"Family Collection" continues to pay attention to the special program "Follow the Cultural Relics to See the Past and Present", and the "Quanzhou Maritime Archaeological Harvest Achievement Exhibition" is being held at the Fuzhou Museum, with 122 sets of cultural relics and more than 200 pictures provided by the Quanzhou Museum. Through this exhibition, everyone can better understand the cultural relics of underwater archaeology. Today, let's take a look at a red lacquered square compass from the Qing Dynasty.
The copper compass, with a square lacquer box as the base, and the classic shape of the outer square and the inner circle, can be said to be very in line with the ancients' idea of "the sky is round and the place is round".
The compass is a special instrument for geography and is also used for feng shui detection. There are two kinds of compasses, one is called water compass and the other is called dry compass, so what is the difference between them?
Han Jing, a docent of Fuzhou Museum, introduced that the water compass is a kind of compass that floats a magnetic needle on the water surface for a guide, while the dry compass is a central axis supported magnetic needle, and its hexagram is very complicated, which is more suitable for the interpretation of metaphysical feng shui. However, navigation is practical, so after the dry compass is simplified, only a circle of needles composed of heavenly stems and earthly branches is retained, which is convenient for intuitive navigation, and gradually evolved into a nautical compass.
With the development of the Maritime Silk Road, the water compass for navigation has also been continuously improved, and it is much smaller than the dry compass just by looking at the size, so that it is more convenient for sailors to carry with them when they go to sea.
The nautical compass is of great significance in navigation, not only because it can escort the sea navigation, but also because after it is used for navigation, the route can be relatively fixed, and the navigation area can be expanded, which is crucial for the accumulation of navigation experience and the development of navigation technology in later generations.