Asian Influences on European Metallurgy

The communication by Cyril Smith giving Dr. Spencer welldeserved praise for translating Filarete's treatise on iron stirs anew the issue of Asian influences on European metallurgy. Dr. Smith has shown becoming caution in forbearing a claim of possible Chinese antecedents for the wheel, bellows, and their connecting mechanisms, as described or suggested by Filarete. This caution is justified since Filarete never describes the wheel. Dr. Smith's suppositions deserve to be explored for the readers of Technology and Culture, however, since they reveal so well the nature of cultural communication of technology, past and present. This commentary calls attention to my own efforts in Iran in tracking down a primitive type of blast furnace with evident ancestry in China of Ming Dynasty or before, a furnace whose practice suggests solutions to the riddles posed by Filarete. During my three-year stay in Iran, I twice retraced the route of Dr. Erich Bdhne's 1927 voyage into the mountains of Mazanderan, on the Caspian coast. The reader who wishes a sketch of this moist region of mountains and forest should consult the article by this German geologist in Stahl und Eisen (Vol. XLVIII, No. 2 [1928], pp. 1577-80). Many aspects of Dr. B6hne's description of the small blast furnace of the Caspian were vague to me. I wanted in any event to study water mechanisms in the Chinese-type villages of the Caspian, with the thought of preparing an article for Technology and Culture, for with the advent of land reform and new technology these will soon disappear. In the company of a seigneur of the Mahdavi family, which in years past had attempted to modernize the flourishing primitive iron industry of the Caspian, we set off on horseback in May 1962 to visit the villages in the upper mountains of Mazanderan, villages combining many features of Han China and eighteenth century Kentucky. Led by a musket-bearing guide, we travelled first to the village of Irka some 12 miles south of Amol, then began the ascent to Angetarud and Mahan, scene of old slag heaps and metallurgical mounds. Though rumor had one furnace still in operation in the forest of Lavij (Lavij-tenge), we were unable on this trip or that in June 1963 to find any traces of it. However we managed to interrogate workers, who confirmed Dr. B6hne's description of nearly four decades ago, which follows: