During his stay in China, Marco Polo encountered many things that were totally new to him. In fact, in Marco’s day China was in many ways more technologically advanced than Europe.
Among Chinese inventions are the development of blast furnaces to obtain cast iron from iron ore, the refinement of iron into steel, the use of the chain pump for irrigation, row cultivation in agriculture, silk making, gunpowder, the wheelbarrow and the seed drill. Marco Polo was also very impressed with the superior postal system in China, which moved "second class" messages by foot-runners and "first class" on horseback.
Nothing so astonished the Polos in China as much as the use of paper money, another Chinese innovation. "With these pieces of paper," Marco wrote, "they can buy anything and pay for anything." Of course, it helped that the Great Khan ordered that the paper money be recognized on pain of death.
The invention of paper itself was made in China. In the early days of the 2nd century, a court official named Cai Lun produced a new kind of paper from bark, rags, wheat stalks and other materials. Paper-making did not reach Europe until the 12th century.
The Chinese also invented block printing (the practice of engraving writing or pictures on a wooden board, smearing it with ink and then printing it on pieces of paper page-by-page) beginning in the Sui Dynasty (581-618). The first book with a verifiable date of printing appeared in China in the year 868, or nearly 600 years before a similar process appeared in Europe.
Credit for the invention of gunpowder also goes to ancient China. Ancient necromancers (wizards who predicted the future by communicating with the dead) discovered in their practice of alchemy that an explosion could be induced if certain kinds of ores and fuel were mixed in the right proportions and heated. Gunpowder was originally used for making fireworks and its later adaptation revolutionized warfare across the world.
Learn more: Who Invented It? When? Chinese Inventions
China’s “Golden Age”: The Song, the Mongols, and the Ming Voyages