Chemical formulas on a more than 2,000-year-old Chinese text have become a lot clearer. The six formulas for bronze turn out to be pre-made alloys rather than pure metals, says Antiquity.

For a long time, there was some confusion among researchers about two components in the chemical formulas for bronze from the Rites of Zhou text from the late Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-221 BC). They are Jin (金) and Xi (锡). It was thought that Jin stood for copper, a copper alloy or simply metal, and Xi for tin, but exactly what they mean remained unclear. Mark Pollard (Oxford University) and Ruiliang Liu (British Museum) express their suspicion that Jin and Xi are alloys, which formed the basis for the bronze.