By Björn Björklund

The Chinese – English Dictionary MDBG defines in English the logographs (word-pictures) in the phrase青铜 Pinyin qīngtóng as meaning “bronze: alloy of青 tin and 铜 copper”. This is indeed the English definition of bronze and it is metallurgically correct.

But if we examine the definitions of the logographs separately we find that although the MDBG does define the logograph 銅 Pinyin tóng as meaning “copper” it defines the logograph 青 Pinyin qīng as meaning “green / blue / black / youth / young (of people)”. [Pinyin is a system of indicating in Roman letters how to pronounce Chinese words.]

In fact the Chinese word for “tin” is 锡 Pinyin xī meaning“tin (chemistry) / to bestow / to confer / to grant”.

Nonetheless the full MDBG definition of 青铜 qīngtóng is “bronze (alloy of copper 銅｜铜and tin 錫｜锡)”. (The logographs to the left of the vertical bars are Simplified; those on the right are Traditional.)

This is peculiar. It is peculiar because the Simplified logograph 錫 and the Traditional logoraph锡, which mean “tin”, are purported by the beginning of this entry in the MDBG to be pronounced as qīng, but they should properly be pronounced as xī.

The MDBG shows 38 different meanings of qing. None of them is “tin”.

But the MDBG defines a different qing, which is 轻 Pinyin qīng, as meaning “light / easy / gentle / soft . . .”.

We may therefore hypothesise that the purported pronunciation qīng is a survivor of a very ancient Pinyin phrase qīngtóng meaning “light copper” (referring to boron) in which the logograph for qīng was 轻 Pinyin qīng meaning “light / easy / gentle / soft . . . ”.

This would imply that the ancient Chinese and the ancient Europeans had access to a common source of knowledge about boron, and it would imply that Atlantis, which had oreichalcum (boron), was on a coast of Eurasia, not on an island in the Atlantic Ocean.

©Björn Björklund 2025