[Sca-cooks] OT: Gunpowder, not Noodles/Pasta

[James Prescott]

At 07:27 -0400 2001-08-06, johnna holloway wrote:

> I suspect that there is a solid reason why the 1240 something dates
> come up, and it maybe that there are Vatican records. Another
> research angle would be to run this question from the other end
> and go through the Chinese tech/sci lit that's now available in
> English and see what that says.

That line of investigation had occured to me.

A check of the indexes in the 5 volumes of C. Ronin's condensation
of J. Needham's _Science and Civilisation in China_ revealed nothing
specific from Needham's point of view about how gunpowder might have
made its way to the West.

Thorvald