Posted on 07/11/2011 8:15:58 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Nanjing Belt was discovered in a tomb in 1952 around a skeleton. The tomb and the body dated to the Jin Dynasty that brings us back to the early centuries A.D (265-420) and luckily the name of the occupant was established through an inscription. He was one Zhou Chou (obit 297) who died fighting, of all people, the Tibetans.
So far so easy: belts and even britches are common in graves around the world from the mysterious dragon buckles of Late Roman mercenaries to the ceremonial belts of the Lords of the Maya. In fact, the problems only really began when the boffins got the belt off Zhou and back into a laboratory.
The belt included 'about' (?) twenty pieces of metal -- which had presumably been attached to the now rotted leather -- and four of these were made of almost pure aluminium. Aluminium it will be remembered does not appear alone in nature. It took Europeans till the early nineteenth century to understand how to isolate this useful substance and even then the aluminium that issued was far from pure.
Chinese historians were, understandably, bemused and something of a civil war broke out, not helped by the fact that the Cultural Revolution was on the horizon. If there was a resolution though before Mao's guillotine came down it was that four pieces were, indeed, aluminium. The problem then was not metallurgical but rather archaeological: were they Jin Dynasty or had they been placed in the tomb in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries?
(Excerpt) Read more at strangehistory.net ...
Did they find AMMONIA at the excavation, too?
On another note:
The Hall Process involves the electrolyzation of molten cryolite. I doubt that the ancient Chinese were able to generate powerful electrical currents. The aluminum pieces must be a later addition.
Regards,
hey, you screwed up. it was the washington monument.
the tip of the washington monument is aluminum. at the time it was the most expensive metal in the world, far more expensive than gold.
I may be missing something from the article but aluminum does occur in nature but very rarely. So rarely that prior to modern technology, aluminum was valued more than gold.
I believe so. It's called internally cured concrete.
I may be missing something from the article but aluminum does occur in nature but very rarely. So rarely that prior to modern technology, aluminum was valued more than gold.
It still is, when it’s encasing beer on gameday.
LOL!
Haber, Hall, ... Dammit Jim, I am a mathematician, not a chemist!
Actually, that is one reason I am not a chemist - I suck at names. Can’t remember them. Brain not wired for it. Lucky I can remember my own kid’s names.
I remember enough of chemistry to recall that to get AL out of bauxite, you gotta heat it to about 1000C, using electricity.
And that would take one heck of a campfire...
For years I had about an eight-ounce (formerly) molten blob of aluminum, from when a Chicago L train caught on fire. (I got some 8mm film of it.)
I went back a few days later and the stuff was laying around on the ground under the burnt-out wreck of the train in the elevated structure.
I think I lost that momento in a move 40 or so years ago.
I don't think that there is much "mystery" to this any more. Modern knife makers might be able to show the old timers a thing or two about Damascus.
Pontiac Patton Aluminum ... but is it transparent??? Could there be stashes of it around the ruins but we just can’t see it? ... Flojistum here we come!
Wanna make a road trip?
Weightless and transparent - it is all around us, floating on the breeze ...
Ah, so that’s what the time travelers make their perpetual motion machines out of ... live and learn. I suppose they use zero point energy to fuel them.
Washington Monument is topped with alum. also.
How many man-crafted pieces of aluminum are extant in the archeological collection of artifacts? Certainly they would be rare enough to be reported.
-——Wanna make a road trip?-——
Actually, I have made the road trip.....twice in fact. The first was to Appalachian Center For Crafts, the fine arts school of Tennessee Tech and to Bristol Virginia where I purchased a Damascus blade from a master blade smith.
At ACFC I took a metals workshop in the studio next to the blacksmith works. Under the watchful eye of the resident metals instructor and master blade smith I saw the students there learn the making of various patterns of Damascus steel to be forged into knives. I became friends with two black smiths from Santa Fe who came to learn the Damascus steel making art. They explained the process in detail. For those of us who work silver, the forging process seems very heavy work, hot and sweaty.
In nearby Bristol a master blade smith makes and sells his wares. the various patterns he creates in his custom blades are a site to behold.
The secret to Damascus is work....... hammering and heating and folding and hammering and heating and folding over and over and over and over.
My work is to take this wonderful blade and provide a silver mounted hilt and a silver mounted and appointed scabbard
-——Wanna make a road trip?-——
Actually, I have made the road trip.....twice in fact. The first was to Appalachian Center For Crafts, the fine arts school of Tennessee Tech and to Bristol Virginia where I purchased a Damascus blade from a master blade smith.
At ACFC I took a metals workshop in the studio next to the blacksmith works. Under the watchful eye of the resident metals instructor and master blade smith I saw the students there learn the making of various patterns of Damascus steel to be forged into knives. I became friends with two black smiths from Santa Fe who came to learn the Damascus steel making art. They explained the process in detail. For those of us who work silver, the forging process seems very heavy work, hot and sweaty.
In nearby Bristol a master blade smith makes and sells his wares. the various patterns he creates in his custom blades are a site to behold.
The secret to Damascus is work....... hammering and heating and folding and hammering and heating and folding over and over and over and over.
My work is to take this wonderful blade and provide a silver mounted hilt and a silver mounted and appointed scabbard
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.