[TheForge] weapons found with the terracotta army

[Bob Ehrenberger]

Bruce,

You are forgetting that up until 50 or 100 years ago most technical 
knowledge was treated like a trade secret and never shared. They for sure 
would not tell a foreigner. There are stories where some masters would not 
even share with their apprentices.

Robert Ehrenberger
Shelbyville, Mo.
eforge at centurytel.net

-----Original Message ------
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 07:55:43 -0400
From: "Bruce ." <freemab222 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [TheForge] weapons found with the terracotta army

My first suspicion is that they'd happened upon a high-chromium ore,
much as folks in the middle east happened upon a high-vanadium ore for
making Wootz (sp?) steel.  I don't know whether that makes sense
either metalurgically or geologically.

However, there is a general tendency for the current generation to
discount the intelligence and knowledge of past generations.  (This
was not always so.  Witness the tendency in the middle ages to harken
back to the Greeks and Romans as fonts of knowledge.  I suspect it's
the old pendulum, swinging back and forth....)  I expect that many, if
not most, of us in this group are less inclined to think this way, but
it's easy to fall into the trap.

China (as a whole -- which it wasn't always) was a great empire, for
thousands of years.  It traded with the middle east, so goods and
knowledge were exchanged.  It is more than likely that crude batteries
were known in the middle east, and it has been suggested that these
were used for electroplating (precious metals IIRC).  Of course,
ferrous metals were fairly well explored, possibly better than we
realize (because they rust and aren't well represented in the
archeological record), as were copper-based alloys.