A sword that hasn't rusted in a thousand years actually contains chip technology? Scientists are stunned!

During the Spring and Autumn period, there was not only a military culture represented by Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but also macho thinking like that of Guigu Zi, and the Analects, which emphasized human morality and etiquette. It can be said that a hundred schools of thought contended and a hundred flowers blossomed.

What is surprising, however, is that this period saw the emergence of a craft that has shocked the modern era - sword making. From the excavated sword of King Yue Goujian in China, scientists were not only amazed by the casting process of the time, but also discovered the secret of making chips from it.

The Greatest Sword: Sword of Kings for Men and Women

When it comes to the casting of swords during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, many people may first think of "Mo Xie", a pair of male and female swords, with a popular story of sword casting, so many people are addicted to it.

However, the authenticity of the legend of Mo Xie is still open to question, including the whereabouts of the male and female swords Jiang Gan and Mo Xie, which are still under active examination.

After all, most of the legends about the swords are from the book "The God of Exploration", a novel about strange spirits. In today's terms, Tianjin is like a metaphysical novel, the plot of which cannot be believed in its entirety.

So, strictly speaking, the "Mo Xie" was not a real sword maker, but that does not mean that there were no so-called "male and female swords" during the Spring and Autumn, and Warring States period.

In 1965, the Chinese scientific archaeology team organized a large number of construction workers to build a canal-style tunnel next to Wang Shan in Hubei province.

Watching the tunnel move forward, the expedition had a hunch that there would be a large tomb here. As for the source of this premonition, it was not the so-called sixth sense, but the "feng shui reading" described in tomb raiding novels.

It turns out that this place called "Wang Shan" sits in the direction of what is known in traditional feng shui as the "two dragons playing with the pearl", and these two dragons are the Jik Mountain and Baling Mountain on the side.

It is also worth noting that next to Jikishan is the site of Jinan City, the former capital of the ancient state of Chu, Duying. The team, therefore, had reason to believe that at the center of the 'two dragons playing with the pearl', there must have been many tombs of the nobility of the state of Chu.

And so it was. A total of 55 tombs were rediscovered during the excavations carried out by the construction team.

At the same time, most of these tombs used the usual sealing methods used by the Chu royal family, such as the quicksand tombs that frightened tomb robbers. However, at this site, the method of sealing the cave of one tomb attracted the particular attention of experts.

This tomb was named 'Wang Shan No. 1' because it was the largest of all the tombs. This tomb was sealed by the extremely rare method of 'fire pit sealing', known in the trade as 'fire cave'.

This is a more advanced and insidious method of burglary prevention. In simple terms, the tomb's outer perimeter was sealed with charcoal and green clay. The green mud is an excellent sealing material, which creates a 'fermentation' like reaction inside the chamber, resulting in the production of flammable gases.

If a tomb raider digs, the flammable gas will be emitted instantly by digging out the green paste on the outside. When they encountered a torch or a torch, it would burst into flames and explode, turning the whole tomb into a "fire pit" and causing great harm to the diggers.

Fortunately, however, the green paste of King's Hill 1 had collapsed and the flammable gas had escaped, leaving only the outer protective layer like a hollow shell.

With that, the expedition made light work of entering the tomb. After some protective digging, a pair of swords caught everyone's eye. After wiping off the top layer of soil, the experts froze directly on the spot.

It turns out that these are a pair of male and female swords with bird marks engraved on them. It should be noted that the bird seal is a script for communicating with the Heavenly Way during the Spring and Autumn Period, and it is unlikely that a non-royal relative would have carved it. Moreover, the fact that this is actually a pair of swords shows that it is extraordinary.

The swords were quickly sent to the research laboratory. After deciphering by Guo Moruo, Tang Lan, and several other experts, it was agreed that the bird seal on the swords reads "Yue Wang Goujian, the Sword of Self".

This means that the two swords are the legendary male and female swords of King Yue.

Craftsmanship: ancient and modern.

While it is a miracle that the male and female swords of King Yue would be found in a tomb from the state of Chu, the craftsmanship of the swords is even more extraordinary.

Firstly, the pair of swords had been in the tomb for thousands of years, but now that they have been unearthed, the two swords have not decayed or even rusted, they look like brand new heirlooms.

And not only have the two swords not decayed, but they have also retained their sharpness.

According to the Warring States Strategy :

"Wigan is a sword, flesh ko is for breaking oxen and horses, and jin ko is for cutting slabs of evidence; if you hit a thin pillar it will break into three pieces, while if you hit a quality stone it will break into a hundred."

In other words, all swords produced in Wu Yue had to go through four tests of cutting through oxen and horses, cutting through plates, striking thin pillars, and grinding stones before they were named and eventually born.

It is generally understood that the swords of Wu and Yue could cut through oxen and horses with one sword, cut through bronze plates with one sword, cut through wooden pillars in houses with two swords, and cut through large stones with one sword.

So the pair of male and female swords of the Yue king would theoretically have possessed these characteristics.

Meanwhile, experts have done a special test. These two newly unearthed swords of King Yue were able to cut right through 23 layers of carbon paper with a single slash. This sharpness already surpasses that of countless modern swords. Not to mention that these are ancient swords, buried for thousands of years. It can be considered a marvel of ancient craftsmanship.

What material were King Yue's male and female swords made of that could have such amazing properties?

Faced with this question, a group of archaeologists began to conduct scientific research on the male and female swords, and the first thing they had to do was to examine the composition of the male and female swords.

Under the most advanced particle accelerator, the chemical composition of the Yue Wang sword was soon revealed to the research team - a copper-tin alloy.

The copper-tin alloy sounds very highbrow, but it is actually 'bronze'. But the copper-tin alloy of the swords is particularly special because the alloy of these two swords does not contain lead.

The distribution of copper and tin in these two swords is unusual, in that the blade is made of tin and the spine of the blade is made of copper, which shocked everyone present.

Fortunately, the experts studied the cross-section of the blade in depth and found that the craftsmen had forged the blade and the spine separately.

That is, such a pure bronze sword was made by first casting the spine in copper water with high copper content, and then casting the blade outside the spine in copper water with a high tin content.

What is even more striking, however, is that not only is the tip of Wang Yue's sword sharp, but the workmanship on the surface of the blade is also unprecedented.

For on the surface of Yue's sword there are regular diamond-shaped hidden lattices that give the whole sword some mysterious aura. Moreover, these lattices are not unusual. According to scientists, these lattices contain extremely high levels of tin.

A group of historians then came up with the idea of a lost craft - the craft of casting lines on the blade.

Based on the distribution of lines on the body of King Yue's sword, it would appear that this was a line casting process called the tin-rich fine-grained technique.

After all, on both of King Yue's swords, experts have seen dendritic crystals of metallic tin, which is consistent with tin-rich fine-graining.

In modern times, however, there is another generic term for such a process, namely 'crystal growth'.

Crystal growth can be described as a highly technological modern technique. Generally speaking, the material is melted into a molten soup and single seed crystals are placed on the soup.

The seed crystals and the molten soup-like material then 'coexist' at the solid-liquid critical point, i.e. the seed crystals extend as the molten soup extends, and when the soup solidifies, the seed crystals also set, which is a perfect cover.

It is worth noting that this technology is now being used in the manufacture of chips. Simply put, if this technology can be mastered, it will enable the manufacture of raw materials for chips.

This has shocked the world even more. It should be noted that the Wang Yue sword is from the Spring and Autumn period. How did the craftsmen of the time master the craft?

Unfortunately, this question is still a mystery. Perhaps shortly, the new ancient text will be available to answer this question. Let's wait and see.