Excuse me, does the ancient "cow Liu Ma" really exist?
Looking up the history books, the biography of the Three Kingdoms and Zhuge Liang records: "Brightness is better than ingenuity, and gains and losses are even unexpected." "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms and the King" records: "In the nine years of Jianxing, Liang returned to Qishan, transported cattle and returned grain; In the spring of the twelfth year, I learned that the masses were out of the valley. According to Wugong Wuzhangyuan, Sima Wangxuan and Weinan. " It is clearly pointed out in the above records that Liu Ma, a wooden cow, was indeed an invention of Zhuge Liang, and Liu Ma, a wooden cow, were two different tools. In terms of the time sequence of using Liu Ma, there were cows first, then Liu Ma, and Liu Ma was an improved version.
In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Pei Songzhi annotated the History of the Three Kingdoms, quoted the now lost record of Mu Niu Liu Ma in Zhuge Jiliang, described the image of Mu Niu Liu Ma, and recorded some dimensions of Liu Ma. However, because there are no physical objects and characters left to future generations, the understanding of Mu Niu Liu Ma is always rare.
200 years after Zhuge Liang made Mu Niu Liu Ma, it is said that Zu Chongzhi, a scientific genius in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, made Mu Niu Liu Ma. "The Biography of Zu Chongzhi in Southern Qi Dynasty" said: "Zhuge Liang's wooden ox is a horse, not because of Feng Shui, but because of machines, and no manpower is needed." It is hard to understand that he didn't leave any detailed information either.
However, the record of Zu Chongzhi's creation of Cowherd Liu Ma provides evidence for the main point of "automatic machinery" in Cowherd Liu Ma. It is considered that it is very common to manufacture machinery with gears in the Three Kingdoms period, and Liu Ma, a wooden cow admired by later generations, should be an automatic machinery manufactured by using the gear principle.
In Huangsha Town, Mianxian County, Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province, historical records show that this is where Zhuge Liang made wooden cattle and horses. According to textual research, Zhuge Liang used Liu Ma, a cattle herder, three times during the eight-year Northern Expedition. It is from here that Mu Niu Liu Ma walked a 250-kilometer plank road and reached the front line of Wuzhangyuan in Qishan.
The local old man described the legendary wooden ox and flowing horse to us: "The horse's head is made of wood, and then the horse's body is composed of other scattered pieces, and then the horse's legs are assembled." A gear is installed in the middle of the belly, and there is a wrench behind the Trojan horse. When operating, step by step. " As can be seen from this legend, the wooden ox and flowing horse have gears, and it seems that it also uses the lever principle.
Not long ago, Liang, an ordinary rural teacher in Botou, Hebei Province, said that he had found Mu Niu Liu Ma himself and was very successful. Our reporter made a special trip with great interest.
The wooden cattle and horses made by Liang are all wooden machines with four legs and empty hearts, which can carry loads. Press and lift the horse's neck, and the flowing horse will walk with open legs; The wooden cow walks by pressing the back of the shaft. According to Liang, his wooden ox and flowing horse are consistent with historical records in principle: "Wooden ox and flowing horse are alike." There is a long labor-saving arm behind the wooden cow, which is biaxial; The labor-saving arm of a flowing horse is its long neck, which looks like an elephant. More subtly, Liang immediately realized the secret lock on his functional flow. As soon as he twisted his tongue, the horse's head was locked and he couldn't walk, which was very consistent with the description in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
However, Liang's resumption of cattle grazing was opposed by another faction. Guo Qinghua, director of Mianxian Museum in Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province and director of the Three Kingdoms Cultural Research Center in Shaanxi Province, believes that Liu Ma, a cattle herder, can't have four legs: "The plank road is paved with wooden boards, and the gap in the middle is different. How do four legs walk on a cracked board? Even if you walk on a non-plank road, you are climbing, and you need to pull forward and push back. You can't pull or push it with four legs. Therefore, the wooden cow must have wheels. "
Why does Guo Qinghua think that wooden cows and flowing horses should have wheels? This can also be found in historical records. Guo Qinghua believes that Mu Niu Liu Ma should be a four-wheeled vehicle: "In the production method of Mu Niu Liu Ma, when introducing Liu Ma, it is said that Liu Ma has a front axle and a rear axle. Everyone knows that a wheel is a shaft, and a shaft is equipped with two wheels, so I think it should be four wheels. "
Does a wooden ox have wheels or four legs? There are the following written records in the Northern Song Dynasty: "There is a small car in Shu, which pushes eight stones alone and looks like a bull's head in front; There is also a cart with four people pushing it and carrying ten stones. "In the Song Dynasty, Gao Cheng's book" The Origin of Things "also recorded:" The wooden ox has a front axle today; This horse is the only pusher today. Lin Qing, a Manchu water conservancy expert in the Qing Dynasty, also said that the earth truck used in water conservancy projects at that time was the wooden ox and flowing horse recorded in Chen Shidao: "Earth truck, single wheel, looking for earth to fill, carrying barnyard grass. Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of Shu, went to war and began to build wooden cows and horses to transport salaries. Today, the earth truck pushes alone, and Ge's legacy still exists. "Cattle herding is a wheelbarrow with a front axle, and Liu Ma is a wheelbarrow without a front axle, which is also a main point about cattle herding Liu Ma. But even the records of the Song Dynasty are more than those of the Three Kingdoms period 1000 years. How credible is this view?
Feng, a professor at Tsinghua University Institute of Ancient Literature, believes that Mu Niu is basically a wheelbarrow, because it is most likely to be a wheelbarrow based on a comprehensive analysis of various historical materials and documents.
In order to find out the situation of the plank road during the Three Kingdoms period, we came to the mouth of Baodi Valley, which is the starting point of Baodi Inclined Plank Road. Located 20 kilometers north of Hanzhong, 1700 years ago, Zhuge Liang's wooden cattle and horses started from here and transported grain and grass to the front.
Surprisingly, the ancient plank road was very gentle and not steep. It turns out that the ancients were very clever in driving ramps. They chose the slowest road in the Qinling Mountains, climbed up the mountain unconsciously, and then descended effortlessly. On such a road, the efficiency of a quadruped machine is not as good as that of a wheel, so the wooden cow at that time was unlikely to be a quadruped mobile machine, and the possibility of a four-wheeled vehicle was even smaller, because it was more difficult for a four-wheeled vehicle to be used as a steering control, and even on the flat ground, the four-wheeled vehicle was not very flexible in turning, so it was even more impossible to put it under that special condition.
From the analysis of the plank road, it seems that only unicycle is most likely to be a wooden cow in history. Some people may ask, if Liu Ma, a cattle herder, is a unicycle, then it is recorded that a cattle herder has one foot and four feet. How can this quadruped be embodied in a unicycle? Also, how to explain the names of some parts including hidden organs?
Recently, Kang Hong, an Australian scholar, put forward a new explanation for cow Liu Ma. It is considered that Liu Ma is a winch cableway system driven by a gear set. In the deep mountains of Yunnan-Guichuan, similar systems are still in use.
His research mainly solved the problem of "doing" in Historical Records. According to ancient records, "A wooden ox has a square belly, a bent head and four feet ..... dozens of miles for special travelers and twenty miles for group travelers." ..... People walk six feet, and cows walk four steps. Twenty miles a day, people don't work hard. Based on this description, the traditional view is that Mu Niu Liu Ma should be a vehicle similar to Mu Niu Liu Ma. You can walk 20 miles a day. Because the level of science and technology two thousand years ago could not have produced such a level of transportation, it is generally considered that this is just a legend. The reason for this misjudgment is the misunderstanding of whether the subject who walks 20 miles a day is a man or a wooden cow. Linking "walking twenty miles a day, but people don't work hard", we can clearly understand that "walking twenty miles a day" is a person-the person pushing the winch, and Mu Niu didn't go at all.
This new study first raises a question: Liu Ma is so easy to use, and they should be popularized and circulated. However, Liu Ma, a cattle herder, was not popularized by the public, and even Zhuge Liang did not often use Liu Ma, a cattle herder, in all places at that time. This shows that the use of wooden cattle and flowing horses has considerable limitations. By analyzing Zhuge Liang's use of Mu Niu Liu Ma, it can be preliminarily concluded that this limitation is mainly manifested in the regional environment. Shu Han is located in today's Sichuan, with rugged roads, mostly Panshan Highway. It is far and difficult to take Panshan Highway between the mountains not far away in a straight line, so it is undoubtedly a quick and convenient way to set up winches and ropeways. At present, the ropeway in Sichuan and Yunnan mountainous areas is still the main means of transportation, and the mountain people have to rely on it to go to the market. Winch ropeway can't be widely used in other areas, so cattle herding Liu Ma has not been popularized. Before leaving Qishan, Zhuge Liang had already conquered Menghuo in the south, and he should have heard about the ropeway widely used in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. According to its function, Cowherd Liu Ma should be a winch and cableway driven by variable speed bevel gear set or worm and turbine. The winch needs to be stable. So make it in the shape of a cow to show its firmness. The bucket on the ropeway needs to be light and fast, so it is made into the shape of a horse to show its agility. It is also possible that herding cattle is a heavy conveyor, a winch and a cableway, and Liu Ma is a light conveyor and a simple cableway. This structure is only suitable for mountainous areas with inconvenient traffic, not for traffic in plain areas, so it cannot be widely popularized.
According to the records in Zhuge Liang Ji, the type of wooden cow is: "The wooden cow has a square belly, a curved head, four legs, a head in the middle and a tongue in the abdomen. Mention more and do less, so be useful, not small; Special travel is dozens of miles, and group travel is twenty miles. The machete is a cow's head, two are cow's feet, the horizontal one is a cow's collar, and the turn is full. The cover is a cow's back, the square one is a cow's belly, the tongue is hung, the machete is a cow's gang, the carving knife is a cow's tooth, the vertical one is a cow's horn, and the thin one is a cow's martingale. The photographer is a cow's whip shaft. Cattle head up, six steps, cattle four steps. It's not hard to walk twenty miles a day with one-year-old grain. " Based on this, the structural analysis of the wooden bull in the history books is as follows: the square belly is the frame of the winch, the curved head refers to the shaft head at the upper end of the winch, the foot refers to the movable device, the foot refers to the movable wheel body, the quadruped refers to the four columns of the winch, and the leader leads the heart means that there is a protective cover or ring outside the upper shaft head to prevent sand from entering the shaft head. "Tongue in abdomen" means that the inspection key is in the frame. "Too much load and less travel" means that the speed will slow down when the load is too much (this is attached to the principle of mechanics, and the force is inversely proportional to the distance under the same power). "It's better to use it in large quantities than in small quantities", because the erection of winch ropeway is a big project and must be used in large quantities, and the wooden ox ropeway cannot be erected just to transport some grain. "The special tour is dozens of miles, and the group tour is twenty miles." The "special traveler" and "group traveler" here refer to the person who pushes the winch, not the wooden cow. "Trekker" refers to one person pushing. Because of the small thrust, it is necessary to increase the diameter of the driving wheel, thus increasing the distance (tens of miles). Many pedestrians are stronger and can reduce the distance. Pay attention to "a group of walkers travels 20 miles" and "people take six steps and cows take four steps". Carrying grain for a year and walking 20 miles a day is consistent. This is the workload of the soldiers pushing the winch in a day. This also shows that Mu Niu may have used a set of bevel gears, similar to the gearbox of the current car, which increases the distance when people push less and decreases the distance when people push more. "The bender is a cow's head and both are cow's feet" is a concave wheel, including a drum and two side baffles. This is the same as the existing winch. It can run in both directions, and the ropeway runs along the upper and lower grooves of the concave wheel. The horizontal axle bearing bush and axle seat should be the bevel gear set, the cover should be the ox back, the square one should be the ox belly (underframe), and the hanging one should be the ox tongue (Xiao Jian hangs by gravity), "The bender is an ox helper (the bent handle is similar to the handle of the current automobile gearbox)" and "the carver is an ox tooth" (the toothed anti-retreat wheel matched with the ox tongue, and the ox teeth may also be a group. "The upright person is a horn" may be a vertical tube protruding from the back of a cow, such as a hollow one, which can be understood as a lubricating device for oiling, "the thin person is a bull martingale", "the photographer is a bull whip shaft", the cow lifts two shafts (the two push rods of the winch are now cross-shaped), and the wooden cow may use two parallel push rods, or both ends of one push rod pass through the central shaft hole. Another possibility is that "the cow has two shafts on its back", which means that the wooden cow has two shafts, which are used to fix the wooden cow to other fixtures, such as trees and stones. Today's winches are also used for two-point fixing. The key is the sentence "A pedestrian walks six feet, and a cow walks four steps". In the past, researchers thought that "cow walking" was cow walking, but it was not. Its original intention is: the person pushing the winch walks six feet, and the shaft of the wooden cow turns four times. It is also possible that there are teeth on the wheels, like a toothed disc on a bicycle to block the ropeway from slipping. "People take six steps, cows take four steps" means that the person pushing the winch turns four teeth every six steps. "Carrying one-year-old grain" (150-200 kg) and "walking 20 miles a day" mean that people who push winches walk 20 miles a day, not wooden cows, so people don't work hard.
To sum up, herding cattle is a kind of heavy transportation tool, which is a combination of winch and cableway. Its core part is a group of bevel gear transmission devices that transform horizontally driven winch into vertical rotation. Cattle head, ox foot, ox collar, foot, ox tongue, ox gang, ox tooth, ox horn, ox martingale, ox whip shaft and double shaft are all components of the complete set of equipment from power to transmission, work, braking and lubrication of wooden cattle. The foot of the cow is the base, the belly of the cow is the body, the back of the cow is the hood, and the food bag is hung on the ropeway for the height difference between the two mountains. In the novel, the tongue of Sima Yi's wooden ox and flowing horse can't move after it is turned over, because the tongue is an anti-retreat device, and when it is turned to the other side along its axis, it becomes an anti-entry device. At this time, the winch can only be pushed in the reverse direction, but not in the forward direction. In fact, its function is to transport the goods here to another place, turn the ox tongue to the front, transport the goods there here, and turn the ox tongue to the opposite side. Because Sima Yi didn't know this function, she couldn't push it after she turned it over.
Understand the wooden cow, it is easy to understand the horse. The introduction of Trojan horse in history books is actually a wooden box with grain hanging on a cableway. It can be understood as a ropeway device that slides from one height to the bottom by gravity under the condition of large height difference, and of course it can also be understood as a device. Liu Ma is a grain loading tool matched with cattle grazing. Because it is more complicated to make wooden ox, the history books mainly introduce its parts structure, while flowing horse is relatively simple, so only its manufacturing dimensions are listed in detail.
According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, in the ninth year of Jianxing, Liang returned to Qishan to transport grain with wooden cows and retreat ... In the spring of the twelfth year, Liang learned that many people had left the oblique valley (another road) to transport horses. According to the martial arts Wuzhangyuan, he and Sima were Weinan. "We can understand that before the route out of Qishan, the distance between mountains was small, so we used wooden cows. After three years, we went out of the inclined valley and the distance between mountains was large, so we used flowing horses.
If Liu Ma can be regarded as a gear-driven winch cableway system, it will be another great invention of China. Two thousand years ago, China had a gear transmission device and a relatively complete transportation machinery system. (Figure omitted)
"Cowherd Liu Ma" may break the conventional rules:
As we all know, the wooden ox and flowing horse in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has always been a mystery and has fascinated countless people. At that time, the production conditions were poor, far less than modern ones, but the structure of "cow Liu Ma" seemed simple and feasible, which was also in line with the situation at that time. If Cow Liu Ma had been written wonderfully at that time, we might have abandoned it as a myth, but just because the book was written in line with the situation at that time, we can't help but doubt that there might really be A Mu Cow Liu Ma at that time. However, with a long history, the drama of the novel makes us somewhat helpless.
At present, if the "wooden ox and flowing horse" can really walk without eating or drinking as described in the book, it obviously does not conform to the law of conservation of energy in science. Because if "cow Liu Ma" wants to walk, it will definitely consume energy. At that time, there must be no energy substances such as oil and natural gas. It doesn't eat or drink. Where did it get its energy? This is a question worth thinking about. If we want to create the kind of wooden cow described in the novel, we must abandon the current law of "conservation of energy". Similarly, creating a "wooden ox and a flowing horse" will certainly break the law of "conservation of energy" that has influenced our generations, and it must be a story that attracts worldwide attention. There are countless mysteries in history that need us to solve. This may just be a fictional object, but no one can deny its existence until the mystery is solved.