There are links on all aspects of life and it is also possible to establish a connection between the fourth century in China and cast iron guttering to follow.
So many discoveries and inventions of people seem to come from the East, but that does not apply to cultures that have come and gone at the same time and had to trace. Then there is a region of Mesopotamia to the east and south of Turkey and Syria and also part of several other modern European countries. Almost every yeararchaeologists find the oldest of some item or other known to man. Last year it was a five thousand year old wine press in this part of the East and that is now recognised as the earliest example of a press to have ever been discovered in any part of the world.
In South America whole civilisations have come and gone and there may have been inventions by these people which we shall never know of. In today's world if something is discovered or invented then thanks to modern communication through television and in particular the internet we all know about it within minutes.
The point here is to give a specific example of something we consider a basic metal which was being used to make plough sheers in the fourth century in China but which was something unheard of for another one thousand years in Europe.
In Britain we are taught one of the great evolutionary passages of history was the discovery of iron making. This period known as the Iron Age was a turning point and brought the country out of a period known as the Dark Age. The Dark Age really means there was so little going on that there is not much to say about it. You would have thought that with a thousand year jump on us in something as useful as iron the Chinese would logically now have office tower blocks on Mars.
Finally we understood the wonders of iron and built the world's first all iron bridge and the first iron ship. It became logical to make cast iron guttering for all the great houses in the cities and in the country. On these cast iron gutters it became the fashion to emboss your coat of arms at the top of each downpipe.
Walk through a city like London and look closely at the cast iron guttering on some of the great Georgian and Victorian buildings and you can almost feel the history around you as you decipher the heraldic crests.
Iron gutters are still used today by anyone who wants a professional solid look to the outside of the house. Architectural reclamation yards are always hosts to people looking for that special bit of historical downpipe to complete the look on their country pile.
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