Gunpowder
Alchemists seeking an elixir of immortality find the opposite.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 150 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Chinese alchemists experimenting with saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal document explosive mixtures by the ninth century — a treatise warns of the danger, which implies people were already burning their beards off. Military use follows within a century: fire lances, bombs, rockets, and by the thirteenth century metal-barrelled guns. It reaches the Islamic world and Europe in the 1200s and ends the military value of stone walls within two hundred years.