it is common knowledge that gunpowder and fireworks were invented in china but when early guns first appeared in europe it was already close to its final form so what happened in between how did fireworks evolve from instruments of joy and festivities into guns the world's most efficient instruments of death let's talk about the development of early gunpowder weaponry in china firecrackers had actually existed in ancient china before gunpowder was even invented these non-gunpowder firecrackers were really just bamboo tubes when heated by fire the air inside the tube would expand and eventually burst with a loud pop it was not known when they discovered this reaction some sources dated back to around 2000 years ago during the early han dynasty but it could have been discovered way earlier before paper was invented in ancient china they used to ride on bamboo scrolls and those scrolls had to be heat treated before they can be used so this natural reaction could have been observed in the process of making those bamboo scrolls it wasn't precisely known when gunpowder was invented but the first reference to it was documented by the alchemist weibo young in his book tan tong-chi which was written in the middle of the second century ce but it took a few hundred more years until an entrepreneuring genius tried to get more bang out of the firecrackers by stuffing the bamboos with gunpowder li tien who was born in the town of lyoyong during the tang dynasty was traditionally credited as the inventor of gunpowder firecrackers and by the time of the early song dynasty firecrackers had evolved into fireworks today the city of lyoyang is known as the industrial capital of fireworks in china and perhaps also the world so with this long history of gunpowder use in china naturally someone will come up with the next coolest thing you could do with gunpowder you know what let's turn them into weapons oh yeah yeah the song dynasty government encouraged the invention of new weapons so the people just started throwing everything onto the wall and hoped that something would stick and earn themselves some dosh one of the earliest designs is literally attaching incendiary gunpowder to a bird and hopes that it lands on the enemy side before the fuse runs out but one of the earliest practical gunpowder-based weapons that was invented was the fire arrow the gunpowder used for these arrows however were for incendiary purpose which meant that they were not intended to explode but rather to cause fire in the 1040s when the book would ya was published there were already many early gunpowder weaponry mentioned in it including the thunderclap bombs at that time the song dynasty had powerful rivals to the north the main one was the churchian rule jing dynasty in 1126 song was able to fend off an assault by ching using their fire arrows and the shock-inducing thunderclap bombs the jing army however were quick to adapt and learned how to make their own gunpowder weaponry from the captured song soldiers and artisans thus the first gunpowder armstrokes in the world was started and soon we got our first proto gun the firelands this thing mike had been invented earlier but it made its first appearance in battle records in 1132 it is really just a gun powder-filled bamboo tube attached to a lens it is the opposite of a bayonet really when you attach a gun to the end of your spear instead of the other way around what you do with this thing is to lit the fuse before fighting and point it at the enemy then the burst of fire will provide the lancer with shock advantage later on the fire lands would be improved on the tube was replaced with metal so that it could withstand more potent gunpowder formula and the content could also include porcelain shrapnels and poison gas with this attachment the lancers could kill at least one enemy soldier at the start of a fight the first true bomb the iron bomb was invented sometime in the late 1100s and early 1200s and its first recorded use in battle was in 1221 it is a gourd-shaped object encased in 2-inch thick pig iron launched by catapults unlike previous explosives which were designed to shock these things were designed to kill when they explode the iron shell will break and the sharpness will maim the victims later versions of this bomb would be used by the mongols on their invasion of japan half a century later but that's a different story then finally we got our hand cannons the first true guns after the mongols conquered song dynasty china the most reliable evidence we have was the sanado gun which was dated to 1298 the gun was named after the place it was discovered in sangdu the mongol yuan dynasty capital as you can see this looks like a direct evolution of the fire lands all you need to do is to replace the lens head with a dedicated firing tube but the way the manufacturing date is inscribed under the sauna to gun suggests that the manufacturing process had already been systematized by that time other older guns were also discovered later but they can't be dated as precisely one massive gun weighing 108 kilos or 238 pounds was discovered in the former area of the tanggut rule sisya empire it was estimated to have been created sometime between 1214 and 1227 but other scholars debated whether it could truly be considered a gun when guns first appeared in european records in 1326 it had already appeared in a form similar to hand cannons it is not precisely known how it was brought to europe but the mongols were the likely suspects or at least the intercontinental trait facilitated by them the mongol invasion of java for example introduced the hand cannon to the japanese and this is where the development of gunpowder weaponry started to diverge in the west and east asia in asia they kept experimenting with various forms of gunpowder weaponry by the time the mongol yuan dynasty was overthrown and the ming dynasty was established rockets had become part of the arsenal and various bizarre looking devices had been created in the interim and they were recorded in the book hoalonjin there was the multi-stage rocket weapon called the fire dragon emitting water which was propelled by four external rockets because the fuse of the main tube was connected to the other rockets it would be automatically lit after a certain amount of time and the rocket inside the main tube would be shot out there was also the rocket arrow launcher which could shoot multiple rocket arrows at the same time there were the large stationary version and also the handheld beehive version this concept was improved on later in korea and became the huacha in the 16th century they also made cannons in asia but they were rarely as large as the ones in europe even the larger devices were mostly used as anti-personnel weapons the paradigm in the east was that firearms were intended to be used against the enemy army not structures meanwhile in the west and near east they kept refining the same form and eventually developed larger and more powerful cannons the cannons proved to be very effective siege weapons too when mehmed ii sultan of the ottoman empire blew through the supposedly impenetrable walls of constantinople in 1453 and took the city historian tonio andrade posits that the reason for this divergence might be explained by the type of walls built in china in europe the walls were mostly built with stones and mortars and they are usually not very thick the walls of constantinople for example was only around 4.5 to six meters thick meanwhile the walls in china could go up to 40 meters thick not only that they were also built differently under the layer of stone exteriors the inside of ancient chinese walls were made of stamped earth additionally the walls were also sloped by coincidence these impact absorbing features happen to be the traditional wall building methods of the chinese so without even knowing it they stumbled upon the most optimal design for defending against cannons if it took mehmed the second 53 days with 70 massive cannons to take constantinople how much resources do you think it would cost to break through chinese walls so it would be dumb for the chinese to even try to build siege cannons okay so that's the early evolution of guns in asia hope you all find it interesting i am cj and we release a video on this channel every week so subscribe if you would like to know more cool histories of asia and other parts of the world and if you like spicy takes on the history of japan then check out lin vermee's channel until next time stay cool my bros