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Does ancient Asia have the most inventions we still use today?

This is a very difficult question to answer as there have been so many inventions!

old wooden map of asia

13 December 2021

Ancient Asia certainly came up with some very important inventions which are still used today. China is noted for having invented gunpowder, the printing press, paper and the magnetic compass all of which are still in use, in modernised forms today.

 In the West we focus on those four because we learnt them from the Chinese around the sixteenth century and they had a significant effect on the West at the time.
Actually the Chinese came up with many more inventions, in making metals such as copper and iron, using coal and oil, bridge making, farm machinery, farm irrigation, harnessing animals and the production of porcelain, silk and wine.

Chinese medicine used aspirin made from tree bark long before the West synthesised the chemical, salycyclic acid, and had many effective herbal medicines where we use synthesised versions today. We must not forget either that Asia is a very big place and that ancient India came up with the idea of zero and had the first symbol for zero in mathematics. 

Whether that is more than anyone else is difficult to say, but certainly there were a great number of important inventions to come out of Ancient Asia