List of Chinese discoveries

Aside from many original inventions, the Chinese were also early original pioneers in the discovery of natural phenomena which can be found in the human body, the environment of the world, and the immediate Solar System.

They also discovered many concepts in mathematics.

The list below contains discoveries which found their origins in China.

Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) paintings on tile of Chinese guardian spirits representing 11 pm to 1 am (left) and 5 am to 7 am (right); the ancient Chinese, although discussing it in supernatural terms, acknowledged circadian rhythm within the human body

Each bronze bell of Marquis Yi of Zeng (433 BC) bears an inscription describing the specific note it plays, its position on a 12-note scale , and how this scale differed from scales used by other Chinese states of the time; before this discovery in 1978, the oldest known surviving Chinese tuning set came from a 3rd-century BC text (which alleges was written by Guan Zhong , d. 645 BC) with five tones and additions or subtractions of ⅓ of successive tone values which produce the rising fourths and falling fifths of Pythagorean tuning . ^{[

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Aware of underground minerals associated with certain plants by at least the 5th century BC, the Chinese extracted trace elements of copper from Oxalis corniculata , pictured here, as written in the 1421 text Precious Secrets of the Realm of the King of Xin .

Bamboo and rocks by Li Kan (1244–1320); using evidence of fossilized bamboo found in a dry northern climate zone, Shen Kuo hypothesized that climates naturally shifted geographically over time .

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi tends to a leper; the Chinese were the first to describe the symptoms of leprosy .

Iron plate with an order 6 magic square in Eastern Arabic numerals from China, dating to the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).

With the description in Han Ying's written work of 135 BC ( Han dynasty ), the Chinese were the first to observe that snowflakes had a hexagonal structure.

Oiled garments left in the tomb of Emperor Zhenzong of Song (r. 997–1022), pictured here in this portrait, caught fire seemingly at random, a case which a 13th-century author related back to the spontaneous combustion described by Zhang Hua (232–300) around 290 AD