Replace weapons with jade and silk.
Huainanzi
In October 2012 an amazing discovery has been made by the archaeological team for rescuing excavation of a graveyard of the Western Han Dynasty discovered during the construction of the Chengdu metro, from where, 4 wooden tombs were cleaned and large number of lacquer wares, potteries, bronze wares and iron wares were unearthed, including over 50 inscribed wooden tablets, over 920 bamboo slips, a lacquered medical portrait with meridians, and four bamboo miniature loom models. These wooden looms seem to be the first semi-automated looms in the world.
The tombs are dated around 150 BC, when China was ruled by the Han Dynasty (202 BC to 220 AD). The models and tools from the tomb are similar to those shown in the Tiangong Kaiwu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature), an encyclopedia on techniques compiled in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
The Loom of Laoguanshan Han was used for Shu brocade. Shu Jin (Shu brocade) began to appear in the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.), and brocade-making techniques reached high levels during the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when the brocade became popular among the high class. Shu brocade was sold not only in China, but along the Silk Road.
The four models of the hook-shaft pattern loom were constructed of wood and bamboo and discovered at the bottom of a wooden coffin, along with remnants of silk threads and dyes. The largest of the four looms measures H.50 x L.70 x W.20 cm. The other three are smaller, around H.45 x L.60 x W.15 cm. Moreover, there were 15 painted wooden figurines (four male weavers in the tomb were sitting on looms to work, while the eleven female wooden figurines represented the preparatory work), which—as indicated by their postures and accompanying inscriptions—may be representations of workers at a weaving workshop where Sichuan jin silks were produced.
It took several years for researchers to understand how the loom functioned fully, but in 2018, a working model was created by the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou. For a meter of brocade, the silk has to be threaded over 100000 times. The loom can be operated by only one weaver. The machine is about four meters long, but even an experienced worker could only weave 13 centimeters of brocade per day, although the use of foot pedals freed the weaver’s hands, significantly improving efficiency.
The Han looms belong to the multi-healds hooked type, which was the pinnacle of Han Dynasty textile technology. The loom weaves the warp and weft yarns in a mechanical way to form the shed, in which the warp yarns are composed of two layers, one layer lifts, and the other layer presses down, allowing the weft yarn to pass through to form the fabric. To create intricate designs, the pattern loom must accurately lift the corresponding warp yarns according to the rules and then weave in the corresponding weft yarns. Depending on the design of the fabric, the structure of the shedding is sometimes a ratio of one upper warp yarn to four lower warp yarns or a ratio of one to five. This requires the loom to have certain smart mechanical functions to complete this complex operation. When dealing with intricate designs, the shedding process can be very complicated and challenging to execute. It is also extremely difficult to remember the complex shedding information. Multiple devices, therefore, are installed to store this information, allowing for the recycling of the shedding memory (similar to computer programming). The operations can be repeated without the need to restart each time. This technique is undoubtedly one of the most challenging aspects of brocade weaving. The design is stored on the releasable device, which consists of multiple head frames, the main components for forming patterns in the fabric. The weaver controls the selection of the heald through sliders, picking the desired frame by hooks, which is of a complex structure and smart function. Thus, it can produce high-quality brocade.
The Han looms offered the first physical evidence for the advanced pattern-weaving technology previously only known through ancient texts and excavated silk fragments. They revealed a sophisticated multi-shaft, treadle-operated loom design with a hook-beam system for pattern selection, a technology that appeared in the West over a millennium and a half later (see Jacquard loom).