Secrets of an ancient Chinese recipe for bronze finally deciphered

Murugesu is a journalist by the name of jason arunn.

It is possible that the missing ingredients of an ancient Chinese recipe for bronze have been found.

The oldest technical encyclopedia is Kaogong Ji, which was written 2300 years ago. There are instructions in the book on how to make several objects. There are six recipes for bronze that have stumped researchers.

The style and scale of the bronzes produced there was unparalleled according to the British Museum in London.

How can Asian and Chinese people make so many bronzes?

The combination of copper and tin is what makes bronze. Researchers have not been able to identify two ingredients in the recipe mystery. In ancient China, jin means gold, but it is thought to have been referring to copper or a copper alloy. It has been said that xi refers to tin.

Chemical analyses of bronze vessels from that time period show that jin and xi can't simply be copper and tin.

The data on the chemical composition of knife-shaped Chinese coins was analysed by the group. The researchers theorize that the objects were created using pre-made alloys.

The lower the lead concentration in the coins, the lower the copper and tin concentration. The coins with the highest concentrations of both copper and tin were the most popular. The findings show that lead was being mixed with copper and tin.

An 80:15:5 copper-tin-lead alloy mixed with a 50:50 copper-lead alloy in various ratios was found to be the best match for the chemical coin data.

The Kaogong Ji has a record of these pre-made alloy being jin and xi. He says that the recipes in the book don't reflect how bronze is usually made.

He thinks the recipes are too specific. The people who got their hands dirty probably couldn't read or write, so they wouldn't have been able to record the recipe There is a lack of knowledge between the person who wrote the recipe and the person who worked on it.

The researcher at the University of Cambridge isn't sure about the findings. These recipes should not consider the records of practices used at the time. He says that the officials who wrote the text might only pay attention to the most important materials. If you add jin and xi to the recipes, they still work.

In ancient China, bronze was used to make large vessels for religious purposes. She says that China had a huge workforce and could afford to use a very complicated system with a lot more metal.

The journal's title is "Archaeology."