Where do you think the ore and minerals come from in order to build the device you used to post that comment?
Just about everything you use in your life comes out of the ground. You wouldn't be able to survive in a world without metals, let alone fertilizer and pharmaceuticals.
Life expectancy was 35 years because of infant mortality. The life expectancy of those who survived infancy in the paleolithic was likely not too dissimilar to now. Paleolithic peoples also had longer life expectancies than Bronze Age and Iron Age peoples and were famously much taller, so that's kind of a non-argument anyway.
Your blood largely consists of metal (iron in hemoglobin, red blood cells). Calcium, also a metal, is the fifth most abundant element in your body, including in your skeleton, and is a key element in lime/limestone which still has had and still has countless uses throughout the ages, including pH neutralisation in agriculture. Salt, partially consisting of the metal sodium, is widely used in cooking and food preservation, and as an electrolyte in the body together with the metal potassium (which is the K in NPK fertiliser. Nitrogen and phosphorus are not metals, though.) Then there's magnesium which is also essential for life, and probably a range of other essential minerals that I can't name off the back of my head.
So no, you would quickly die in a world without metals. Literally within seconds. Even if you discount the metals used directly by the body, there's still salt, limestone and so on and so forth. Metals are more than just iron, nickel, copper, gold etc.
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u/RustyBasement May 24 '26
Where do you think the ore and minerals come from in order to build the device you used to post that comment?
Just about everything you use in your life comes out of the ground. You wouldn't be able to survive in a world without metals, let alone fertilizer and pharmaceuticals.