Levensbomen

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Op donderdag 1 oktober 2009 17:30 schreef _Led_ het volgende:

[..]

Oh, ze hebben ooit wel voorgelopen, maar dat hebben wij ook.
Je zei altijd.

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Around 2300 years ago, when no one in Europe or the Middle East could melt even one ounce of iron the Chinese were casting multi-ton iron objects. It was not until the mid-1700's in Europe that such feats of metallurgy were achieved in Britain, the technically most advanced country of Europe. The early success in iron-casting in China was due to a superior form of bellows that delivered a continuous stream of air to a furnace instead of an interrupted stream as from the type of bellows used in the West. No one beforehand would have given much thought or attention to such a seemingly unimportant device as the Chinese bellows, but it turned out to be a crucial technological development.

But ancient China was not just technically advanced in iron-making. In a wide variety of technical fields China of 300 BCE was many centuries ahead of Europe and the Middle East. And what happened to China that it stagnated technologically so that by the nineteenth century it was so far behind the West that it was weak and primitive? China had regressed so much that almost everyone, in China as well as the West, had forgotten that China was once technically far advanced compared to the West.