What makes ancient china unique

All the boards became useless after the printing was done and a single mistake in carving could ruin a whole block. In of the Song Dynasty , a man named Bi Sheng carved individual characters on identical pieces of fine clay which he hardened by a slow baking process, resulting in pieces of movable type.

When the printing was finished, the pieces of type were put away for future use. This technology then spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Europe. Later, German Johann Gutenberg invented movable type made of metal in Ancient necromancers discovered in their practice of alchemy, that an explosion could be induced if certain kinds of ores and fuel were mixed in the right proportions and heated, thus leading to the invention of gunpowder.

In the Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques, edited in by Zeng Gongliang, three formulas for making gunpowder were recorded; an explosive mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. Needham identified these as the earliest formulas of such a kind.

The method of powder-making was introduced to the Arab world in the 12th century and to Europe in the 14th. Gunpowder was originally used for making fireworks and its later adaptation revolutionized warfare across the world. Ancient necromaniers put minerals and plants together, hoping to make some medecine to keep alive forever Flying firearrows Tang Dynasty GrenadesSong Dynasty Bronze canonsYuan Dynasty Four Great Inventions of Ancient China - the Compass Sinan Warring States Period the earliest guide tool in the world The compass, an indispensable navigational tool, was another significant gift from ancient China.

While mining ores and melting copper and iron, people chanced upon a natural magnetite that attracted iron and pointed fixedly north. After constant improvement the round compass came into being. Their bronze work was very different in style than the bronzes of the contemporaneous Sanxingdui civilization in Sichuan even though it is known that there was trade between the two cultures. It shows that the ancient people of the Shang and Zhou dynasties maintained a distinct artistic culture with their own motifs and never adopted the alien style of the Sanxingdui.

Anyone familiar with Chinese artistic style can see that the Sanxingdui masks' facial features are very different than those of ancient Chinese art and that the geometrical patterns and decorations of the Sanxingdui are foreign. The Sanxingdui bronze object pictured below for example seems oddly irregular and off-balance, with projections seeming to defy the center of gravity, but the people of the Shang and Zhou and succeeding eras generally created objects that are geometrically balanced around the center of gravity.

This sense of proportion and order has always been a characteristic of Chinese art and craftsmanship. The Shang prized jade objects unusually highly compared to other cultures, and the people in the Zhou era did as well. Archeologists have discovered a substantial quantity of jade ornaments, artworks and other objects that were made for ritual ceremonies and decoration. The Shang even used it to make body armor, and in later eras, royalty were encased in jade burial suits.

Jade objects had religious significance, and this is an unusual tradition of ancient culture that many modern Chinese retain. They consider it to be quite an auspicious material, and many still wear it as an amulet as you can observe in China today. Archeologists discovered tea in a 2nd century Han emperor's tomb, and ancient records say that it was considered a medicinal drink in the Zhou era. It is thought that tea was first cultivated in Yunnan during the Shang Dynasty era.

From there, the custom of drinking tea spread through the Zhou era states and then to other countries. During the Tang Dynasty and afterwards, tea was a major export to the Tibetan Empire along the Tea Horse Road , and it is still China's most popular natural health beverage. Other than water, green tea is the most commonly drunk beverage in China. Chinese produce more green tea than any other kind of tea black, red, green, white. Chinese commonly consume dozens of varieties of tea.

Another Chinese characteristic stemming from the ancient past is the love of silk. Chinese people were the inventors of silk fabric. The earliest example of silk fabric dates from 3, BC in Henan. Silk cloth manufacture was well advanced during the Shang Dynasty era. The wife of the Yellow Emperor Huangdi was having tea under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her cup.

As she watched, a strand of fiber unspun from the cocoon, and she realized that the strong filament could be used to make cloth. Thus, an industry was born. She taught her people how to raise silkworms and later invented the loom. Whether or not this story is true, it is known that the Shang and then the Zhou had a tradition of sophisticated silk weaving.

They traded in silk, and a Shang-era silk garment was found in a contemporaneous tomb in Egypt. Silk weaving and the preference for silk is another cultural tradition that continues in modern times. Mainland Chinese produce more than half of the world's silk. The Shang had a belief in a supreme god called Shangdi, who represented Heaven.

In the Zhou era, it was believed that Shangdi presided over big issues such as war, harvests, natural disasters, and the succession of dynasties. Sophisticated ceremonies such as the annual Prayer for Good Harvests by the emperors became part of Chinese tradition. See the Temple of Heaven. The Mandate of Heaven principle meant that China's rulers were revered as the representatives of Heaven on earth, and so emperors enjoyed the utmost respect, bordering on worship A key political concept passed down from the ancient eras is the concept of the Mandate of Heaven described by Sima Qian and thought to have been espoused by Confucius.

This idea is also somewhat original to the Chinese, though it is reflected in other ancient cultures around the world. The ancient Chinese believed that if a dynastic clan or a particular dynastic leader became corrupt or misruled, "heaven" would signal that it was time for a change of dynasties via various omens such as natural disasters, signs in the heavens, ominous dreams, prophecies, etc.

The ancient historical accounts and some recent archaeological evidence show that the people of the Zhou era believed that the first Zhou king conquered the Shang Dynasty because the Shang lost the Mandate of Heaven. They believed that the first Shang King defeated and conquered the Xia Dynasty in the same way. The Zhou believed that the last Shang king was very corrupt and misruled so badly that he made the people suffer.

He killed his own son and tortured and murdered his ministers, so he lost Shangdi's Mandate to rule. Then the last Shang Emperor was defeated by the Zhou rulers because his own troops and slaves rebelled and joined the Zhou in BC. From the fall of the Qin Empire onwards, a series of serious natural disasters and the large loss of life were interpreted by the populace as signs that a dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven, and almost every major empire and large kingdom since then has fallen after such a serious of disasters.

The people rose up in rebel armies and turned in revolt against the rulers as it is said that the Shang slaves and troops rebelled against the last Shang emperor. The Shang also worshiped their own ancestors and notable dead people. They believed the dead souls could both harm and help people, and this key ancient belief in ancestor worship is still current in Chinese culture and most Chinese worship their ancestors. These concepts were part of the folk religion.

Since the Shang believed that the soul continued to live afterwards, they tried to equip the souls at burial with items they might need including sacrificing humans and animals to go with them for their use and did things like giving food or money to spirits. This tradition continued through the Qin and Han Dynasty eras down to the present day.

The Qin Emperor's huge Terracotta Army is an example of the elaborate expense that was showered on many other emperors and kings throughout history to benefit them in the afterlife, and most modern Chinese still offer food, spiritual money, and other items to their ancestors especially on select days such as the Hungry Ghost Festival and the Qingming Festival. People often sacrifice fresh fruit and food, but nowadays they often place plastic flowers and fruit at graves.

The exhibition also includes this ox-shaped wine jar, dating back to the late Shang Period 13thth century BC. Egypt and China are among the oldest-known civilizations to have developed a script. Egypt already had a writing system by BC. They often used papyrus to write. This book of the dead that once belonged to Ta-remetch-en-Bastet of the early Ptolemy Period is also part of the exhibition. Among the earliest writing implements in China were bamboo strips and so-called oracle bones.

Due to climatic reasons, linen robes from ancient Egypt could be preserved over a long time. In China, however, cloths made from China grass, and later on from cotton, could not be preserved. This statue depicting a servant, however, gives us some insight into the fashion during the Western Han Dynasty. Plagiarism and industrial espionage may in some cases explain why a particular invention turns up far away from where it was originally invented.

But what about such cases when these possible explanations have been ruled out and two inventors incidentally develop the same idea? Take, for example, horse snaffles - a longish mouth piece made of bronze that is kept flexible by two interlocking rings in the middle enabling the rider to steer the horse to the right or left. Two such snaffles can be admired in the special exhibition "China and Egypt.

One of them, dated to 1, BC, was found in Egypt, and the other one, dated a bit later, in China. The possibility that the Chinese copied the invention from the Egyptians has been ruled out as these two ancient civilizations had no contact with each other at this stage. Cradles of the World". Back then, traveling merchants and couriers were capable of bridging enormous distances of up to 3, kilometers.

But they could never have overcome the 8,kilometer distance between China and Egypt. And yet, these two civilizations seen as the world's earliest ones, developed numerous similar inventions, institutions and traditions - not only concerning instruments of daily life, but also religious rites like the death cult and other religious concepts. Sooner or later, almost every culture has invented the needle after experimenting with fish bones, pin feathers or little bones.

And in the same way, people came up with similar answers to abstract questions about God and the hereafter. Friederike Seyfried is the director of the Egyptian Museum and the papyrus collection. Roughly half of the exhibits of the current Berlin exhibition originate from there.

The other half comes from loans of the Shanghai Museum with whom Berlin's state museums are cooperating. Both museums came up with the idea to initiate a common exhibition including items from 4, BC until AD in the Greek-Roman era. After all, it's an important social anthropological question that makes this exhibition so interesting. How do human civilizations develop? And what are man's solutions to particular problems?

The exhibits are not presented chronologically, but in terms of five big topics: daily life, writing, power, death cult and deities. Fireclay models in one of the first display cases show that the structure of simple dwellings in China resembled the ones used in Egypt.