Earliest possible gunpowder?

[Winnabago]

Certainly, the ancient Greeks could have made gunpowder if someone had told them how. Perhaps not in large quantities, initially at any rate.

Judging by their use of steam power, I doubt they would get very far with the stuff.

How about Archimedes survives the Roman capture of Syracuse, and uses sulfur from Etna to make gunpowder bombs for the Roman fleets? Then, hilarity can ensue!

 

[katchen]

Mithradites was mixing ingredients. He would have had to have been lucky and have some of them go "boom!" without blowing him up--which is probably how the Chinese alchemists figured out gunpowder. Mithradetes figured out things like arsenic from mines in Pontus for his poisons and worked out minimum dosages and the like. He had the analytical mind to come up with gunpowder (or chlorate percussion caps, perhaps). He just needed to have some dumb luck.

 

[JedidiahStott]

One problem is that, in order for gunpowder to go 'boom' decently (and not just make a fire and smoke), the ingredients must not only be mixed , but also processed, in a process called 'corning'. This allows the flame to propagate quickly enough to cause an explosion.

However, I guess an analytic mind might say 'Well, if that stuff goes whoosh, maybe I could fiddle with it some more and make it go boom'.

Still needs metallurgy at a fairly advanced level, to produce workable firearms.

It's not impossible. But an awful lot of improbable would have to coincide. None the less, they obviously DID coincide at some time!

 

[Elfwine]

The other question of course if why anyone would develop it. Good bows outperform guns - to the societies that accept fighting at a distance as a good idea - and the mass army isn't all that appealing to the societies of this era (speaking of the area up to and including Iran).

Cannons might be more attractive, however. But infantry wielding firearms? Where's the market?

 

[Pesterfield]

But infantry wielding firearms? Where's the market?

Firearms are easy to train people to use, that's the usual argument for why they got popular even when bows still had the upper hand in accuracy and rate of fire.

 

[Elfwine]

Firearms are easy to train people to use, that's the usual argument for why they got popular even when bows still had the upper hand in accuracy and rate of fire.

Spears are even easier and cheaper.

As stated, this is looking at the nonpopularity of the mass army - that firearms are easy to train people in the use of is all very appealing in the conditions of 16th century Europe or (apparently) Japan, but its not as appealing in other situations.

I don't see Sassanid Iran being a lot more enthusiastic about them than Mameluke Egypt - warrior elites hate being replaced. Meanwhile early firearms are a poor counter to horse archers.

 

[Simreeve]

Is metal working really needed, the inventor could go the rocket route.

Or start off by using it purely as an explosive ratherr than a propellant, for undermining enemy fortifications...

Re alchemy, by the way, apparently there was a tradition of this in India too.

You can have grenades as soon as you have workable gunpowder. At its simplest a grenade is just a clay pot filled with gunpowder with a fuse of some sort stuck in.

I seem to recall that the WRG rules for wargaming with miniatures allowed at least one Islamic army-list to include some troops who used staff-slings for launching missiles of this type.

 

[LSCatilina]

Firearms are easy to train people to use, that's the usual argument for why they got popular even when bows still had the upper hand in accuracy and rate of fire.

First firearms were expansive, hazardous regarding use, inefficient except psychological warfare, with a really long reloading, and took a fairly long time to be trained to.

Bows training and fabrication is expansive and took time to be used, but were really really useful on battlefield. Furthermore, they certainly not had more accuracy : see this.

Crossbow were cheaper (while fabrication still wasn't exactly free), took one week or two to be trained with.

Mechanical artillery was based on less technological combining, at first far more efficient, and was already widely present.

It doesn't prevent the appearance of gunpowder weapons, but seriously put in question that someone would see them right after this appearance as an alternative to other weapons.

 

[LSCatilina]

Or start off by using it purely as an explosive ratherr than a propellant, for undermining enemy fortifications...

Not only you would need a big amount of gunpowder (that wasn't exactly cheap) to make a worthwhile hole in a wall, but you have to bury the charge to have a maximum efficiency. In the same time that this operation is made, you have to protect sappers against attacks from defenders (artillery, quick hit-and-run, possible counter-measures such as larger and bigger walls foundations).
Basically making the same that for other siege features that was as efficient (regarding medieval use and quality of gunpowder) such as sape with a cost from gunpowder use that was expansive.

I don't think anyone should have made that, if the same result can be reached with less charges, or from a far range enough to dispense the hazard.

Re alchemy, by the way, apparently there was a tradition of this in India too.

It seems that you had indeed a proto-chemical tradition, but I don't know if it was close to Chinese or Hellenistic (and successors in Muslim and Christian worlds) features? Do you have more knowledge about it?

I seem to recall that the WRG rules for wargaming with miniatures allowed at least one Islamic army-list to include some troops who used staff-slings for launching missiles of this type.

200m of extreme range for a particularly fitting ammunition.
Using it with grenades would certainly limit it and considering that grenades weren't widely used before the XVIII due to technological limitations (cast iron really made them efficient in open battlefied) and that before this date, grenades were essentially inciendary weapons (that aren't the most useful on battlefield, where you can't really control a fire that you'll have with some luck ignited on grass, if it's dry enough), I don't think it could be used this way outside naval and siege warfare.

And even there, I don't think it could replace more ancient feature : gunpowder was expansive to produce. Using it in replacement of bow/crossbow/mechanical artillery would be too costly before some experience, some techniques are understood and assimilated.
And when it would be, it's most certain that weapons with less random results would be preferred, as OTL.

 

[Simreeve]

You need people mixing those ingredients in the first place. That's the problem with pushing it back earlier - were people doing that? Its not a mixture you'd do without the sort of activity that would see alchemy and such practices.

All three ingredients were seen as having [potential] medicinal properties, weren't they? So an apothecary tries combining them...
(That was H. Beam Piper's explanation in his AH novel 'Gunpowder God'/'Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen', anyway, and it sounds reasonably plausible to me...)

Not only you would need a big amount of gunpowder (that wasn't exactly cheap) to make a worthwhile hole in a wall, but you have to bury the charge to have a maximum efficiency.

Undermining walls, with fires set to burn away your tunnel's supporting timbers once your miners were clear, was already a known technique in Hellenistic times... maybe earlier, too, although I'd have to do some checking to be certain. Adding some gunpowder in that situation wouldn't be too much of a change, even if you didn't have a lot of it by modern standards, and considering the levels of resources to which some of the Hellenistic kingdoms had access -- or Rome, or Carthage, for that matter -- I think that at least an occasional "big bang" would probably have been within their means.

 

[Elfwine]

All three ingredients were seen as having [potential] medicinal properties, weren't they? So an apothecary tries combining them...
(That was H. Beam Piper's explanation in his AH novel 'Gunpowder God'/'Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen', anyway, and it sounds reasonably plausible to me...)

That sounds believable to me. I'm just saying that you have to be at a point people are doing such experiments - maybe 600 AD, but I dunno about 600 BC - even if you technically could make it as far back as civilization.

 

[LSCatilina]

Adding some gunpowder in that situation wouldn't be too much of a change, even if you didn't have a lot of it by modern standards, and considering the levels of resources to which some of the Hellenistic kingdoms had access -- or Rome, or Carthage, for that matter -- I think that at least an occasional "big bang" would probably have been within their means.

I don't put in question that sappers could have used gunpowder, but the efficiency of such use : when you can reach the exact same result with other features that took less investment (that cost of gunpowder production being quite prohibitive) no matter you have a boom or a big bang, it's not going to be widely used before gunpowder became a standardized product and that you have enough technichal capacities to make an explosive charge more devastating.

 

[Dom Pedro III]

As some have suggested, the earliest development of gunpowder and the earliest use of guns are two very different things.

I could see gunpowder being used for fireworks and in temples and religious ceremonies. It might remain a novelty for hundreds of years, but presumably people would eventually start applying it in ways that would make military use apparent.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

The Styphon house route of Piper's Lord Kalvan seems an entirely plausible route to me. Doctor monks fiddling with medicinal ingredients, suddenly one batch goes FOOM. Not bang, being unconfined, but foom.

The priesthood uses the discovery to awe peasants, and build their power. A century or two later other uses are discovered/the mixture is refined enough to go boom.

Heck, that may be what happened iotl.

Some doctors experimenting with wdird mixtures is all you really need, and they were doing THAT in ancient egypt, babylonia and china.

So it COULD have been discovered 1000 BC(E), or maybe a millenium earlier.

Not likely, but surely possible.