CHINESE CIVILIZATION

ANCIENT CIVILIZATION (SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY)

 The civilization of ancient China first developed in the Yellow River region of northern China, in
the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.
 A large part of this area is covered by loess soil. This very fine earth has blown in from the
highlands of central Asia over thousands of years, and makes one of the most fertile soils in the
world.
 In ancient times, the main crop in northern China was millet, a highly nutritious food still grown
in many parts of the world as a major crop.

The Yangtze valley region

 To the south, the great Yangtze valley, with its warm, wet climate, was the first area in the world
where rice was grown, sometime before 5000 BCE.
 From this region rice cultivation spread far and wide across southern China and into south-east
Asia.
 Rice is one of the most nutritious plants known to humans – three or four times as nutritious as
wheat. This means that, other things being equal, a much larger number of people can be
supported from the same area of land with a rice crop than with a wheat crop.

The Cradle of Chinese Civilization

 The Yellow River region is regarded as the Cradle of Chinese Civilization.

 earliest Chinese dynasties were based.
 the Yellow River region which formed the heart of the Chinese world, and it was from here that
Chinese civilization spread out into adjacent areas, including the Yangtze region.
 By the end of the Han dynasty, the final chapter of ancient Chinese history, all of modern China
except the outlying regions of Tibet, Xinjiang, most of the northeast (what was Manchuria) and
parts of Yunnan in the south-west had been more or less incorporated into the world of Chinese
civilization.

CHINESE INVENTIONS

PAPER MAKING

 The invention of paper greatly affects human history. Paper already existed in China since 105
A.C.
 The first paper was made from rags , and later plant materials were used such as bark, hemp,
and bamboo.
 Civil Service officials needed lots of paper to do their work , and so paper gradually became mass
produced in government factories

MOVABLE TYPE PRINTING

 Woodblock printing was already a widely used technique in the Tang Dynasty.
  This kind of printing tech was expensive and time-consuming. Until the Song Dynasty (960-
1279), a man named Bi Sheng (990–1051) invented movable type printing, making it quicker and
easier.
 He first carved individual characters on pieces of clay and then harden them with fire.
 These movable type pieces were later glued to an iron plate to print a page and then broken up
and redistributed for another page.
 This kind of printing tech rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later
all around the world.

GUNPOWDER

 Gunpowder was invented by Chinese Taoist alchemists about 1000 A.D. when they tried to find
a potion to gain human immortality by mixing elemental sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter.

COMPASS

 A compass is a navigational instrument that shows directions.

 The compass was invented by Chinese between the 2nd century BC and 1st century AD.
 It was first used in Feng Shui, the layout of buildings. By 1000 AD, navigational compasses were
commonly used on Chinese ships, enabling them to navigate.

ALCOHOL

 The inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula were widely believed to be the first brewers.
 In 2013, a 9000-year-old pottery found in Henan province revealed the presence of alcohol,
1000 years before Arabian.
 Alcohol is known as Jiu in Chinese and is often used as a spiritual offerings to Heaven and the
Earth or ancestors in ancient China.
 Study shows that beer with an alcoholic content of 4% to 5% was widely consumed in ancient
China and was even mentioned on oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC–1046
BC).

MECHANICAL CLOCK

 The world’s first mechanical clock -Water-driven Spherical Birds – was invented by Yi Xing, a
Buddhist monk in 725 A.D.
 It was operated by dripping water which powered a wheel that made one revolution in 24
hours.

TEA PRODUCTION

 According to old Chinese legend, tea was first discovered by Shennong, Chinese Father of
Agriculture, around 2,737 BC.
 In the Tang Dynasty (618－907) tea became a popular drink enjoyed by all social classes.

SILK

 Silk, one of the oldest fibers, originated in China as early as 6,000 years ago.
  The earliest evidence of silk was discovered at Yangshao culture site in Xiaxian County, Shanxi
Province, China where a silk cocoon was found cut in half, dating back to between 4000 and
3000 BC.

UMBRELLA

 The inventions of umbrella can be traced back as early as 3500 years ago in China.
 Legend has it, Lu Ban, a Chinese carpenter and inventor created the first umbrella.
 Inspired by children using lotus leaves as rain shelter, hecreated umbrella by making a flexible
framework covered by a cloth.

ACUPUNCTURE

 The oldest Chinese medicine book “Neijing”, also known as “The Classic of Internal Medicine of
the Yellow Emperor”, shows that acupuncture was widely used as a therapy in China much
before the time it was written.
 Various kinds of acupuncture needles were discovered in the tomb of Prince Liu Sheng who died
around 200 B.C.

ANCIENT INDIA

 The Indus Valley Civilization was an ancient civilization located in what is Pakistan and northwest
India today, on the fertile flood plain of the Indus River and its vicinity.
 Evidence of religious practices in this area date back approximately to 5500 BCE.
 Farming settlements began around 4000 BCE and around 3000 BCE there appeared the first
signs of urbanization.
 By 2600 BCE, dozens of towns and cities had been established, and between 2500 and 2000 BCE
the Indus Valley Civilization was at its peak.

Why is it also called Harappan Civilization?

The Indus Valley civilization is also known as the Harappan civilization because the first site of the
archaeological remains of the Indus Valley civilization was found at the modern site of Harappa, West
Punjab, Pakistan.

INDUS INVENTIONS

ANCIENT DENTISTRY

 According to historians, the Indus Valley Civilization has revealed evidence of dentistry being
practiced as far back as 7000 BC. One dig site in Mehrgarh even showed evidence of healers
curing tooth disorders with bow drills.
 Dentistry was also practiced in Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome but odontology and dental
appliances arose only by Etruscans.

AYURVEDA
  Ayurveda is commonly referred as 'science of life' because the Sanskrit meaning of Ayu is life
and Veda is science or knowledge. Ayurveda is also a person-centered medicine (PCM), which
deals with healthy lifestyle, health promotion and sustenance, disease prevention, diagnosis and
treatment.
 Ayurveda came from the Indian subcontinent, having been tracked as far back as 5000 BC.
Therapies generally include complex herbal compounds, minerals and metal substances.

SANITATION

 Great Bath, Mohenjo-daro.

 Dholavira Sophisticated Water Reserving
 A water well in Lothal.
 Prominent in hydraulic engineering, and had many water supply and sanitation devices that
were the first of their kind.
 The urban areas of the Indus Valley civilization included public and private baths.
 Sewage was disposed through underground drains built with precisely laid bricks, and a
sophisticated water management system with numerous reservoirs was established.
 In the drainage systems, drains from houses were connected to wider public drains.
 Many of the buildings at Mohenjo-daro had two or more stories. Water from the roof and upper
storey bathrooms was carried through enclosed terracotta pipes or open chutes that emptied
out onto the street drains.

RULERS

 In 1500 BC there were ivory rulers used by the Indus Valley Civilization.
 Some findings in Lothal proved that there was a ruler which was calibrated to 1.6 millimeters,
and it was 4400 years old.
 Mohenjo-Daro ruler has accuracy within 0.13 millimeters. The first folding ruler was invented by
Anton Ullrich, and the first flexible ruler was made in 1902.

WEIGHING SCALE

 The first weighing scales were actually balances, using two plates attached to an overhead
beam, itself fixed on a central pole.
 The measurement was taken by putting the object measured on one plate and weight-setting
stones on the other, until equilibrium was reached.
 The earliest existence of weighing scales also date back to between 2400 BC-1800 BC in the
Indus valley civilization, where balances were used to compare measure and compare goods in
trade.

PLASTIC SURGERY

 Historians believe plastic surgery was being carried out in India as early as near 2000 BC.
 Eventually, it was ancient Indian physician Sushruta who was credited with being the father of
plastic surgery around 600 BC, whose books and teachings eventually made their way to Europe
centuries later

CRUCIBLE STEEL
  Metallurgy in India has a long and varied history. Bronze and copper were known during the
period of the Indus Valley Civilization.
 The recovery of metal articles (including a bronze dancing girl) and the discovery of crucible with
slag attached are clear indicators of the knowledge of casting (pouring molten-hot metal into
moulds of the desired shape and size) and forging (hammering hot metal into required shapes).
 Historians now know that by at least 200 BC (a conservative estimate) South India was
producing high quality steel, using a method Europeans would later call the crucible technique.
 Wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed together and heated until the iron melted and
absorbed the carbon, forming high grade steel.

CATARACT SURGERY

 Indian physicians were known to practice a different kind of cataract surgery that known to the
Greeks in about 200 BC.
 It was performed with a tool called the Jabamukhi Salaka, a curved needle used to loosen the
lens and push the cataract out of the field of vision.
 Greek scientists of the time travelled to India to see these surgeries, and the technique was even
introduced into China from our country.

SPINNING WHEEL

 This mechanized method of spinning yarn was invented in India, between 500 and 1000 AD,
eventually replacing hand spinning across the world. The Charkha, as it came to be called,
eventually went on to become the symbol of India’s independence movement.

ARAB CIVILIZATION

LOCATION

 The Arabian culture developed in Arabia, a peninsula situated between the Red Sea and the
Persian Gulf, in southwestern Asia. Due to its arid climate, Arabia is a desert where agriculture is
only possible in some coastal locations and inner oases.
 The Arabian Peninsula was isolated from the great historical centers until the 7th century. It was
merely a place where caravans would pass through from the East bringing spices, silks, and
other goods.
 The Arab world of the seventh to the thirteenth centuries was a great cosmopolitan civilization.
 It was an enormous unifying enterprise, one which joined the peoples of Spain and North Africa
in the west with the peoples of the ancient lands of Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia in the east.
 It was the rapid expansion of Islam that initially brought this empire together.
 Alliances were made, trade routes were opened, lands and peoples were welded into a new
force. Islam provided the dynamism, but it was the Arabic language, which provided the bond
that held it together.
 Islam spread to lands more distant than North Africa and the Fertile Crescent, but it was in this
area that a common Arab culture emerged.

ARAB INVENTIONS
SURGERY

 Around the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published a 1,500 page illustrated
encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical reference for the next 500 years.
 Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds --
beforehand a second surgery had to be performed to remove sutures.
 He also reportedly performed the first caesarean operation and created the first pair of forceps.

COFFEE

 Coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the 9th century.

 In its earliest days, coffee helped Sufis stay up during late nights of devotion.
 Later brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee buzz soon caught on around the
empire.
 By the 13th century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century did the beans start boiling
in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.

FLYING MACHINE

 Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying machine and
fly.
 In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus, roughly resembling a bird costume. In his
most famous trial near Cordoba in Spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling
to the ground and partially breaking his back.
 His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed Italian artist and inventor
Leonardo da Vinci's hundreds of years later.

UNIVERSITY

 In 859 a young princess named Fatima al-Firhi founded the first degree-granting university in
Fez, Morocco.
 Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and together the complex became the al-
Qarawiyyin Mosque and University.
 Still operating almost 1,200 years later, Hassani says he hopes the center will remind people that
learning is at the core of the Islamic tradition and that the story of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire
young Muslim women around the world today.

ALGEBRA

 The word algebra comes from the title of a Persian mathematician's famous 9th century treatise
"Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala" which translates roughly as "The Book of Reasoning and
Balancing."
 Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, the new algebraic order was a unifying system
for rational numbers, irrational numbers and geometrical magnitudes.
 The same mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, was also the first to introduce the concept of raising a
number to a power.

OPTICS
  Around the year 1000 Ibn al-Haitham proved that humans see objects by light reflecting off of
them and entering the eye, dismissing Euclid and Ptolemy's theories that light was emitted from
the eye itself.
 This great Muslim physicist also discovered the camera obscura phenomenon, which explains
how the eye sees images upright due to the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.

MUSIC

 These artists, al-Kindi in particular, used musical notation: the system of writing down music.
 They also named the notes of a musical scale with syllables instead of letters, called solmization.
 These syllables make up the basic scale in music today and we are all familiar with doh, ray, me,
far, so, la, tee. The Arabic alphabet for these notes is Dal, Ra, Mim, Fa, Sad, Lam, Sin. The
phonetic similarity between today’s scale and the Arabic alphabet used in the 9th century is
astonishing.
 Muslims were also developing musical instruments.

TOOTHBRUSH

 The Prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in around 600. Using a twig
from the Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and freshened his breath. Substances similar to
Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.

CAMERA

 Ibn al-Haitham revolutionized optics, taking the subject from one being discussed
philosophically to an actual science based on experiments.
 He rejected the Greek idea that an invisible light emitting from the eye caused sight, and instead
rightly stated that vision was caused by light reflecting off an object and entering the eye.
 By using a dark room with a pinhole on one side and a white sheet on the other, he provided the
evidence for his theory.
 Light came through the hole and projected an inverted image of the objects outside the room
on the sheet opposite.
 He called this the “qamara”. It was the world’s first camera obscura.

HOSPITALS

 The first such medical center was the Ahmad ibn Tulun Hospital, founded in 872 in Cairo.
 Tulun hospital provided free care for anyone who needed it -- a policy based on the Muslim
tradition of caring for all who are sick. From Cairo, such hospitals spread around the Muslim
world.