During the Northern Song Dynasty, the progress of ironmaking technology and the increase of iron output in China were fundamentally reversed. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the annual output of iron was as high as 8 million Jin, which seemed to be a lot, but it was only 4,000 tons of iron when converted into the current unit (the current annual output of steel in China is 1 100 million tons).

But in ancient times, China's annual output of 4,000 tons of iron was already a remarkable figure. According to the manufacturing weight of iron pots at that time, if all iron pots were made in the Northern Song Dynasty this year, it could produce more than 6.5438+100,000 mouths. Such an entry-level iron production can not only meet the needs of weapons and armor, coins and Buddha statues, but also serve the cookers of tens of millions of people. ?

It was the popularity of iron pots in the Song Dynasty that strongly promoted the popularity of China cooking methods in the Song Dynasty.

Extended data

Iron history of China

The late Western Zhou Dynasty was the early Iron Age in China. This is the era when China began to smelt iron on a large scale and applied it to production and life. Most of the ironware made in the early days were small tools such as knives and knives. 1976, a forged medium carbon steel sword, 38.4 cm long, was even unearthed from Tomb No.65, Yangjiashan, Changsha, Hunan (equivalent to the late Spring and Autumn Period). It is identified that the carbon content is about 0.5%, and the metallographic structure is relatively uniform after high temperature annealing.

After the mid-Warring States period, iron tools gradually replaced traditional copper tools in agriculture and handicrafts, and played a huge role in social production and life. Iron-making technology has also been continuously improved, and iron products have spread all over seven countries and spread to Xiongnu in the north and Baiyue in the south. Although China's metallurgical industry appeared later than West Asia and Europe, it developed faster than them and was at the forefront of metallurgical technology in the world for a long time.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the types of ironware were farm tools, hand tools, weapons and miscellaneous utensils, and farm tools and hand tools were in bulk. Handicrafts related to inscriptions include: chisel, chisel, hammer, scrape, chisel, hook, needle, saw and axe. Guan Zi Hai Wang said: A craftsman must have an axe, a spear, a chisel, a saw and a hammer, which is a true portrayal of the handicraft industry at that time.

As Wei Linggong said in The Analects of Confucius, "If a worker wants to do a good job, he must sharpen his tools first". Iron tools are much sharper than copper tools, and its application in inscriptions, like the application of brush in writing, will inevitably lead to a technological revolution and an artistic revolution, which is particularly prominent in stone carvings and ancient seals.

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