Earliest Possible Invention Of Gunpowder?

I've toyed around with this idea before, but I thought it would be worth examining. What is the earliest point at which gunpowder could be invented, and what might the impact of its invention be on a more "primitive" society? Could the Romans have invented it? The Norse? The Egyptians? The Inca?

Also, some information about where in the world the ingredients would be easily available would help.
 
you need to look at how it originally was invented, some chinese alchemist/doctor trying to discover a medicine to live forever.

what you need is a early start of experimental alchemy, after that it is a matter of chance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder


in the case of the romans, it means a different attitude to practical research, and that change would cause more changes than black powder.
 
I've toyed around with this idea before, but I thought it would be worth examining. What is the earliest point at which gunpowder could be invented, and what might the impact of its invention be on a more "primitive" society? Could the Romans have invented it? The Norse? The Egyptians? The Inca?

Also, some information about where in the world the ingredients would be easily available would help.

The ingredients are everywhere (well sulphur isn't but it is readily obtainable) - nitrates can be obtained using urine and charcoal / carbon is available wherever you have trees.

The Romans could definitely have produced it although it would probably have been a clever Greek. Roman fulleries used urine and sulphur as part of the cleaning process for clothes. Postulate an inquisitive Greek slave and hey presto! Legionaries with grenades!
 
It's a fortuitous and largely accidental thing. It could have been discovered as early as the original Mesopotamian or Indus civilizations. Possibly earlier.

Or potentially as late as seventeenth or eighteenth century Europe.
 
It's a fortuitous and largely accidental thing. It could have been discovered as early as the original Mesopotamian or Indus civilizations. Possibly earlier.

Or potentially as late as seventeenth or eighteenth century Europe.

Well, the Persians had it in 480 B.C... I've seen 300!
 
One documentary I saw claimed that China had a readily available source of nitrates in the form of bat guano. Something to do with how the humidity of southern China was just right so that cave guano broke down to nitrates quickly and yet got to build up without getting quickly washed away. Chinese alchemists were likely working with nitrates for a very long time before they hit upon gunpowder.
 
It ask for a context where chemistry or pre-chemistry is not only a thing, but where it's tied up with cultural features : China benefited from a really good impetus with taoist conceptions on it.

You can rule out every culture without the material possibility of doing such assembles.

Furthermore, it's not enough to discover it, you have to manage to use gunpowder.
Problem with Hellenic scholarship was that inventions were more seen as a way to proove a point than the real objective (when the alchemic result was the objective, while it didn't managed to be the immortality potion).

I think you'll need a context where "engineering" is seen as more than an amusing contraption for "marvel and wonder", as for primitive steam engines.

You'll argue that gunpowder being really useful for siege, and that siege engineering was clearly a thing then, it's not really the same.
But use of gunpowder ask for the readiness of other features, for exemple mettalurgical knowledge advanced enough to make strong enough cannons.
It's why, while probably known since the first Arab-Chinese exchanges in the VIII/IX centuries, gunpowder in Europe didn't became a thing before such technology appeared (or why despite first western gunpowder use was made by Mongols, gunpowder was transmitted trough Arabs eventually)

Summarizing it : for discovering and using gunpowder, you need a society with
1) Scientific establishment both cultural and technological
2) An actual search for something, rather than theorisation for the sake of it
3) Develloped metallurgy
 
The greeks invent it, play with it and then go back to serious business.

The romans look at this toy. Someone notices that packing a handful of this substance in a bag with a fuse makes a jolly good bang... quickly losing some body parts in the process. Since this thing shows potential, it is further investigated for military purposes (romans were superb military engineers).

Eventually, the arrangement is for smaller charges thrown with slings at short range and bigger ones at long range with balistas/cataputs. With the available weapons you can easily throw 1 talent (~26kg) satchel at about 350 meter away (no need of cannons).

The final development is to put create a two layer satchel, with powder inside and rock peebles outside :eek:.
 

Whitewings

Banned
Two small corrections: Black powder doesn't need carbon. It needs partially pyrolyzed cellulose, meaning charcoal. It also doesn't need sulphur, which serves only to lower the mixture's ignition temperature.
 
Two small corrections: Black powder doesn't need carbon. It needs partially pyrolyzed cellulose, meaning charcoal. It also doesn't need sulphur, which serves only to lower the mixture's ignition temperature.

It would work with carbon, charcoal is easier to make.

It would work without sulphur, it is just easier to make with sulphur than without and much less dangerous to handle (don't need to grind it as fine)

And the Op asked about gunpowder specifically.
 
Discussion of China's advantages reminds me of the thread I posted just the other week, supposing a more Daoist China. Since the Daoist alchemical tradition is to thank for gunpowder historically, maybe having Daoism more prominent in China could give us an earlier window.

I just had this very fun idea of the Warring States period ending due to a Daoist state overwhelming their competitors with rocketry.

Nobody would happen to have a map of regions that have good saltpeter resources, would they?
 
Well, the Persians had it in 480 B.C... I've seen 300!

I know you're kidding but as a technical process there's really no reason that it couldn't have been invented that early. All the ingredients are fairly easy to obtain and would have been available to anyone with a bit of money. As everyone else pointed out, its discovery is pretty much a lot of luck and a bit of tinkering.
 
I know you're kidding but as a technical process there's really no reason that it couldn't have been invented that early. All the ingredients are fairly easy to obtain and would have been available to anyone with a bit of money. As everyone else pointed out, its discovery is pretty much a lot of luck and a bit of tinkering.

Which I guess brings about another question (in a similar vein)... would it be possible to NOT have that 'luck' occur, and if so what are the chances of it? Blackpowder/gunpowder made a massive change in the west, but would we still advance technologically as fast without it. what is the critical point in time where our understanding of chemistry means that we cannot avoid the knowledge of explosives (in powder form, as I know we've had liquid explosives forever) and would it necessarily start with blackpowder?
 

iddt3

Donor
The greeks invent it, play with it and then go back to serious business.

The romans look at this toy. Someone notices that packing a handful of this substance in a bag with a fuse makes a jolly good bang... quickly losing some body parts in the process. Since this thing shows potential, it is further investigated for military purposes (romans were superb military engineers).

Eventually, the arrangement is for smaller charges thrown with slings at short range and bigger ones at long range with balistas/cataputs. With the available weapons you can easily throw 1 talent (~26kg) satchel at about 350 meter away (no need of cannons).

The final development is to put create a two layer satchel, with powder inside and rock peebles outside :eek:.
An even bigger use would be mining and road construction. The kinetic energy packed into a few barrels of well placed gunpowder is equal to hundreds of man hours worth of work with a pick.
 
An even bigger use would be mining and road construction. The kinetic energy packed into a few barrels of well placed gunpowder is equal to hundreds of man hours worth of work with a pick.

And yet you need another hundreds man-hours working with a pick (=$$$) to mine the saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal needed to make this barrel of powder.

I'm under the impression that before the invention of smokeless powder, saltpeter was a precious and frequently fought-over resource.
 
I'm under the impression that before the invention of smokeless powder, saltpeter was a precious and frequently fought-over resource.

Yes and no. It's actually fairly common, its just the titanic quantities used that caused the issue. It was considered vital to nations and its production was under a state monopoly in both France and England for a while but up until the 1800s most countries produced enough for their own needs. Manufacture of it became a big if smelly business since it was made of manure and urine. As the use of firearms grew however guano deposits became a major source, mostly from places like California or Chile since it was much cheaper. Lack of access to saltpeter deposits was an expensive problem for a country leading to things like the War of the Pacific but because it can be manufactured in large quantities (basically nitrate farms) and there are other sources like caves and Pacific islands, not an insurmountable one.
 
I take issue with the idea that saltpeter was easy to come by. There were basically two ways to make it. One involves finding bat caves with the right conditions for guano to form nitrate crystals. This raw material requires a refining process using boiling and charcoal purification before you can use it in gunpowder.

The second process involves boiling down buckets of human waste to get a tiny amount of nitrates. There was probably no reason anyone would do this if they weren't looking for a way to make saltpeter in the first place and human waste was easier to source.

In either case saltpeter wasn't readily available and the manufacturing process was not intuitive. But at least working with crystalized bat poop was less disgusting than fresh human waste.
 
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