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ANCIENT CHINESE CONTRIBUTIONS 1

Assignment 2: Ancient Chinese Contributions
Thomas R. Felix Strayer University
Humanities 111
Professor Aprile Castagna
March 05, 2013

ANCIENT CHINESE CONTRIBUTIONS 2

The Ancient Chinese culture was a very successful culture that created many inventions and contributed to the advancement of not only the Chinese civilization but also to the civilization of the world. According to Henry Sayre, the Qin Dynasty, which was said to exist from 221BCE until 206 BCE, was the first empire in China to rise to dominance; however, the Han Dynasty was given credit for the most Ancient Chinese contributions and inventions (Sayre, 2012). The Han Dynasty existed from 206 BCE until 220 CE, and during the Han Dynasty contributions and inventions by the Ancient Chinese included: the wheelbarrow, seismograph, paper, compass, map, glazed pottery, hot air balloons, and silk. While the Ancient Chinese made many contributions and inventions for the world, the four most useful are the wheelbarrow, the seismograph, paper, and the map.
Today the wheelbarrow is commonly used for farming, gardening, and construction work such as moving dirt, bricks, mulch. It is suitable for many jobs because it allows the weight of the contents to be evenly distributed between the wheel and the operator. For many of the same purposes as we use the wheelbarrow today, the Ancient Chinese invented the wheelbarrow. It served the purpose of transporting things from one place to another that could not easily be one with just one person alone. According to Jeff, the earliest form of the Chinese wheelbarrows was said to be invented by a famous prime minister of the time named Zhuge Liang (Jeff, 2003). There are different

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