European naval power from 500-1200

 

Yeah, I think alot. But it doesn't make me sexy. My cock does. Lol.

Eric

 

The earliest reference to a compass ever comes from a 4th century BC Chinese book called Book of the Devil Valley Master, and back then it was a simple loadstone (highly magnetized magnetite) basin placed with a metal ladle spoon, and it was used largely for purposes of geomancy, including pointing one's house in the southern direction because the Chinese believed this was most auspicious to the designs of feng shui. In the Dream Pool Essay, written by the Northern Song Dynasty era scholar Shen Kua in 1086 AD, gives detailed descriptions of how a magnetized loadstone needle with a single strain of silk with a bit of wax attached to the end hung the needle, and when the needle was hung this way, it could point either north or south. However, the first evidence in Chinese records of a compass used for navigation, Zhu Yu's book the Pingzhou Ke Tan, or the Pingzhou Table Books of 1127 AD, predates both Arab and European documentation of a magnetized compass used for navigation (Yemeni Sultan al-Ashraf in 1290, although use of the compass could have come earlier, and with Europe, Alexander Neckham's De Naturis Rerum, or the Natures of Things). There is speculation that the magnetic compass was both an indigenous invention of China and the West, considering that the Chinese usage of the compass was to point south, and for Europe it was to point north. However, there is also equal speculation that the idea of the magnetized compass spread from China to Europe since the Chinese compass predated the latter and since seafaring trade links between the seafaring Chinese to Indians, Persians, Arabs, Africans of the Southern Song Dynasty in China to the Indian Ocean could easily have transfused such an idea by way of constant communication of China to the West (hell, it could even have been transported via the silk road, as many things were). As for the astrolabe, you are correct about the ancient Greeks (Hipparchus), and the Arabs employing its use that would later transfuse back to Europe by the 11th century, although it wasn't widespread in use again in Europe until about the 13th century. The first armillary sphere, the spherical astrolabe, was invented by the Greek Eratosthenes in the West in 255 BC, while the first Chinese invention of the armillary sphere dates to 52 BC with the astronomers Geng Shou-chang and Luo-xia Hong. The first water-powered celestial globe is accredited to the 2nd century Chinese genius Zhang Heng, who was quite easily the equivalent of Archimedes to Western technological invention, math, and science. As for Jacob's staff, this came long after the compass was already introduced to Europe, as it is accredited to either the Jewish mathematician Levi Ben Gerson (lived 1288 - 1344) or Georg Purbach (1423 - 1461), the famous Austrian astronomer and mathematician.

 

Pidgeon? Did you mean pintle and gudgeon (although I have heard it been called as a pidgeon before)? Anyways, once again with the sternpost-mounted rudder, there is speculation that it could be both Chinese and European inventions separately, and equal speculation that the idea was transfused from China to Europe. This is brought about by the idea that in the Middle Ages, ships had adopted a quarter-rudder to placed at the stern of the ship, which aided the steering used by rowing power of oarsmen. By the late 12th century, the quarter rudder began to be replaced by the better advantage of the pintle and gudgeon rudder mounted at the sternpost, but even the quarter rudder persisted in use well into the 14th century (The Development of the Rudder, by Lawrence V. Mott, 1997). But to the point of the idea of the mounted sternpost rudder coming from China to Europe, the first use of a rudder in Europe is in stark contrast to the first of Chinese rudders, evidence of which stems back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (23 - 220 AD), where a clay model of a Chinese "junk" ship dated to that era had mounted at the stern a steering rudder. Throughout the centuries to follow, Chinese chronicles extensively record the use and evolution of the sternpost rudder to better-adapted models, employing techniques such as hole-drilling to decrease the amount of water friction in order to steer faster, etc. In the late 4th - early 5th century (399 - 422 AD), the Chinese Buddhist Monk Fa Xian was the first Chinese to sail in a junk all the way to India across the eastern half of the Indian Ocean. From that point on, the Chinese used not only land routes like the Silk Road stretching from the Tarim Basin all the way to Eastern Europe, but relied heavily on oceangoing trade, from ports in east and southern China (like Quanzhou and the like), and sailed all the way to India, Persia, Arabia, and East Africa during the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 AD), as it was the Muslim Prophet Muhammad himself who allowed some of his lineage (an uncle Waqqas) to travel to China during the reign of Emperor Gaozu of Tang, and is accredited for having spread Islam to China. It wasn't until the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279), though, that the Chinese relied heavily on massive oceangoing navies (before this point, large Chinese navies were lake and riverine based) to escort their merchant fleets and defend them, no longer relying on Arabs or Indians to do all the middle-men trekking or commerce.        

 

Eric 

 

Eric

 

How much that was due to the Normans and how much to do with internal affairs in Denmark/Scandinavia I don't know because I don't know anything about internal affairs in Denmark/Scandinavia .

 

Except for their going around putting poison in each others' ears, which I glean from Hamlet of course.