Talk:List of Chinese inventions/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

List of Chinese inventions

I have nominated List of Chinese inventions for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:34, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Cleaning up the article

As it tends to happen with articles on Wikipedia, the quality of this article declined since it was first nominated as a featured list. However, much (but not all) of the issues with this article are associated with the work of a certain user.

After combing through his edits carefully, it became obvious that many of his edits were clearly plagiarized from other Wikipedia articles without attribution, which is a violation of Wikipedia's guideliness. I noticed this because I recognized paragraphs lifted from articles that User:PericlesofAthens, User:Yprpyqp, User:Underbar dk, User:Madalibi, and other established editors interested in Chinese history. These are editors that I've worked with before, so I'm familiar with their writing styles and citation preferences. The problem is that User:Backendgaming also plagiarizes from poorly written articles cobbled together from random sources on Google. This explains his seemingly inconsistent citation style.

Of his "original" edits, he struggled to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources. Sometimes, his claims were accurate yet poorly cited. At other times, the sources were reliable yet misinterpreted. In many cases, his additions were neither factual nor verifiable.

Looking on the bright side, this does make the article easier to clean up. The entries that he contributed to this list can be roughly grouped into five categories: 1) Those that were plagiarized. 2) His original contributions. 4) Duplicates of existing entries. 5) Cultural "inventions" specific to China that would never have met the list's criteria for inclusion.

The entries that are classified as 4 or 5 are the easiest to fix. Any entry in category 5 should simply be removed. Regarding category 4, User:Backendgaming had an irritating habit of adding multiple entries that essentially describe the same invention. For example, consider the rocket propellant entry. The propellant in question is gunpowder and we already have a well-researched entry on gunpowder that was mostly written by User:PericlesofAthens. The solution would be to discard the rocket propellant entry in favor of the gunpowder entry.

Category 1 is a little trickier to deal with, but not by much. If the content was directly copy-and-pasted from a high-quality article that has already gone through the review process, e.g. the featured Science and technology of the Song dynasty, we can assume that the content isn't problematic. If the content was taken from a badly written article, then we'll need to fix it accordingly.'

Those in Category 2 would require looking up academic sources to verify the claims, but fortunately, the entries that fit this category are in the minority. As someone who does research at a university and is familiar with the relevant academic literature, verifying or debunking those claims made in the article should be easy given my access to the sources.

I have compiled a list of entries that were added by User:Backendgaming. Some of these have already been deleted, but I've generated the entirety of his additions for completeness. I will also keep a tally of the entries that remain to be fixed.

Inventions specific to China's material culture (24/24 entries checked and verified):

• Alligator drum: Previously removed.
• Baguenaudier: Previously removed.
• Bamboo and wooden slips: Removed
• Bambooworking: Previously removed.
• Baoding balls: Previously removed.
• Dao (sword): Removed.
• Dragon boats: Removed.
• Dragon kiln: Removed.
• Facekini: Removed.
• Fermented bean curd: Removed.
• Fu (tally): Removed.
• Hukou system: Removed.
• Incense clocks: Removed.
• Jadeworking: Removed.
• Kang bed-stove
• Kau cim Already removed.
• Lamian: Already removed.
• Mandarin square: Removed.
• Mantou kiln: Removed.
• Meat analogue: Removed.
• Ritual bronzemaking: Removed.
• Seal Removed.
• Stinky tofu: Already removed.
• Tianchi basins: Removed.
• Xiaochi: Removed.
• Tributary systems: Already removed.
• Night market: Removed.

Other entries (11/66 entries checked and verified):

• Artillery: Removed as duplicate. Covers the same content as cannon.
• Biological pest control: Plagiarized from Biological pest control without attribution. Originally written by User:Entomologger with revisions by User:Chiswick Chap. This content has already gone through the GA review process (link to the reviewed version on April 2017). As a precaution, I've also double-checked and verified that the claims accurately represent the sources.
• Bintie: Removed. According to p. 268 in Wagner 2008, Chinese primary sources from the 6th and 7th century attribute the origin of bin iron to Persia or Afghanistan. The character bin is likely transcribed from a foreign language, possibly Persian or Sanskrit.
• Brick, fired
• Bombard
• Borehole drilling
• Brandy: Already removed.
• Breeching strap
• Brine mining
• Cannon: Plagiarized from cannon without attribution. Original text contributed by User:Yprpyqp and myself. Sources are reliable and claims have been verified.
• Cast coinage
• Counting rods
• Diabolo
• Deepwater drilling
• Explosives: Removed as duplicate. Covers the same topic as the "exploding bomb" entry.
• Field artillery: Removed as duplicate. Covers the same topic as the "cannon" entry.
• Fire arrow
• Fire cracker
• Food steamer
• Fuses
• Gas cylinder
• Gas lighting
• Gnomon Removed. It's strange that this is included under "gnomon" rather than "sundial" because a gnomon is just the part of the sundial that casts a shadow to indicate the time. In any case, from the sources that I've read on the history of the sundials, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the invention of the sundial because it hinges on speculations regarding whether certain megalithic structures were used for timekeeping.
• Grid referencing
• Hand fan
• Handgun
• Hygrometer
• Irrigation system
• Keel
• Kerosene
• Louche
• Map scaling
• Movable sail: Already removed and I agree with the deletion. It's not clear what a "movable sail" means in this context (is there such as a thing as an immovable sail?), but there's little evidence that the sail was a Chinese invention.
• Multiple rocket launcher: Removed as duplicate. Covers the same topic as the "rocket launcher" entry.
• Oil lamp
• Oil refining
• Parachute
• Percussive drilling
• Petroleum as fuel
• Pipeline transport
• Pudding process
• Quern stone
• Raincoat
• Rammed earth
• Rocket boosters
• Rocket propellant: Removed as duplicate. Covers the same topic as the "gunpowder" entry.
• Row cropping
• Salt mining
• Salt well
• Snap fastener
• Snow gauge
• Solid-propellant rocket
• Squatting-tiger fire trebuchet: Plagiarized from User:Underbar dk. Also, an incredibly obscure variant of a weapon.
• Stinkpot
• Sunglasses
• Two-stage rocket: Removed as duplicate. Covers the same topic as the "multistage rocket" entry.
• Umbrella
• War wagon
• Water clock
• Water compartments: Removed as duplicate. Covers the same topic as the "bulkhead partition" entry.
• Weeding rake
• Weighing scale
• Well drilling
• Well-field system
• Wheelchair
• Wrought iron

Furthermore, there are also entries that were removed in other cleanup attempts over the past year. These should be judged independently on their own merits, so I've listed them here for separate consideration (/7):

• Beer
• Churn drill
• Merit system
• Nail polish
• Noodle
• Underwater salvage operation
• Xuan paper

I plan on finishing this task within the next few weeks. I'll also make comments about whether we should keep and discard each entry based on what I find through reliable academic sources.--Khanate General ☪ talk ^{project mongol conquests} 06:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Khanate General: thanks for all your hard work here and your due diligence! I fully support the moves to remove certain items listed above, especially the double entries masked by different wording. We obviously don't need two separate entries about gunpowder. The fact that these were all added by a sockpuppet account means they should just be viewed as highly suspect and removed anyway. I think this cleanup job will ultimately negate the necessity for this FL article to be delisted or to revert back to the stable version in June 2013, the rather drastic option I offered as a solution. Again, many thanks! Pericles of Athens^Talk 15:41, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, what's with citation #600 "ftp"? It is shown in red as an error message. Did we remove something we shouldn't have somehow? That should please be taken care of if it was just a simple editor's mistake. Thanks. Pericles of Athens^Talk 06:14, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Are you finished? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 14:44, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

Notification: Ongoing review processes for removal of featured list status here and here. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:17, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Cannon, Hand cannon, Hand gun, Bombard

Tripled entry, all three refer to the same weapon, the Heilongjiang hand cannon. Also, why is the bombard listed separately from a hand cannon? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:11, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Gun Powder Ma: Hello. The 13th century Chinese/Jurchen/Mongol bronze hand cannon and handgun can be consolidated into one entry, yes, but not with cannon, which is not a handheld weapon but refers to the much larger wheeled siege artillery piece that appeared on the battlefield in China, Europe, and the Middle East at roughly the same time, i.e. the first half of the 14th century. Contrarily, the hand cannon was purely an anti-personnel weapon used to target individual soldiers on the field (very inaccurately at that, more of an intimidation factor than anything else) and was not large or powerful enough to be useful as a piece of siege tech. Pericles of Athens^Talk 11:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Pericles of Athens: Hi. And the entry on the "bombard"? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 02:15, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

@Gun Powder Ma: the bombard is a type of cannon, yes, so perhaps it can be consolidated into one post, seeing how a hand cannon is a type of handgun, just as a bombard is a type of cannon. In each of these cases they were the earliest prototype versions of either a handgun or cannon. Alternatively, you could keep the "bombard" entry name while writing "see cannon" there, while moving the entirety of the textual body itself over to the entry on the cannon. In fact, I'll just do that right now. It's a sensible solution. Pericles of Athens^Talk 16:24, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

@Pericles of Athens: Problem is that the term bombard designates a large type of cannon, proper artillery so-to-say, while the supposed "bombard" in that Buddhist cave temple is a light hand-held weapon (if it is this at all), that is a handgun. You can't classify the piece as both artillery and handheld. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 18:11, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Here a quite widely cited scholarly source that states that bombards were large calibre artillery and a type of weapon originating in Europe (Kay Douglas Smith, Robert Douglas Smith, Kelly DeVries: The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy, 1363-1477, 2005, ISBN 9781843831624, p. 204):

Bombards are, perhaps, the easiest of all medieval gunpowder weapons to identify and recognise. They were the largest of the available types of gunpowder artillery, both in their weight and their bore, ranging in size from the relatively small to huge monsters weighing in excess of 20 tonnes, though most were in the range of 5-10 tonnes. Bombards first appear in the Burgundian registers in 1412 and are relatively common until the middle of the century when references to them decrease quite drastically. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 12:33, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

"Bombard" has been removed from the list but kept as a link in the passage for "cannon" where it belongs. Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:46, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Tea

Why should tea be classified as a Chinese invention if the area where it was first consumed, Yunnan, became Chinese only several millennia later? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:11, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Wrong. It is only speculated that the ancient people of Yunnan drank it first for medicinal purposes, but the earliest confirmed physical evidence of it used as a drink comes from the tomb of Emperor Jing of Han from the 2nd century BC, while a book by Western Han poet Wang Bao in 59 BC provides the earliest known record of it being boiled as a beverage. There's nothing wrong with retaining the entry on tea. Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:48, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Pericles of Athens makes a compelling argument. Wang Boa's article "A Contract with a Child Servant" is the earliest writing documenting the use of tea as a beverage. I support not changing the article. Jurisdicta (talk) 02:45, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Contour canal

What is that exactly? I noticed there is no other language version and probably for a reason: Isn't every canal a contour canal in that its water follows a gradient that is defined by the topography? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:11, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

No, not every canal does this and many involve significant engineering work beforehand such as leveling soil, building tunnels, or even canal locks. I'm not even sure what the complaint is here, other than that you are not a native speaker of English and this is an unfamiliar phrase to you. The source cited for this is hardly spurious either: Day, Lance and Ian McNeil. (1996). Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-06042-7. While some of your complaints resemble legitimate concerns, this one in particular seems humorously tangential to your overall argument about the quality of this article having been diminished. Since you were the one who championed the effort to have this article delisted per WP:FAR, please try to bring up only very serious items that contain duplicate entries or dubious unreliable sources. Thanks. Pericles of Athens^Talk 23:56, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Pre-Shang

The entire entry is problematic. Why are things that date as far back as eight to ten millennia into the past declared as "Chinese" inventions? Does that mean that the Dutch invented the dugout because the oldest evidence from 10,000 years ago is from modern-day Netherlands? Note that the inventions and discoveries of the Indus Valley Civilisation are listed separately from the List of Indian inventions and discoveries, although the Indus Valley Civilisation is temporally much closer to later Indian culture than the Neolithic cultures of China to later Chinese culture. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 02:15, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Is there something to be said against removing the entire section as OR? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:34, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I figured you would suggest something that extreme, a pattern that I'm sensing with your suggestions (a radical proposal considering virtually everything in that section is fairly well-cited with reliable academic sources, not someone's personal blog). That being said, I've chosen to simply move pre-Shang, Neolithic and prehistoric stuff over to a new sister article: List of inventions and discoveries of Neolithic China. It took a lot of effort, but all of that material is now excised from the article, with handy links provided to the new one. I have also removed the sources cited at the bottom in the references section that once pertained to that section but are no longer found anywhere else in the article. To me this represents a huge improvement to the article, which should soon warrant the lifting of any tags that claim this article suffers from WP:OR issues. Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:03, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Animal zodiac

This article dates the introduction of the Babylonian zodiac to "between −408 and −397 and probably within a very few years of −400" BC.

Francesca Rochberg, Professor of History at the University of California, dates its introduction even a bit earlier (The Heavenly Writing. Divination, horoscopy, and astronomy in Mesopotamian culture, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 130):

The earliest direct evidence for the existence of the zodiac comes from fifth-century astronomical diary texts (e.g., No. −453 iv 2 and upper edge 2–3, No. −440 rev. 3, and No. −418:5, 10, rev. 8 and 14) and horoscopes (BH 1 and 2, both dated 410 b.c.), in which positions of the planets are cited with terminology used with respect to zodiacal signs as opposed to zodiacal constellations. The existence of the zodiac in this period is also indirectly supported by Seleucid astronomical texts that deal with phenomena of the Achaemenid period. The oldest of these relates longitudes of conjunctions of the sun and moon, computed by a schematic method, with solar eclipses. The phenomena computed in these texts can be dated with relative certainty to 475 b.c., although the writing of the tablets was certainly much later. Another text that uses the zodiac together with astronomical phenomena, dated to circa. 431 b.c., lists phenomena for Venus and Mars plus a column containing values of “column,” the purpose of which is to take into account the influence of the moon’s variable velocity.

Since the Babylonian zodiac also uses twelve animal signs and only slightly differs in some names (cf. Rochberg, p. XXV), the Babyonians should be credited with its invention. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 03:33, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

It's really close, possible 5th but likely also not by the 4th century BC, yet I've decided just to remove the claim for the Chinese. I'm not sure if Rochberg's hypothesis for dating these tablets is widely accepted in scholarly consensus, but you've at least brought two sources to the table here and that's good enough for now, I suppose. I might add it back later after a bit of research to see if the Chinese texts can be dated further back than the 4th century BC. Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Acupuncture

Acupuncture was already practised in the 4th millennium BC in Europe, notably on Ötzi, but possibly also on other mummified bodies (cf. here and here. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 03:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

No, unlike the Animal Zodiac thing, which was a legit point given the hard evidence of Babylonian tablets, this is just mostly a silly claim, or as The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine (p. 610) rightfully says, a "speculative" one without very solid evidence. Scholarly consensus is not on your side here. As far as I know most scholarship has not moved on this issue, and thus the entry for acupuncture will stay in this article until overwhelming evidence is presented in trustworthy academic sources that any Neolithic cultures practiced it. Scholars even view Needham's hypotheses of acupuncture going back to Bronze Age China with great skepticism, with no firm physical evidence for it until the Han dynasty, with maybe textual evidence going back to the Warring States Period. Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:29, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Also, I'm starting to wonder if I should re-nominate this article for FA status if this is the sort of fringe theory stuff you have used as the basis for delisting the article. Again, many of your concerns are legitimate, and I'm addressing them one by one, but I feel as though people were persuaded to delist the article based on your advocacy of ideas that aren't even widely accepted in academic consensus. You should be far more cautious and careful about that in the future, especially given the dramatic act of delisting an enormous complex article that simply needed some tweaking here and there (the biggest change being the removal of prehistoric/Neolithic stuff, which is at least one of your more reasonable proposals ala the Indus Valley Civilization comparison to India). Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:34, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Chain stitch

The excavated tunic of Tutankhamun (c. 1342 – c. 1325 BC) has chain stitches, predating the oldest cited Chinese example (Paul T. Nicholson, Ian Shaw: "Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology", Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 9780521452571, p. 280). Note that Mary Schoeser, the cited source, is not concerned with claiming global priority for the Chinese but makes her remark rather in the limited context of her discussion of Chinese (silk) clothing.

This is a recurring problem with this list: it ignores cultural and geographical context and inflates limited claims to global absolutes. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:03, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough, removed given the earlier example from Ancient Egypt, as we inch closer to removing those tags at the top of the article. Also, I couldn't disagree more with your perception about this article, the problems of which I think you're exaggerating when it comes to claims of innovation in a global context. It's certainly no different from other invention list articles such as List of English inventions and discoveries and List of Italian inventions and discoveries. For whatever reason you have decided that List of Chinese inventions is far more egregious than these other examples when it's literally presented in the same format. While you're certainly free to hold this opinion, it's irrelevant at best, so let's stay focused on the specific items that you have actual concrete evidence to refute with scholarly sources. Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:46, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Ephedrine

Its first use is claimed for the Han era but this is a weak claim. The sole source refers to Abourashed 2003, a pharmacological article that is not much concerned with historical accuracy. This is what Abourashed writes (p. 703):

A member of family Ephedraceae, Ephedra sinicais the primary species that has been used in China for more than 5000 years and is still being used in Ephedra preparations and extracts all around the world. Although originally examined by Emperor Shen Nung (ca. 3200 BC), the use of ma huang as a stimulant and as an antiasthmatic was not documented until the time of the ancient Chinese Han Dynasty (ca. 207 BC–220 AD). Ephedra gerardiana has been similarly employed in Indian folk medicine since old times. Even during the time of the Roman Empire, Ephedrawas well known and described until it was eventually dropped from medieval European literature.

I cannot see how Abourashed credits any specific culture with Ephedrine's first use. Going by his choice of words, Indian and Roman use could predate that in China. The fact that he attributes a role to a mythical Chinese ruler should be an immediate red flag to treat his historical synopis as reliable. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:03, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Good point. I have removed this post, which I did not personally add but was the addition of some other editor long after my successful FAC. Thanks for bringing it to my attention and yes, it seems ancient Romans or Indians could have been using it around the same time or earlier as the Han dynasty Chinese. Inching ever closer to removing those tags! Pericles of Athens^Talk 02:56, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Incense

A priori an unlikely claim given how ubiquitous the practice is and how ephemeral evidence of any kind for its earliest use must be. And the only source cited truly lives up to expectations. Stoddart claims on the given page that "few details of the rites have survived" (plausible), but that the Hindus adopted incense from the Chinese (interesting) and the Egyptians in turn from "Hindu traders" at the time of the "11th dynasty" (wow), which he dates wrong by 1500 years (never mind). Then he goes on more to give more impossibly precise details (but he knows). Worthy of Erich von Däniken and unintentionally funny. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:03, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Again, unsurprisingly, not an entry that I had personally added, but am happy to remove. You're right, the origins of incense are far too murky to speak in such absolutes and the author, despite being published by the Cambridge University Press, made a number of glaring errors that put his other claims into question. That is not a small error, either, that's a colossal one that betrays a huge ignorance of the timeline of entire civilizations. Pericles of Athens^Talk 03:04, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Natural gas as a fuel

This entry take a free license to embellish things. What Loewe (1968) actually writes on p. 194 is that drills may have penetrated over 600 metres" and that "it is possible that the fires lighted below the pans were fed on natural gas, brought from the mine by the same conveyance". The entry, however, treats his conjecture as a fact. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:03, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

This is a case where both artistic and archaeological evidence strongly suggest that natural gas was indeed used as fuel for salt production and that borehole drilling did in fact reach such depths, but yes, per Loewe's wording, I have softened the language there to stress that this is still hypothetical and not yet fully or exhaustively confirmed with corroborative textual evidence. With that done, I have addressed every single one of your concerns listed here. If you have any other outstanding concerns let them be known with specific details, because I will now remove the OR tags from the top of the article. I may even re-nominate this for FAC, but in the meantime it looks decent enough. Pericles of Athens^Talk 03:11, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Crank and Connecting Rod

I tried to add the "Crank and Connecting Rod" into this article but it was deleted. I don't see the problem with the source I've provided.

Source title: International Symposium on History of Machines and Mechanisms

Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media

Pg 249 of the book says:

"From the above discussion, the crank and connecting-rod mechanism featured with eccentric lug was adopted for a long period of time in ancient Chinese blasting apparatus, textile machinery and agricultural machinery, and its appearance was no later than the Western Han Dynasty. It was first applied in manually operated quern and long, and the gradually evolved into different crank connecting-rod devices, used in the inter-conversion of rotary and reciprocating (rectilinear) motion in specific situations".

In page 245 the author shows a Chinese waterwheel operating a crank and connecting rod to blast air for a furnace (from the Nong Shu).

In page 241 the author showed treadle spinning wheels (from the Nong Shu) that operated through a crank and connecting rod.

In page 239 it showed a water-driven flour-sifter driven by "a connecting rod and an eccentric lug" (from the shui ji mian luo).

In page 237 and 240 the author showed crank and connecting rods in a fascimile of a Han dynasty stone relief, as well as a Han dynasty model of a quern using the crank and connecting rod.

The author says in page 237:

"The eccentric lug is actually a crank, also a kind of crank-and connecting rod mechanism. So far as we know, the eccentric lug system of manually operated quern and long in the Han Dynasty was the earliest crank mechanism in China; it was also the earliest application of the crank and connecting rod in the world"

'--ArchimedesTheInventor (talk) 11:55, 4 April, 2020 (UTC)