What place invented the earliest military sand table models

According to "Hou Han Shu - Ma Yuan Liezhuan", in 32 A.D., Liu Xiu, Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty, wanted to conquer P'aoi in Longxi (the area of present-day eastern Gansu). However, he did not know much about the terrain of the northwest region and the deployment of Pahui's troops, so Emperor Guangwu looked for Ma Yuan to learn more about it. Ma Yuan was originally a subordinate of Kui hu, who was successfully turned by Liu Xiu and put under his command. Ma Yuan is very familiar with the geography of the Longxi area, but so big Northwest, not a sentence or two can say clearly, said half a day, Emperor Guangwu did not understand. Ma Yan was very anxious, after returning home, he called his staff to discuss how to make Emperor Guangwu understand, but no one thought of a good way.

The next day, Ma Yuan woke up early to practice his sword, and happened to see a group of children piling up sand, one by one, sandbags are scattered everywhere, with sticks inserted on top of them, as if they were a military camp. Ma Yuan immediately felt a bright spot, he immediately went home, let the attendants clean out the east room, let people find a board, and then brought a few bags of sand and soil poured on the board, and then by memory let the attendants began to pile up the sand heap, and with a bamboo plate engraved with the words inserted in the sand heap, marking the military deployment of Kui. Three days later, a model similar to the field terrain was made. Ma Yuan invited Emperor Guangwu to his home and answered his questions in front of the model. Emperor Guangwu understood this time, and was very happy to say to Kui Xiang: "The enemy is all in my eyes now! This thing is good, what is it called?" Ma Yuan was at a loss for words and asked Emperor Guangwu to give it a name. Emperor Guangwu pondered for a while, then said to Ma Yuan, "This is a big wooden plate filled with sand, let's call it Sand Plate." Ma Yuan hastened to call it a good name.

More than seventeen hundred years later, in 1811, the King of Prussia's military adviser, von Leiswitz, used the same method to introduce the battlefield to Wilhelm III, except that his sand tray was a great improvement over Ma Yuan's, and it was a standardized, realistic miniature model of the battlefield. First of all, an elaborate model of the battlefield with a scale of 1:2,373 was made of collodion, and the layout of the model was not far from the real battlefield situation. Once again, this model not only has hillocks, but also represents roads, rivers, villages and woods in various colors. Finally, there are also small ceramic blocks to mark out the army deployments and weaponry.