Since ancient times, the social development of human beings has been divided into Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. In fact, in the time before the first stone was made into a knife, human beings also experienced a long "age of wood".
However, due to the difficulty of preserving the characteristics of wood in the long river of history and bound by the traditional academic ideas of the time, the wooden age was not recognized by history.
In our daily life, "wood" can be said to be an indispensable and important material. People use wood to assist in life to build life, from hunting tools to building houses, furniture, paper, life props, and even the four great inventions of ancient China, which played an extremely important role in promoting the world's scientific progress, are also inextricably linked to it.
Wood with a compass
In the long history of more than 6,000 years before the advent of the compass, human beings used the Tugui method to seek geographical meridians, and it was not until the Yuan Dynasty that the compass or compass completely replaced the original "Tugui method". The Togui method mentioned here is to erect wooden poles on the horizontal ground, make the wooden poles perpendicular to the ground through suspension ropes, and then observe the range of projection of the wooden poles at sunrise and sunset to orient themselves.
In the Three Kingdoms period, people invented the all-wood guide car. Looking at the various orientation methods in the early days of mankind, they are all related to wood, and wood plays a crucial role in human orientation activities.
Wood with paper
As we all know, the production of modern pulp and papermaking in the mainland is inseparable from wood raw materials. Whether it is Cai Hou paper invented by Cai Lun on the basis of summarizing the technology of his predecessors in the ancient Eastern Han Dynasty, or modern pulp and paper production, its raw materials are wood. In addition, before the advent of paper, human writing was also on wood chips.
Wood with gunpowder
Gunpowder and papermaking, printing, and the compass are known as the four major inventions of ancient science and technology on the mainland, which have a history of more than 1,000 years and have played a huge role in promoting the development of world culture, economy, politics and science.
Gunpowder is mainly made of a mixture of three elements: sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal. Because of its great lethality, it was often used in the military field during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and firearms were made. From mines and bullets to huge cannons and tanks, almost all weapons are inseparable from the shadow of "gunpowder".
Wood and printing
Printing is the precursor of modern human civilization and has created conditions for the wide dissemination and exchange of knowledge. Before the Northern Song Dynasty, engraving was used, that is, the manuscript was carved on a wooden board, and then ink was brushed on the engraving plate, and then the engraving was stamped on the paper.
In the Northern Song Dynasty (around the 11th century), engraving printing was developed and perfected through cloth and cloth, resulting in movable type printing. Among them, wooden movable type has become a type of movable type commonly used in the history of movable type printing in mainland China due to its relatively convenient materials and low cost.