cross-cultural distribution or who exactly was first. Neither did Needham.

Ocanter: So what does the 1341 account tell us about the power of the 1288 technology?

It certainly tells us something about the development of gunpowder charges between those decades. Unfortunately you can't decipher much from statements made like:

"...which caused great damage [? how much ?], and such confusion that the enemy soldiers attacked and killed each other."

"This threw all the enemy's horses and men into great confusion." Interesting.

At least these statements are enough to give us a hint about at least a minimum of destructive power of Chinese handguns found in 1287 and 1288, leading up to the big bad cannons found in the 14th century.

--PericlesofAthens 13:00, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I think we're in complete agreement here, Pericles, so I might have to let this conversation exhaust whatever fuel you have left to feed it, and then just let it burn out. We both agree that in the fourteenth Century, Chinese had gunpowder, and it kicked some major butt. I think we also both agree that England had gunpowder, in the thirteenth century, and judging by the documentary evidence, it also kicked butt. I think we also agree that the earliest known guns are dateable to the late thirteenth century and come from China. If there is disagreement here, it is only that the fourteenth century documentary evidence that evidently describes very powerful explosives, shows that the same technology existed forty years earlier, and that the only thing that could have made that big a boom was black powder. There's no link there. Non sequitur. Peace, Ocanter 17:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is good to be on the same page at last.--PericlesofAthens 17:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

You're Funny (Part 2)

In terms of Chinese gunpowder technology in the 1st half of the 14th century, I believe this part of the Huolongjing article should be of particular interest here.

From an illustration and description in the Huolongjing is the oldest known multistage rocket; this was the 'fire–dragon issuing from the water' (huo long chu shui), used mostly by the Chinese navy.[64] It was a two–stage rocket that had carrier or booster rockets that would eventually burn out, yet before they did they automatically ignited a number of smaller rocket arrows that were shot out of the front end of the missile, which was shaped like a dragon's head with an open mouth.[64] This multi–stage rocket may be considered the ancestor to the modern exocet.[64] Needham points out that the written material and depicted illustration of this rocket come from the oldest stratum of the Huolongjing, which can be dated roughly 1300–1350 AD (from the book's part 1, chapter 3, page 23).[64]

You're right; it is of particular interest here. Marcus Graecus has a gunpowder rocket in his Liber Ignium, the relevant sections of which are also dateable to roughly 1300. Again, the almost worldwide use of saltpeter, and the refinement of the black powder recipe in Europe show that many cultures were developing gunpowder before the Chinese technology reached its fourteenth-century stage of high-power explosives. Ocanter 19:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Ocanter, please put information about Marcus Graecus in the article for the rocket, it desperately needs it, if you have sources readily available that you can cite.--PericlesofAthens 17:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Will do. Please give me a couple days; I have two exams to finish today. Peace, (ocanter)171.64.141.148 21:07, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Although Jiao Yu and Liu Ji were the main editors of the Huolongjing in the latter half of the 14th century (Jiao Yu waiting a long time before providing his preface to the book in 1412), the first half of the book was material that had been written and compiled before the Red Turban Rebellion (1351 AD). Jiao Yu also wrote that rockets in his day, which were fitted with aerodynamic wings, could be launched hundreds of feet up into the air.--PericlesofAthens 13:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

50 years behind Europe, again. Ocanter 19:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)