Comment by gradschoolfail

Yepp! Never read Guns,Germs&Steel, but premodern China never really had decentralized steelworking. a cursory google shows that the mongolian words for steel and iron are similar to the ones in Chinese, my conjecture is that the chinese words are actually loaned from a barbarian culture not the other way round.. (genghis khan probably came from a smithy family btw) Maybe this is why the post roman west has always been quicker to adopt bottom-uppitism instead of elitism. it runs in the families..