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The history of the firearm begins in 10th-century China, when tubes containing gunpowder projectiles were mounted on spears to make portable fire lances. [1] Over the following centuries, the design evolved into various types, including portable firearms such as flintlocks and blunderbusses , and fixed cannons, and by the 15th century the ...
Bronze cannon with inscription dated the 3rd year of the Zhiyuan era (1332) of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368); discovered in Beijing in 1935. The earliest artistic depiction of what might be a hand cannon—a rock sculpture found among the Dazu Rock Carvings—is dated to 1128, much earlier than any recorded or precisely dated archaeological samples, so it is possible that the concept of a ...
Needham noted that breech-loading guns were already familiar in Southern China in 1510, as a rebellion in Huang Guan was destroyed by more than 100 folangji. [66] It may even be earlier, brought to Fujian by a man named Wei Sheng and used in quelling a pirate incident in 1507.
Gunpowder weaponry exchange between China and Japan was slow and only a small number of hand guns ever reached Japan. However the use of gunpowder bombs in the style of Chinese explosives is known to have occurred in Japan from at least the mid-15th century onward. [ 86 ]
The earliest gunpowder recipe and gunpowder weapons date to China's Song dynasty and the oldest extant guns appear in the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. However, historian Tonio Andrade notes that there is a surprising scarcity of reliable evidence of firearms in Iran or Central Asia prior to the late 14th century.
Wheeled gun carriages became more commonplace by the end of the 15th century, and were more often cast in bronze, rather than banding iron sections together. [35] There were still the logistical problems both of transporting and of operating the cannon, and as many three dozen horses and oxen may have been required to move some of the great ...
Historically, China has pioneered the development of a number of weapons. Several of the traditional weapons are practiced today at the many schools of Chinese martial arts around the world. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Weapons of China .
Although the Xanadu Gun is the most precisely dated gun from the 13th century, other extant samples with approximate dating likely predate it. One candidate is the Heilongjiang hand cannon , discovered in 1970, and named after the province of its discovery, Heilongjiang, in northeastern China.