"The Four Great Chinese Inventions - compass, gun-powder, paper, and print - are legendary. Less talked about are meritocracy and banknotes." -- Thorsten J. Pattberg
Yeah, Just discovered, not Invented Food Culture.... or would you treat discovering some planet as the same thing as inventing a way to get in the Planet? Two Different Categories "Glutamic acid was discovered and identified in 1866 by the German chemist Karl Heinrich Ritthausen, who treated wheat gluten (for which it was named) with sulfuric acid. Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University isolated glutamic acid as a taste substance in 1908 from the....." seaweed Laminaria japonica (kombu)"
For those crying out about papyrus... though paper, parchment and papyrus are all used to write on.... they all have different processes and there is a specific reason paper is commonly used today and not the other two.
@@recoil53 Allow me to quote myself in order to help you realize you seem to answering the wrong comment; "...though paper, parchment and papyrus are all used to write on.... they all have different processes..." Try again.
@@recoil53 You failed to add any indication of such. An easy mistake to make. Furthermore, your support merely parroted what had already been stated. Next time, clarify your response more adequately. Thank you for your time and attempt.
A British historian named Joseph Needham [ 1900 to 1995]. Wrote a huge coffe table book called " Science and Technology in Ancient China. ". It still might be available in print form. This book details over 50 inventions in many fields. I recommend it. It may be available at your local library.
he has an entire series of books they are insanely influential and expensive go to your local college library en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China
Small error from 8:11 to 8:17 You're describing the Chinese inventor and his accomplishments while showing what I assume is his picture, but the name is that of the French inventor instead.
And then what is actually the third chapter is captioned as 'Chapter One'. Some of the interstitial stock video clips are a little ... strange ... in this one as well. Trying out a new editor ?
To be fair, the MUCH bigger error of the video is saying the flood management system still exists. Not according to recent news on all their devastating flooding of heavily populated areas.
Simon forgot to mention that China also used debit vouchers and traveler's checks rather than coins or gold pieces for people who don't want to travel with large sums of money. So they already had American Express and bank ATMs before "modern financing".
@@noahway13 What are you *SHOUTING* about? .. Johnny thinks that "debit vouchers" are a significant invention of the Chinese. You know that economics is a field of scientific study .. yes? Like .. math .. statistics .. etc. Deep breaths man.
There was a British administer who was holed up in Central China during WWII. There he found a lot of old documents to pass the time and he ended up cataloging things the Chinese invented before the Europeans. The shorted book is a good read. The Oxford unabridged dictionary length one takes up a lot of space. So yes, Simon left out a lot of things. On subject, I believe it was during the Tang Dynasty that trade associations issued vouchers, so you only had to carry paper and could reimburse in kind in another one of their trading posts. So it was only good in network, but it also potentially saved a lot of money in shipping if you chose to get reimbursed in goods at another location. And that led to paper money.
Do you think all of Simon’s clones know that they’re clones? Or would they all lose their mind if they realised that they were clones locked in a basement with a few writers?
🤣OMG, that's funny. I thought, immediately, of the Michael Keaton/Andie McDowell movie, MULTIPLICITY. Some of the clones made other clones, not from the original 🤣🤣🤣Simon's clones in a basement 🤣🤣🤣👍
@fanomusic76 not quite. A cubic kilometer is a cube that is 1,000 meters on each side. To get the volume, you would multiply the length by the width by the height. 1,000 X 1,000 X 1,000 = 1,000,000,000 or 1 billion cubic meters
@@uriblaketheriddimprotege The main difference is that for the first 4900 years it was for their own betterment, the last century they were enslaved by tyrannical companies and used for cheap labor and dumping grounds. Good times.
Your production team on today's releases seem to be off their usual high quality: Iraq War scenes placed in the video about WWI; mistitled chapters in this video; and mislabeled graphics (a French name next to a Han inventor circa 5rh c BC? What's up?)
I've noticed this on a few of his channels recently. I've also noticed there is no editor in the end credits for those videos when I've checked, but I admit it's not something I usually look for in his shorter videos.
The Chinese compass was not different, and the west did not tweak it to point North. The compass needle has two ends, so it points North AND south, the west just looked at the other side of the needle because it was aligned with the North Star, which they were used to using.
Exactly .. a lot of this was disappointingly garbage. Comparing the Aqueducts .. delivering water purely over man-made .. err .. aqueducts, for thousands of miles .. with some still in use .. to river diversions (admittedly impressive) is a bit ridiculous as well.
A compass using a thin string is also not very useful. It’s too unsteady to be useful. Europe figured out how to make a compass that was steady (and therefore useful) even at sea.
@@THE-X-Force The river diversions which were, similar to the Suez Canal, carved by hand and at a time where shovels were not at the pinnacle they are now... But I'm sure you could dig a canal system over a few hundred miles without breaking a sweat with a wooden spade, right?
@@peterfireflylund where do you get the idea of compass using a thin string. The picture of compass here with a spoon is created in Han Dynasty, known as lodestone compass. It then developed into several kind of compass, Tang Dynasty compass and especially Song Dynasty compass..
Also papyrus is a lot more fragile, with fewer variations. Notice how even with it's utility, the use of papyrus never really spread? Yet paper did. In fact it was paper that replaced parchment in the Abassid Dynasty. The city of Damascus was known for paper making. History passed it's verdict, papyrus sucks.
The pronuncation of "C" in Chinese Pinyin is more like an English "T" and "S" combined if you didn't know. (Or if you speak German, it's like German alphabet "C".) Hence the old Wade-Giles romanization would spell out paper inventor's name as Tsai Lun or Ts'ai Lun.
They had a lot of things, of that there is no doubt. What they didn't have so much of though however was glass. Quite important for consistency of experimentation.
I adore videos like this. In so many ways, the East was lightyears ahead of the West. It's about time the rest of the world recognizes their achievements.
The Chinese were unable to produce effective firearms because they did not possess the screw thread. This made it very difficult to seal the breach. They tried other methods like shrink fitting.
Hey Simon, I've got so many ideas for different episodes for you. Being a violinist obviously I think it would be great if you would make an episode on the creation of the violin and the progress to the modern instrument we know today. Actually any modern instrument, guitar and whatnot, piano and more. Thanks 👍.
I hate it when people say "they had unexpectedly advanced technology" in reference to any ancient/ old culture. They just had the technology for the time. It's only advanced compared to Europeans of the same time.
Also my Chinese mom : "Oh you're sick? It's because you didn't drink enough water." "Oh there's an earthquake? It's because you didn't drink enough water." "Oh there's a nuclear war? It's because you didn't drink enough water."
Hasn't been anything on Toptenz for a while now either. I think The other Dave took over Highlight History. Maybe he should let Danny out of the basement and let him take over a channel. I'm sure he's Stockholm broken.
Once upon a time China was the place where all kinds of technological innovation took place and everyone else copied them. Weird how it's the exact opposite in modern times.
That's just the nature of things. After the Chinese it was the Arabs that were leading the world in innovation. Nowadays it's the west, and in 1 or 2 hundred years, it will most likely have shifted again.
@@andyaskew1543 It isn't Communist anymore. More of a State Capitalist society. It mainly focuses on cheaper production. If you can copy, you can take a lot of money from R&D away.
@toooldforthisshte1681 capitalism for the state... not the individuals under the state. The excess funds generated doesn't get truckers down to the population, it gets hoarded for those in charge and their politically connected friends. Also, copying isn't legal. China does it sure, but it's against internationally recognized law, and until China stops doing so, it will continue to hurt their reputation and image on the world stage. Plus, some investment into R&D could do China some good... they can "copy", technology from other nations, but it's never to the level or capability of the original. There's a reason that cheap isn't synonymous with good
Regarding that Chinese earthquake detector, there's actually a lot of controversy surrounding it, the man who supposedly reconstructed it was, in fact, a gov propaganda, and Wang Zheng's version doesn't actually work. The problem with a pendulum in the middle is that if there are seismic movements, the pendulum would swing back and forth, knocking more than one ball out of dragons' mouth, seismic disturbance also does not travel in a narrow linear path, thus causing only the ball of one direction to fall out is improbable. In more recent years even the Chinese gov has removed this invention from their school textbook, so chances are even the original one from the Han dynasty didn't actually work.
Given how much of China has just been devastated by enormous floods, the later generations seem to have forgotten how to do it. Case in point, in this flood the 800 year old original Marco Polo bridge survived the onslaught however the close by modern version was totally destroyed!
Didn't the ancient Egyptians have paper, made from papyrus? Until the 19th century, paper was made from plant fibers such as linen and cotton. The process to make paper from wood pulp was invented in the West in the 19th Century. Incidentally, modern paper yellows and becomes brittle with age because of the acids used to soften wood pulp. Fiber-based papers don't yellow and turn fragile with age. I once read a book printed in the 1600s, that was in better shape than most printed in the 1960s.
"The word paper is etymologically derived from Latin papyrus, which comes from the Greek πᾰ́πῡρος (pápūros), the word for the Cyperus papyrus plant.Papyrus is a thick, paper-like material produced from the pith of the Cyperus papyrus plant, which was used in ancient Egypt and other Mediterranean cultures for writing before the introduction of paper. Although the word paper is etymologically derived from papyrus, the two are produced very differently and the development of the first is distinct from the development of the second. Papyrus is a lamination of natural plant fibre, while paper is manufactured from fibres whose properties have been changed by maceration."
I just discovered this channel. For nerds like me, this is heaven. It's kind of a mix between my 2 other favorite channels. You remind me a Kalen from "Slapped Ham"... appearance wise... while simultaneously reminding me of AJ from "The Why Files" , by the way that you do deep dives. This is AWESOME! 😎
Have you seen the reasent studys of the viking thunderstick? something in the old sagas in iceland about them also discovering gunnpowder on iceland about the same time as the chinese
When I initially read the title of this entry into side projects I assumed it would have been more of the fitting to into the Shadows were Simon Just crashes on things wow had no idea that the Chinese had invented all of these things I knew they figure it out eyeglasses and gunpowder well before us but didn't know about these ones. They invented the freaking compass 😮
Sorry kids humour you mentioned in a previous video on one of your channels was wang kinn a bro. Sorry dude please we would never dis you, but we love the way you say ' wang' ♥️
Has molten lava or magma ever been used as a mortar for building structures all walls, and yes there would be issues collecting into storage for it transporting. Or is it possible to artificially keep Magna fluid sorry viscous?
So... a bunch of Chapter Ones and an ancient Chinese Man given the caption of the preceding (French?) European Man mentioned? Sweet. (They churn these things out WAY too quickly)
It's truly remarkable how slow inventions were shared around civilizations in that time. There weren't enough "messengers" like Marco Polo. But then, life was so tenuous back then. Another wellspring of invention was Mesopotamia and Semitic tribes. Worth exploring this too!
0:00: 🔧 Discover five amazing pieces of ancient technology from China. 3:47: 🧭 The compass played a significant role in navigation and exploration during the Song Dynasty in China and later spread to Europe through trade networks. 7:10: 📜 Ancient Chinese technology surpassed European advancements in water transfer and seismographs. 10:59: 📚 The invention of paper during the Han Dynasty led to the development of printing and the spread of information, ultimately leading to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in the West. 14:58: 🧪 Gunpowder was first mentioned in 142.80 by Wei Boyang, a writer and Taoist Alchemist of the Han Dynasty, who described a three-part composite substance that would eventually become gunpowder. Recap by Tammy AI
Hey Simon, you shouldn't show your keys on video because people can figure out the bidding for you keys and possible use it to break into your office/home
Damn, he has an annoying habit of going down to a whisper at the end of his sentences. I'm up trying to work in the garage and listen, but then he trails down to a whisper and I miss the 'punchline' if you will. Like at when he says "... the mysteries of the cosmos". 03:26 You can't hear unless you are right on top of the speakers.
Yes, if I'm sitting in front of my computer with the volume up, but I have other things I'm accomplishing instead of staring at a bald head on the computer screen. @@peterfireflylund
What about it? They are in fact not the same, they just have the same general use. Papyrus used plant fibers, but the fibers were not broken down. They are in paper. It's a defining step.
Papyrus involves slicing long thin strips off reeds which were then hand woven into a sheet before drying. Paper is made from pulped plant material spread onto a porous material and dried. The processes are totally different and in the case of paper, much less labour intensive
@@mulgerbillon the other hand, papyrus doesn’t require much beside some manual labour. Paper requires boiling. Chinese paper required 24-72 hours of boiling and you could only use the bark of certain bushes (and not even all the bark layers!), so there was also lots of manual labour involved there. Modern paper production is a lot more sophisticated and efficient - it also isn’t Chinese at all.
@@mulgerbill Thank you for explaining the difference but while it may not be what we think of modern types of paper was it not a form of paper even if more process intensive?
The Song dynasty was a dynasty of scholars, hence many inventions. BTW, I'm not sure it's their invention but the first mention of small pox vaccine is from 200 AD.
Yes. I've also read about an early form of smallpox vaccine ,in China. This was in the book:" Science and Tecnology in Ancient China". By Joseph Needham.
That also a sad thing about Song Dynasty. They focus on invention and starting of industrialization, end up neglect their military. Song Dynasty military is weak.
I am sorry, but I disagree with your first place, what I consider de most important technology originally developed in China do not even appear in this list : Differential pendulum and differential bellows ! before transistors the only way to produce precision clocks was using differential pendulum, and before steam machines the differential bellows where the only way to produde high quality steel . both where developed in China, and are related, uses the same working principle .
Track down the origin of the megalithic yard with Alan Butler and Christopher Knight and I promise you that you will never use that word ‘unexpectedly’ again! Indeed you may end up on your knees out of respect!❤
