<previous With the end of Giotto's era, a new technology from China penetrates Europe: gun powder. A formula was offered at the end of the XIIIth century by Marcus Graecus¹. This will give a great advantage over opponents armed only with swords. Around that time, Bell-making foundries learned how to cast cannon barrels and musket from iron to use gunpowder. When the revolutionary XIVth century European weapon, the bombard or cannon appeared, it "made such a noyse in the goying as though all the dyvels of hell had been in the way."².

The Daoist alchemists in the Han period developed gunpowder as elixir before the Chinese added Carbon to it to make it explosive in the Xth century. China began manufacturing guns in 1250³.

Aug, Jacob, an Italian-Jewish trader, arrived at the harbor of Zaitun in southeast China, 4-years before Marco Polo arrived. He wrote a manuscript that surfaced in 1997, translated by David Selbourne, a British scholar. In this manuscript, Jacob described the use of gunpowder [See historical reference for the date "1271"].
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1. The Medieval Machine, the industrial revolution of the Middle Ages, Jean Gimpel, Henry Holt, New York, 1976, p. 226.

2. Ibid., p. 228.

3. The encyclopedia of World History, Peter N. Stearns, originally compiled and edited by William L. Langer,Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 2001.

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