Science and technology of the Song dynasty

China was ruled by the Song dynasty from 960–1279 CE, a period in the nation’s history noted for significant advancements in technology and science. The period is often compared to the European Renaissance—an artistic and scientific rebirth that began in the Western world in the fourteenth century. During the Song dynasty, China experienced continued economic growth that cemented its place as the wealthiest nation on Earth. This allowed for advances in agriculture, navigation, manufacturing, printing, and weapons technology, all bolstered by a flourishing, vibrant scholarly community. Although the roots of some technologies date back to earlier dynasties, Song China made breakthroughs in the nation’s four major historical innovations—gunpowder, movable type, paper, and the compass. These accomplishments significantly impacted China and other cultures that encountered the technologies over the coming centuries.

Background

According to tradition, Chinese civilization began around 2070 BCE with the establishment of the nation’s first dynasty—the Xia. Although some experts consider the Xia dynasty little more than a myth, the first recorded Chinese civilization was the Shang dynasty, which rose to power about 1600 BCE. The longest-reigning dynasty in history was the Zhou, which controlled the nation from 1046–256 BCE. Under the Zhou, China made great advances in science, writing, and philosophy and established two of the world’s greatest Eastern religionsConfucianism and Taoism.

The last years of the Zhou dynasty were marked by war and internal conflict. In 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang completed his conquest of the warring states and united the nation under the Qin dynasty. The Qin period was tumultuous and short-lived, lasting only fifteen years until the overthrow of Shi Huang’s son in 206 BCE. The Han dynasty gained control of China and ushered in more than four hundred years of relative peace and economic prosperity. Under the Han, China began a long-standing trade relationship with Western Europe. The Han period was a time of political stability noted for an increased focus on arts, culture, and science.

After the Han dynasty fell in 200 CE, China endured nearly four centuries of political instability and civil war. Kingdoms and dynasties rose and fell as competing warlords fought for control of the nation. In 581, the Sui dynasty again unified the nation, only to be overthrown in 618 by Gao-Tzu, who established the Tang dynasty. The Tang is considered the greatest dynasty in Chinese history, beginning a “golden age” that would last for three centuries. Under the Tang, China embraced religious, cultural, and artistic freedoms and rose to become the wealthiest nation in the world. The economic stability allowed the sciences to flourish, leading to numerous technological innovations that would be refined by later dynasties.

The political stability of the Tang began to erode in the late eighth century as a series of damaging revolts took their toll on the central government. The dynasty’s end was hastened after a major rebellion in the 870s, and the dynasty fell apart by 907. China entered another period of battling warlords and political upheaval known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. This period ended in 960 when General Zhao Kuangyin emerged victorious and united most of the nation. He took the title Emperor Taizu and established the Song dynasty. The Song leaders ruled a relatively unified China until 1125, when China’s Jin state captured the northern territories and forced the Song capital to move south. In 1279, the Song were overrun by invading Mongol armies who gained control of China and established the Yuan dynasty.

Overview

The rulers of the Song dynasty built upon the technological successes of the Tang to create the most modernized and industrialized nation of the time. During the Song era, China made significant advances in the civilization’s four major historical innovations. China was the first civilization to invent paper, gunpowder, printing, and the compass. Of these, paper had a long history of use in China by the time of the Song dynasty. The invention of paper is credited to Cai Lun, an imperial court official under the Han dynasty. Before that point, most writing was done on bone, turtle shells, or bamboo. Around 105 CE, Lun found an inexpensive way to make paper from old fish nets, bark, and cloth.

By the eleventh century, paper spread from China across Asia and into the Middle East. Under the Song, paper was first used as a form of currency. The Tang had developed a system where people could deposit metal coins for a promissory note written on paper. The Song revised this system with a government-issued form of paper money called the jiaozi. In 1265, China issued the first national form of paper currency, but the system soon collapsed as the Song dynasty crumbled in the 1270s.

The Chinese were able to create paper currency because of innovative breakthroughs in the art of printing during the Song dynasty. The oldest known printed works were Buddhist texts made in the ninth century under the Tang dynasty. These were created with woodblock printing, a method in which text is engraved on a wooden block in reverse and then transferred to paper via ink. While this method was effective, it was very time-consuming and the wood block could not be changed once created.

A craftsman named Bi Sheng, who lived from about 990 to 1051, invented a method of movable type that used blocks of individual characters that could be easily switched out. Sheng’s blocks were made of baked clay that could be rearranged and reused to print different texts. This innovation allowed printing to flourish under the Song, leading to increased literacy and the growth of a learned upper class. Movable type printing gradually spread to Japan, Korea, and other parts of Southeast Asia. By the mid-fifteenth century, the method was further refined by German printer Johannes Gutenberg to create the first printing press that used metal movable type.

The compass was first developed during the Han dynasty when it was noticed that a spoon made from magnetic iron ore always seemed to be pointing south. Chinese alchemists used this phenomenon to devise a geometric map of the directions of the heavens as a means of divination. This was an important element in the practice of feng shui, an ancient belief that humans could find harmony by directing the energy flow within their environment.

During the eleventh century, a scientist named Shen Kuo adapted the technique to navigation by creating a needle out of magnetized steel and set it against a bowl with directional markings. The needle could be suspended in water, on a pointed piece of metal, or by a string. Kuo’s innovation made the compass smaller and more portable, allowing it to be used increasingly in ocean travel. The vessels of the Song dynasty used the compass to easily reach the trading markets of the Middle East.

The most impactful of China’s four major historical inventions was gunpowder, a substance first developed during the Tang dynasty. The Chinese called gunpowder huo yao, or “flaming medicine,” as it was accidentally invented by alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality. They mixed sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate—a chemical commonly known as saltpeter. The substance flashed when exposed to a flame and exploded if mixed in the right proportions.

Records indicate the Tang used gunpowder for some military purposes, but it was under the Song that it was adapted to more efficient wartime uses. Song warriors used gunpowder to make “flying fire,” or fei huo, an arrow or a lance attached to a burning tube of gunpowder. These weapons could be launched into the enemy ranks like a rain of small rockets. Written records from the era report that the Song built large weapon factories that employed more than forty thousand people and could produce more than seventeen thousand gunpowder-powered arrows a day.

The Song also developed early gunpowder weapons such as grenades, flamethrowers, and landmines. Gunpowder-filled bombs containing iron shrapnel were ignited and launched from catapults at the enemy. In the latter years of the Song dynasty, the military began firing projectiles out of gunpowder-filled bamboo tubes. Eventually, they began making the tubes out of metal, creating the earliest-known form of the modern cannon.

Around 1044, a Chinese military text recorded the official formula for making gunpowder. Eventually, that knowledge came into the hands of the Mongols, China’s main enemy from the era. When the Mongol armies overthrew the Song in 1279, they used gunpowder-powered weapons against the Chinese. By the mid-thirteenth century, knowledge of gunpowder had traveled westward to the kingdoms of Europe, and by the mid-fourteenth century, crude cannons were being used by the English and French militaries. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European armies began using gunpowder in handheld firearms, forever revolutionizing the face of war.

Other Innovations

The proliferation of printed works in China under the Song also allowed scientific information to be more easily shared, leading to advancements in astronomy, math, and medicine. Again building on the work of the Tang, Song astronomers had compiled detailed maps of more than 1,400 stars and developed methods to chart the heaven’s movements. Some astronomers contended the sun and moon were spheres and the tides were affected by the moon—both ideas that were not widely accepted. In the mid-eleventh century, a Chinese official named Su Song built a forty-foot-high mechanical clock tower powered by water. The clock featured automated figures that would emerge to mark the time of day by striking bells and gongs. The clock also noted the day of the month and the moon phases. At the top, the clock had a mechanical rotating sphere that displayed the locations of the stars and planets.

National historians view the final decades of the Song dynasty as the height of Chinese mathematics. Several notable mathematicians compiled their work into written volumes but also wrote the first math textbook in Chinese history. In the thirteenth century, Qin Jiushou was the first Chinese mathematician to use the symbol “0” to represent zero. Before that, mathematicians used a blank space to represent the concept. Chinese physicians also used the written word to compile and share medical knowledge. Although their methods were far from modern standards, Song doctors established medical schools where they taught subjects like internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, and dentistry.

The Song Chinese also excelled at shipbuilding, constructing large sailing vessels with up to six masts, airtight compartments, and room for almost one thousand people. They also developed paddle-wheel-powered boats and rudders that allowed for more accurate steering. In agriculture, Song engineers developed a waterwheel that utilized animal power to irrigate fields by bringing water from lower areas to higher ground. They also undertook numerous irrigation and flood-control projects, building dams and draining wetlands to create more land for farming.

China’s highly skilled metalworkers mass-produced weapons and armor using water-powered bellows. The bellows allowed metalworking furnaces to be superheated to produce higher-quality steel weapons. During the eleventh century, engineers invented an early odometer in which gears on a wheeled carriage struck a bell after the carriage had traveled a certain distance.

Bibliography

Cartwright, Mark. “Song Dynasty.” World History Encyclopedia, 26 Sept. 2017, www.ancient.eu/Song‗Dynasty. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

Coy, Katie. “Chinese Inventions—The Four Great Inventions and Beyond.” LTL Mandarin School, 18 Nov. 2020, ltl-beijing.com/chinese-inventions. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

Hays, Jeff. “Science During the Song Dynasty.” Facts and Details, Aug. 2021, factsanddetails.com/china/cat2/4sub9/entry-5471.html. Accessed 20 May 2024.

Pan, Jixing. The Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: Their Origin, Development, Spread and Influence in the World. Paths International, 2019.

“Printing Press.” History.com, 14 May 2024, www.history.com/topics/inventions/printing-press. Accessed 20 May 2024.

“Science in the Tang (618–906) and Song (960–1279) Dynasties.” Asian Art Museum, 2021, education.asianart.org/resources/science-in-the-tang-618-906-and-song-960-1279-dynasties. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

Silverman, Susan. “Compass, China, 220 BCE.” Smith College, www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient‗inventions/compass2.html. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.