>>508061288Fiber-paper (mulberry-bark / hemp pulp sheets) – recognisably “true” paper is attested in Western Han tombs from the 2nd century BCE and was in everyday bureaucratic use by the 1st century CE; nothing comparable existed in northern Europe, where bark, wax tablets and parchment were the norm.
• Blast-furnace cast-iron metallurgy – Chinese shaft furnaces smelted iron at >1 250 °C, then decarburised or remelted it to make wrought iron and steel objects. Germanic smiths relied on small bloomery hearths that could not produce liquid iron.
• Standardised bronze/iron-trigger crossbows – the sophisticated multi-piece trigger (often batch-cast with serial marks) let infantry shoot heavy draw weights with accuracy and interchange parts; no crossbow technology is documented for the Germanic world until many centuries later.
• Single-wheel wheelbarrow (“wooden ox”) – depicted in 1st-century reliefs and praised in Han texts for moving one-man loads of 150 kg; nothing like it is recorded for Europe until the late Middle Ages.
• Sternpost rudder – Han river craft mounted a pivoting wooden blade on the keel’s centre-line for precise steering; contemporary European boats still used side-oars or steering paddles.
• Moldboard iron plough with replaceable share – Han farmers used cast-iron shares bolted to wooden frames and a curved moldboard that turned the soil; Germanic agriculture was limited to light scratch-ploughs or ards that merely scored the surface.
• Rotary winnowing fan & chain-pump irrigation – crank-turned drum fans separated grain from chaff, while endless-chain bucket pumps lifted water for rice paddies; neither device appears in northern European archaeology of the period.
• Multi-tube seed drill – described by the agronomist Zhao Guo (1st c. CE) to sow several rows evenly and cut seed loss to a fraction; Germanic farmers still broadcast seed by hand.