USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Chinese Hit List

Ice cream, ketchup, noodles, matches, toilet paper, paper money, paper cups, playing cards,  golf, playing cards, dominoes, checkers,collapsible umbrellas, first printed book ( the diamond sutra), oil drilling, rockets, parachutes, 950AD

machine guns - and the Leonardo da Vinci

drawings of gear wheels,  (according to Menzies).

I have second thoughts on paper.  A lot of scholars give the Chinese credit for that one but by 3000 BC the Africans were using papyrus to make an item to write on. 

Cai Lun, three thousand years later simply diversified the raw material  for making this by adding cloth to the  plant based mix. Even so the paper industry was born hence the Chinese paper cup and paper money and even paper dolls and paper dresses.

One interesting quote I found  while cross checking Menzies stands out for me.This is a statement by Abu Zad al- Sirafi in the 10th century:

"The Chinese are unhygienic and do not wash their backsides with water after defecating but merely wipe themselves with Chinese paper."

I  absolutely  ❤️ history.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association