Yet another ancient Chinese first

[Mayabird]

No real point to posting it, except I thought it was cool.

Chinese made first use of diamond
The axes were fashioned from the second-hardest mineral known to science

Stone age craftsmen in China were polishing objects using diamond 2,000 years before anyone else had the same idea, new evidence suggests.

Quartz was previously thought to be the abrasive used to polish ceremonial axes in late stone age, or neolithic, China.

But the investigations of a Chinese-US team of scientists indicate that quartz alone would not have been able to achieve such lustrous finishes.

The team reports its diamond findings in the journal Archaeometry.

Harvard University physicist Peter Lu and colleagues studied four ceremonial burial axes, the oldest of which dates to about 4,500 years ago.

The team used X-ray diffraction and electron microprobe analysis. This determined that the most abundant mineral in the axes was corundum, known as ruby in its red form and sapphire in all other colours.

Hard case

The majority of prehistoric stone objects are traditionally thought to have been fashioned from rocks containing minerals no harder than quartz. But corundum is one of the hardest minerals known to science, second only to diamond.

What the researchers found even more intriguing were the finely polished surfaces of the axes, which reflect an image like a mirror.

To test their ideas, the researchers took a small stone sample from one of the axes, an artefact from the Liangzhou culture, and subjected it to polishing with diamond, alumina and silica, following modern techniques.

Using an atomic force microscope to examine the polished surfaces on a nanometre scale, the scientists found the diamond-polished surface most closely matched the surface from the ancient axe.

Quartz could not have been the abrasive used by the ancient craftsmen.

"Our understanding of the first use of diamond is based on textual evidence from 500 BC in India. But even that - though probably right - is speculative. This is physical evidence a couple of thousand years earlier," Dr Lu told the BBC News website.

"Any experiment does not give you 100% certainty, but this is the only possibility that makes sense."

However, even with the best modern polishing technologies available, the research team could not achieve a surface as flat and smooth as that on the ancient axe. The ancient craftsmen must have used highly sophisticated techniques.

The authors speculate that the use of diamond and corundum abrasives could be linked to an explosion in finely polished jade artefacts during the Chinese neolithic.

The use of corundum could have slashed production times while diamond could have added the finishing touches, they suggest.

Quartz, previously thought to have been the neolithic lapidary's abrasive of choice, is only slightly harder than jade.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4555235.stm

[LeftWingExtremist]

interesting although no one can deny that up unitl the 1420s china was far more advanced than europe or any nation in the world. just curious how many have read 1421 by gavin menzies.

[fgalkin]

interesting although no one can deny that up unitl the 1420s china was far more advanced than europe or any nation in the world. just curious how many have read 1421 by gavin menzies.

I haven't read it, but I have heard it debunked on numerous occasions.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[LeftWingExtremist]

even if all of it isn't true i still think that there is enough evidence that china at least made it to America, Africa and Australia by the 15th century.

[fgalkin]

even if all of it isn't true i still think that there is enough evidence that china at least made it to America, Africa and Australia by the 15th century.

That's the part that got debunked. Not to mention that he has no primary sources since he doesn't read Chinese, relies on dubious local "experts" when identifying supposedly Chinese ships wrecked near Australia and New Zeland, and his argument about Chinese buildings in North America is "it was done by an advanced culture, so clearly it wasn't the barbaric Native Americans," somewhat resembling Van Sertima's Afrocentric bullsht about Nubians starting the Olmec civilization. His claims about ceramics are dated only in the case of the Old World, where they could have gotten via trade. All the evidence from the New World (which in mmany cases consists of a few china shards) is undated. All this from merely skimming the website. I call bullshit.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Imperial Overlord]

It is not impossible that the Chinese at the zenith of their exploration phase might have reached the North West Coast, but there is only a small amount of ambigious evidence to support that. They certainly didn't have a signifigant impact on the inhabitents of the North West Coast.

[weemadando]

even if all of it isn't true i still think that there is enough evidence that china at least made it to America, Africa and Australia by the 15th century.

That's the part that got debunked. Not to mention that he has no primary sources since he doesn't read Chinese, relies on dubious local "experts" when identifying supposedly Chinese ships wrecked near Australia and New Zeland, and his argument about Chinese buildings in North America is "it was done by an advanced culture, so clearly it wasn't the barbaric Native Americans," somewhat resembling Van Sertima's Afrocentric bullsht about Nubians starting the Olmec civilization. His claims about ceramics are dated only in the case of the Old World, where they could have gotten via trade. All the evidence from the New World (which in mmany cases consists of a few china shards) is undated. All this from merely skimming the website. I call bullshit.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

There have been many examples of Chinese "trade goods" (ie beads and shit like that) turning up in Northern Australian aboriginal groups from pre-colonisation times.

[Frank Hipper]

even if all of it isn't true i still think that there is enough evidence that china at least made it to America, Africa and Australia by the 15th century.

There is zero credible evidence for a 15th century Chinese presence in the Americas and Australia, the east coast of Africa is another story...

[Imperial Overlord]

There is evidence of Japanese drift iron (i.e. nails in planks) on the North West Coast. Flotsam goes far and trade goods can pass through a lot of hands. Irregular contact is not the same as regular trade and influence.

[fgalkin]

even if all of it isn't true i still think that there is enough evidence that china at least made it to America, Africa and Australia by the 15th century.

That's the part that got debunked. Not to mention that he has no primary sources since he doesn't read Chinese, relies on dubious local "experts" when identifying supposedly Chinese ships wrecked near Australia and New Zeland, and his argument about Chinese buildings in North America is "it was done by an advanced culture, so clearly it wasn't the barbaric Native Americans," somewhat resembling Van Sertima's Afrocentric bullsht about Nubians starting the Olmec civilization. His claims about ceramics are dated only in the case of the Old World, where they could have gotten via trade. All the evidence from the New World (which in mmany cases consists of a few china shards) is undated. All this from merely skimming the website. I call bullshit.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

There have been many examples of Chinese "trade goods" (ie beads and shit like that) turning up in Northern Australian aboriginal groups from pre-colonisation times.

That does not prove that the Chinese were visiting Australia (the remains of a trade settlement would), but only that goods of Chinese origin somehow made their way to Australia.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[weemadando]

There have been many examples of Chinese "trade goods" (ie beads and shit like that) turning up in Northern Australian aboriginal groups from pre-colonisation times.

That does not prove that the Chinese were visiting Australia (the remains of a trade settlement would), but only that goods of Chinese origin somehow made their way to Australia.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

IIRC most of these were linked to traders who were asian in appearance possibly Chinese, but just as likely from any of the other non-melanesian islands. Then again, this is working off the oral histories of the aborigines.