Abstract
In ancient China, people extracted copper, gold, tin, lead, iron, silver, mercury, and zinc from their ores for daily use. Perhaps they obtained stibium in the same way. Stibium in China mainly originated in Xinhua, Hunan Province, where it was known to have been extracted during Ming Dynasty. But at that time, it was mistaken for tin, thus the place of its extraction was called tin mine, which is now the place where Shuikoushan Mining Bureau is situated. As stated in Shuo Wen Jie Zi (Origin of Chinese Characters), all metals belong to the family of gold, hence came the Chinese phrase Jinshu (categorized into gold) which is given “metal” as the English equivalent.
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© 2015 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, Shanghai and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Hua, J. (2015). Mining and Metallurgical Technology. In: Lu, Y. (eds) A History of Chinese Science and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44163-3_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44163-3_2
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