Editor's note: The Bronze Longsword of the Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses has been unearthed for decades, and has long maintained a state of endless debate between the two factions of the "Standing Sword Sect" and the "Inverted Sword Sect". The release of the documentary "Resurrection Corps" and the discussion of some online groups have fueled the dispute over the bronze sword of the Qin figurines. The Cold Weapons Research Institute also once believed that the bronze swords of the Qin Terracotta Warriors were probably based on the prototype of steel weapons based on the situation and the shape of the Qin Dynasty. The most anticipated point of cold weapon research is that there will always be new research findings that overturn your existing cognition and bring about the renewal of knowledge and concepts. Because according to the latest discoveries of British scholars, the bronze longsword of the Terracotta Army, although it may be a dark weapon, is a practical combat weapon with ultra-high-tech strength. ???? For a long time, the "Tingjian Faction", represented by Yuan Zhongyi, director of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum of Qin Shi Huang, and Wang Xueli, captain of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Archaeological Team of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, believe that the bronze sword of the Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses is both strong and tough, amazing in length, and conducive to actual combat, and even adopts advanced processes such as chrome plating, which can be "incorruptible for a thousand years", "memory metal" and "far better than the iron sword of the six countries". The "inverted sword faction" represented by Liu Zhancheng, the leader of the archaeological team of the current Qin Terracotta Warriors, believes that the Bronze Sword of the Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses is a high-tin bronze sword with a tin content of 21-31%, and under this tin content condition, the bronze is hard but brittle, so the Bronze Sword of the Qin Terracotta Warriors is extremely easy to break in use, in other words, the Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses are "long and thin, strong but not tough and easy to break", "In actual combat, the enemy can take any weapon, even an ordinary wooden stick, can also break the Qin sword."
▲The terracotta warrior bronze sword, is it a scrap copper artifact, or a real bronze sword?
Since 2010, the University of Cambridge, the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London and the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Museum have used new instruments to conduct a new metal analysis of the bronze sword of the Qin Terracotta Army, and there have been many new authoritative research results, which have seriously shaken the theoretical foundation of the "Inverted Sword School" from the perspective of physical evidence. First of all, according to the "inverted sword school" - in the theory of metal science, when the tin content of bronze exceeds 20%, the tensile strength is rapidly reduced, and the plasticity is very poor, so there is a Qin sword "plasticity" of only 1%, which is a brittle tin bronze strip. But this theory is based on the fact that the Qin Terracotta Warriors bronze sword is completely one-time casting and molding, without any quenching, annealing and other heat treatment processes, but is the Qin Terracotta Warriors bronze sword really not quenched? In 2011, a research paper published in the Society for Materials Research (MRS) in the United States, hosted by the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University, showed that a batch of newly tested bronze swords of the Qing Terracotta Warriors, although still high tin bronze, all used the process of quenching or annealing after casting!
▲A newly tested bronze sword of the Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses is in a metallographic form, showing a post-casting quenching state
What does high tin bronze quenching represent? Although according to the relationship between the mechanical properties of the copper-tin binary alloy and the tin content, the high tin bronze alloy containing more than 19% tin is very brittle and is not suitable for making weapons and swords. However, if it is quenched, the metallographic structure martensitic with good properties can be retained, so that the tensile strength of the bronze is greatly increased, the elongation is improved, so that the high tin is no longer just a hard and brittle "flower shelf", but can become a good combat weapon. The earliest weapons using gaoxi bronze quenching technology appeared in Wudi in the late Spring and Autumn Period, and then the technology was introduced to Chudi, and quenched Chu-style bronze swords were found in the Tombs of the Warring States Warring States Jiangling Chu and the Ba people in the Xiajiang area. After using similar techniques, the Qin Terracotta Warriors Bronze Sword has made the high-tin bronze that looks brittle and impure into a practical weapon with good performance.
▲ Metallographic of Warring States quenched bronze weapons
▲ Bronze quenched Chu-style sword of Jiangling Chu Tomb
However, if the bronze sword unearthed from the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang only adopts a quenching process, how can it reflect the wealth and wealth of Qin Shi Huang, the "king of hand"? At this time, there is a peak technology that can be called the bronze sword casting process of the Warring States - the composite bronze sword has appeared, and the bronze sword of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang has used this casting technology that makes the bronze sword more suitable for actual combat in addition to the quenching process. The so-called bronze composite sword casting process is the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, the earliest Wuyue craftsmen in order to make the bronze weapon take into account the toughness and hardness, and the two different tin content of bronze materials combined to cast the sword. They cast sword blades from hard but brittle high tin (more than 19% tin content) bronze, made sword ridges from soft and tough low tin bronzes (8-14% tin content), and then used the mortise structure to cast the sword ridge and the blade into one, and in the process homogenized the sword ridge to make the sword ridge more resilient. In the end, the bronze composite sword has a sharp and hard blade that is conducive to assassination, and the tough sword ridge ensures that the whole sword is not easy to break in actual combat, which can be called the most excellent performance among the pre-Qin bronze swords. Bronze composite swords first appeared in Wuyue, and later the technology spread to the Qi and Chu states.
▲ Hainan Provincial Museum collects the bronze composite sword of the Yue King Qi Bei Ancient Self-Action
▲ The metal composition of the bronze composite sword In the traditional view, it is often believed that the bronze swords of the Qin Terracotta Army are all cast and formed at one time, rather than the two-time casting process of the composite sword, and even the bronze composite sword in the middle and late Warring States period is no longer popular. But a 2011 study by Marcos Martinón-torres, a professor of archaeology at the University of Cambridge and then a professor of archaeology at the University of London, and Li Xiuzhen, a researcher at the Qin Shi Huang Emperor Mausoleum Museum, showed that the Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses bronze sword used this "pre-Qin best" casting technique, but the "painting style" was different from Wuyue technology.
▲Terracotta bronze composite sword
The core of the Qin Terracotta Warriors bronze sword is a rectangular alloy strip, made of low tin bronze, and the blade part is cast later, and the alloy strip is completely wrapped, using high tin bronze that has been proven in traditional research as the material. Different from the Wuyue-Qi-Chu bronze composite sword, the Qin Terracotta Warriors bronze sword is difficult to see from the appearance of the composite technology, it is easy to mistakenly think that the integrated casting process is still used, but it still ensures the good performance of the Qin Terracotta Warriors bronze sword in actual combat - the sword heart is tough, the blade is strong. At the same time, electron microscopy research also found that the bronze sword of the Qin Terracotta Army was meticulously and tediously polished to enhance the lethality, and it was "completely mechanically polished". Chinese and British archaeologists believe that the bronze sword of qin shi huang mausoleum "was undoubtedly made as a highly lethal combat weapon, for the burial of qin shi huang after death, rather than a substitute for the authentic ming instrument", thus overturning the "inverted sword school" of the "inverted sword school" with physical research evidence.
▲ Scanning electron microscope displayed Qin bronze longsword and other weapon polishing marks
▲ The Bronze Longsword of the Qin Terracotta Army is a sharp weapon manufactured according to the actual combat process, and it still uses the hun casting integrated molding process, especially the bronze sword that uses the so-called "high tin bronze" material and is blinded by the color of "dark weapon", which may be the result of the limitations of the old experimental instruments, and the actual tin content is not "so high". The Chinese Warring States bronze sword analyzed by the British Rutherford Appleton laboratory found that the tin content of the blade originally measured in China was as high as 23%, but after a large-scale measurement by British experts using neutron diffraction, it was found that the tin content of the blade part of the sword was actually only about 16%, which was a very normal proportion of bronze alloy. The article also points out that traditional X-ray spectrometers (XRF) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are only suitable for small-scale and shallow metal analysis, and the analysis of large bronze instruments such as bronze swords has a large error. Therefore, those pre-Qin Gaoxi bronze swords that people judged to be "not able to be used in actual combat" may only be illusions caused by limited experimental methods.
▲ The Chinese Warring States composite bronze sword analyzed by rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom was excavated in Hunan Province and adopted a bronze composite production process different from that of the Qin-style sword
Based on the new research data since 2010, we can find that the Qin Terracotta Warrior Bronze Sword is not only not a model of the dark weapon in the mouth of the traditional "inverted sword school", but a sharp weapon made by the peak process of the two warring states bronze weapons using the high tin bronze quenching and composite casting method, coupled with a length of more than 80 centimeters, its casting technique is not only not backward, but also can be called the master of pre-Qin related technologies. In addition to steel weapons, there is no better bronze weapon on Chinese soil than the Qin Terracotta Warriors Bronze Sword, which can be used in actual combat.
Of course, even the best quenched bronze composite sword is only the peak level of bronze weapons, and there is still a gap in actual combat performance compared with the steel swords unearthed in Yanxiadu and even some Qin tombs in the Han Dynasty. So, why did Qin Shi Huang not choose to accompany the burial of the iron longsword, but to choose the elaborate bronze longsword, the First Emperor unified the six kingdoms, is it not good to find craftsmen in the Yan country to create a batch of more practical steel swords according to the Yan-style sword? The reasons are speculated to be two, first, high tin bronze after quenching is easy to show a beautiful golden color, as the first emperor "parade troops" of the honor guard weapons used just right, just like the Roman Janissaries long-term use of Greek muscle armor; second, high tin bronze after quenching, tin plating may be more resistant to corrosion, Cambridge University Archaeology Department research shows that the Qin Terracotta Warriors bronze weapons may not have mastered the so-called chrome anti-corrosion process, but rely on high tin bronze and subsequent quenching, tin plating to prevent corrosion, so it is more suitable for underground burial than steel weapons. Therefore, the use of bronze composite long swords as a weapon for the terracotta warriors in the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is not only a manifestation of the national strength of the emperor to be buried with sophisticated practical instruments, but also the result of considering multiple factors of embalming and aesthetics.
To put it simply, Qin Shi Huang, the super hand-made king, if in modern times is definitely a super kryptonite gold gangster in online games, he wants to buy N gorgeous skins, but also has practical attributes! It doesn't matter how much money you burn for it! The demand for the beauty of bronze weapons also ran through the Warring Han Dynasty (Note). After all, for the local tycoons, the expensive bronze sword that is gorgeous and practical is a symbol of strength, and the poor people are buried with the iron sword! Note: The Warring States artifact form system continued to the Han Dynasty, if the excavation information is not clear, it is difficult to break the generation. Therefore, the collecting circles and academic circles collectively refer to the long era from the end of the Warring States to the Han Dynasty as the Warring States. If someone talks about cultural relics with "for a long time, the Han Dynasty was considered to be an era of complete separation from the pre-Qin Dynasty", don't think about it, this kind of painting a target to hit the goods, either a liar or do not know how to pretend to understand. Formal academics and people who have really touched cultural relics dare not say so.
This article is the original manuscript of the Cold Weapons Research Institute. The original outline of the editor-in-chief and the author of the Great Qin Haibo shall not be reproduced by any media or public account without written authorization, and the offender will be investigated for legal responsibility.