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Was ancient gold brass?
This is indeed gold, not brass.

Dear, let me recommend an article to you.

The Han Dynasty was rich in gold.

Ding Qizhen

My book where is the gold? After the blog was published, some visitors criticized that the "gold" given by the Han emperor in Historical Records and Hanshu discussed in my short article was not gold, but brass. Bitter people laugh at me for not distinguishing between gold and copper. Some say it's because of eye problems, some say it's because history books don't learn well and need to make up lessons, and some say it's because primary school didn't graduate and the educational level was too low ... There are many sayings that almost made me laugh.

Yes, I am not a historian, let alone an expert in the history of gold smelting, nor have I made a special study on the differences between ancient gold and copper. What I said in this article comes from Zhao Yi, a famous historian in Qing Dynasty, but I didn't create it. Explain this point in particular to show that you dare not prey on beauty.

Below, I will provide some conclusive evidence for Zhao Yi's assertion.

There is a cloud in Hanshu Shihuozhi: "Gold has three classes, gold is the top, platinum is the middle, and red gold is the bottom." Obviously, gold is what we call gold today, platinum is what we call silver today and red gold is what we call copper today. Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty can also prove this point. On page 14 of this book, there are entries such as "gold, five-color gold", "silver, platinum", "copper and gold pool". It can be seen that Han people not only clearly distinguished the concept of gold, silver and copper, but also had the words gold, silver and copper. The words "gold" and "gold" in Hanshu are gold today, not brass.

Some people think that the gold content recorded in the documents of the Han Dynasty is too large, and put forward a compromise view, saying that the ancient alchemy technology is limited and the gold purity is not high. This is obviously a speculative theory. In fact, China's alchemy technology was developed as early as four or five thousand years ago. The gold products unearthed in Sanxingdui, Guanghan, Sichuan and Jinsha, Chengdu can prove this point, and so can the gold products unearthed in any Han Dynasty tomb. Xu Shen's explanation under the word "gold" in Shuo Wen Jie Zi also has an explanation about gold, such as "being buried for a long time without clothes, never being refined lightly".

Regarding Zhao Yi's assertion in the third volume of Notes to the Twenty-two Histories that "platinum was not used as currency in ancient times, but there was a lot of gold", Mr. Huang put forward another criticism when collating: Mr. Huang thought that the gold mentioned in Historical Records and Hanshu might include the converted amount of money, silver and copper.

According to Hanshu Shihuozhi, "Gold has three classes, gold is the top, platinum is the middle, and red gold is the bottom", "Platinum and silver are also noted by Meng Kang. Those who are red gold, Danyang copper also ",think that" the Han Dynasty is not particularly gold ". According to "Biography of Wang Han", he thinks that a catty of gold is worth 10,000 yuan, inferring: "... the so-called number of people giving gold is the total, which should be converted from platinum and copper coins, not all of them are in gold."

Mr. Wang's argument is flawed and untenable. One of the problems is that there are three records of gold, platinum and red gold in Hanshu Shihuozhi, which does not mean that the emperor of the Han Dynasty would give a little of all three levels of gold. If this is the case, then the writing of Hanshu is too careless. As we all know, Ban Gu, the editor of Hanshu, is a very rigorous scholar. He did show a meticulous historical attitude when compiling Hanshu. It is impossible for him to use such broad terms. The second problem is that the story in The Story of Wang Mang said that "20,000 Jin of gold is worth 20 million", but when Wang Mang betrothed his daughter to Emperor Xian of Han Dynasty (Han Ruziying), the words in the memorial were different from what Zhao Yi said, "Wang Mang hired Ashi's daughter as the queen and used 30,000 Jin of gold as a dowry", so there was no conversion ratio of one Jin of gold to 10,000 yuan. The third problem is that the emperor got married and hired a queen. There is really not much difference between "20,000 Jin of gold" and "30,000 Jin of gold", which shows that a lot of gold is used.

Of course, we can continue to discuss this issue, but even based on the above materials, we can draw the following three conclusions: First, there was indeed a lot of gold in the Han Dynasty; Second, what the emperor of the Han dynasty gave was really gold, not brass; Third, the purity of gold in the Han Dynasty is already quite high!