China is home to some of the most significant inventions of the human civilization, including the four great inventions of ancient China: paper, the compass, gunpowder and printing (as woodcuts, and font). The list below contains these and other inventions which first appeared in China. It does not include technology, invented in other countries and embedded in the Chinese cultural sphere as a result of contacts, such as a windmill with the Islamic Middle East or a telescope of Europe of New time. He also does not include technologies that were originally invented elsewhere, but were later переизобретены Chinese in its own capacity, as, for example, the chain pump or odometer. Because there is no evidence that the Chinese first invented writing, or calendar, inventions such as the Chinese and the Chinese calendar, is also not mentioned in this list. For the same reason were not included in the list of Chinese Opera, Chinese mathematics and Chinese architecture. Not in the list and Chinese discoveries in the field of natural phenomena, made in the study of the human body, other biological organisms or made with the study of the environment and the solar system.