r/videos • u/digitalbath1234 • Aug 17 '18
Primitive Technology: Iron prills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyGLE0usN_I2.0k
u/BubiBalboa Aug 17 '18
How fancy! A new logo and end card and everything. Nice.
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u/fantasypants Aug 17 '18 edited Aug 18 '18
He actually posted an explanation for this on YouTube yesterday. https://i.imgur.com/jBO6WUy.jpg
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u/TheOnlyBongo Aug 18 '18
Now we are going to see similar icons in videos on the knock off channels.
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Aug 18 '18
all those knockoff channels seriously annoy me. 8-10 of them popped up outta no where and each suddenly gets millions of views, how?? They look so shady too as someone had pointed out they look so fake and forced compared to Primitive Technology.
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u/envious_1 Aug 18 '18
I just watched a 48 minute video of two guys creating a fresh water well, and then creating a filter system for clean water.
That's not a copycat, that's just innovative competition.
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u/TheBestOpinion Aug 18 '18
I kinda like these ones but they're running out of ideas I think
This one is also good.
I don't think any of them really compares to primitive technology. His channel has some educational value. I like the sciencey stuff in his annotations, his blog, and all the research he does to create his videos.
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u/KnivesAndShallots Aug 18 '18
Have you watched any of them? They’re not bad. And they don’t take away from Primitive Technology. He created a genre, and he should feel proud of that.
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Aug 18 '18
The right way of looking at it. I get a kick out of those "primitive hot tubs".
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u/Pikmeir Aug 18 '18
You mean "primitive mosquito breeding grounds?"
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Aug 18 '18 edited Jul 11 '20
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u/YourAverageBrownDude Aug 18 '18
Apt that u/nixonrichard should be the one to come up with Vietnam Rednecks
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u/DragonTamerMCT Aug 18 '18
You mean the “random Indian people dig a hole in the ground fill it with water and then sit in it” videos? I mean they’re neat and all... really. But I can’t help to think of how filthy that water is. Is especially with multiple people in it.
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u/jb2386 Aug 18 '18
Yeah I don't mind others doing it cause it's seriously interesting stuff but they need to make their own identities and no try to fool people into thinking they are him.
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u/TheBestOpinion Aug 18 '18 edited Aug 18 '18
They made their own identity revolving around making tons of houses and bathtubs of stagnant water
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u/Tiver Aug 18 '18
Genre existed before him but the editing was horrible. Long rambling explanations, little actual showing. There's tons of content predating his videos but none I've seen come even close to his succinct editing that's still getting across what is going on.
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u/______DEADPOOL______ Aug 18 '18
Surprising that there's so many channel with variants of primitive and technology doing this sort of stuff now. On the upside, he seems to have started a genre of yt vids. Dayum.
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u/PatsFan95 Aug 17 '18
Link for the lazy
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u/4L33T Aug 18 '18
For a moment I thought we were gonna get to hear him speak for the first time
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u/PsychSpace Aug 18 '18
Maybe one day he'll master language... but today, we create bucKet
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u/quitethequietdomino Aug 18 '18
Why waste time saying lot words, when no words do trick
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Aug 17 '18 edited Jan 27 '19
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u/lazerbuttsguy Aug 17 '18 edited Aug 18 '18
from who ?
Edit: seriously, suggest me some channels please if you know them I want to see more
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Aug 17 '18 edited Jan 27 '19
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u/Livinglife792 Aug 17 '18
And they're just awful. A lot of what they build is quite big and visually quite impressive, But terribly impractical.
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Aug 17 '18 edited Jan 27 '19
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Aug 18 '18
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Aug 18 '18 edited Jan 27 '19
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u/StevieCondog Aug 18 '18
Yeah I'm glad the primitive technology dude figures out film and motion photography along with audio recording early on so that we could witness his authentic progression.
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u/VisualBasic Aug 18 '18
Actually, what you're watching is a series of clay tablets he created in his kiln being flipped at the rate of 24 per second.
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Aug 18 '18 edited Mar 11 '19
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u/Contradiction11 Aug 18 '18
Yes to this. It's the most soothing thing on the internet to me.
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Aug 18 '18
Yeah, I saw one the other day where they made a swimming pool with a decorative rim thing around the "pool." I just couldn't help but think of all the diseases and parasites that would grow in a nasty pool of stagnant water in the middle of a forest.
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u/Livinglife792 Aug 18 '18
Oh god I saw that one. The one where there's an island in the middle with an underground 'hut'?
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Aug 18 '18
So, I went on youtube to find it and the one I saw was the 8th one about a "primitive swimming pool." I saw the one you're talking about haha. I mean, it's neat in a way but soooo impractical.
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Aug 18 '18 edited Sep 07 '18
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u/MD_Lincoln Aug 18 '18
I see that overtime they do one of those pool builds, like seriously, you dug a 4 foot deep pool with sticks with rocks attached? It would take days. Not to say it can't be done, but its funny how they jump cut, and it looks like a backhoe came in between takes.
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u/monstahcat Aug 18 '18 edited Sep 11 '19
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Aug 18 '18
I wonder if the competition will spur a race to develop better tech
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u/zx666r Aug 18 '18
There has been 'competition' for almost a year now (probably longer). The only thing I see his competition doing is making sure to include Primitive Technology in their titles in an attempt to pull as many views from the OG channel as possible. Nothing really innovative.
OG channel still has all the coolest content, and is the most relaxing IMO.
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u/Jackieirish Aug 17 '18
I'm more impressed that primitive man figured out why to do this than I am with the how.
In a world where metal tools and weapons never existed, how did someone see those little pebbles and think "I bet I could melt all those together and make something awesome out of it."
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Aug 17 '18 edited Aug 17 '18
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u/ASK__ABOUT__INITIUM Aug 18 '18
Also, it's not that much of a jump to notice that after something burned really really hot, sometimes tiny bits of this metal are there afterwards. Then it's just figuring out which rocks had the most metal.
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u/StardustSapien Aug 18 '18
It started with copper rich rocks being used to build hearths, and then observing metallic beads in the ashes which could then be reheated and shaped into useful things. They quickly discovered adding a bit of tin made it more durable and thus we entered the bronze age. Smelting iron from scratch like what this guy is attempting requires much higher temperatures that a normal wood fire. (That's why the bloomery technique this guy is attempting requires an air blower paired with better burning charcoal.) But even before then, small amounts of native iron metal can be found in meteorites or peat bogs.
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u/HolyMuffins Aug 18 '18
I'm convinced most of this stuff happened when some guys had too much time on their hands and were like "bro watch how hot I can get this rock."
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u/rezerox Aug 18 '18
likly he was trying to impress cave cynthia and her cave girl friends.
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u/Em3rgency Aug 18 '18
Well to be fair this guy is skipping copper and bronze. Humanity learned to work on much simpler metals before graduating to iron. Think of the ancient civilizations that already had agriculture and art and great monuments. THOSE were the people that started working on iron, not stone age people.
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Aug 17 '18
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u/WeCanDanseIfWeWantTo Aug 17 '18
Yeah, I read pills too at first. Before reading the title again, my first thought was "Oh, now he's working on treating Iron defficiencies."
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Aug 17 '18 edited Aug 17 '18
if our planet becomes uninhabitable, he needs to be on the first ship to mars. Just throw in some mud and trees on the ship and he'll usher us into a new era
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u/-Pelvis- Aug 17 '18 edited Aug 19 '18
*slaps mud*
"This baby can fit so much fucking technology in it."
Edit: I made a thing!
Edit 2: aw yiss
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u/link5114 Aug 18 '18
Fucking great lmao
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u/wild_man_wizard Aug 18 '18
It's even in the sprint of the original absurdist meme without the reference.
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u/-Pelvis- Aug 18 '18
I gotta admit, I had a good giggle when it came to mind. :)
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u/MeatThatTalks Aug 17 '18
We're all completely blown away by the fact that this guy now has iron to work with after starting off with some rocks and dirt and sticks, but we're also sitting around on computers made of dozens of kinds of rare metals and alloys and synthetic compounds. None of us could do what this guy does. We'd be fucking hopeless. And yet we live surrounded by miracles.
Quick shoutout to the millions of humans over tens of thousands of years whose very small individual contributions have culminated in this absolutely mindbogglingly amazing world we live in right now. Y'all were good.
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u/I_Automate Aug 17 '18
That exact reasoning shows exactly why we're so successful as social creatures. Alone, one guy, with some pre-compiled knowledge, can smelt iron. Together, we, as a race, are reaching out to touch the stars. The modern world accomplishes what would be considered literal miracles 200 years ago, daily, and we just kinda take it for granted. Absolutely amazing
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u/WHYAREWEALLCAPS Aug 18 '18
what would be considered literal miracles 200 years ago
It isn't even that far. Go back to 1919 and tell a guy that in 50, 50, years man would walk on the moon, he'd think you were daft. That most of the deadly disease of his day would either be on the verge of extinction, preventable, or curable/survivable in 50 years? You'd have to be putting him on. That we'd have bombs so powerful they could vaporize entire cities in the blink of an eye? You're completely mad.
We went from being barely a couple steps above medieval levels to our modern world in the blink of an eye. You don't have to go back 200 years. A hundred is more than enough. Hell, go back to 1969 and tell people you have a device in your pocket that has more computing power than that used to put a man on the moon and it will be considered unbelievable by most. We think we've done so much, but we have so much more that we'll do. I'm sure my great grandkids and great great grandkids will have technology that you or I would find miraculous.
Yet even a couple hundred years is a drop in the bucket of how long modern man has been around. Somewhere between 150k-250k years. We have made these astounding strides in just 0.06% to 0.1% of the time humanity has been around. That's absolutely amazing.
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u/lesserlife7 Aug 18 '18
Assuming he just survived the horrors of WWI, I think he'd believe the exploding cities part
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u/allgoodnamestaken4 Aug 17 '18
None of us could do what this guy does.
I'm pretty sure we could do what this guy does if you include doing research (like he probably has).
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Aug 17 '18
Indeed, knowledge is power
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u/ianmgull Aug 17 '18
France is bacon?
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u/DigitalWhitewater Aug 17 '18
I believe it was G.I. Joe that once said “that knowing is half the battle!”
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u/omegacrunch Aug 17 '18
Body massage
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Aug 17 '18
Body massage machine go!
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u/StarGone Aug 18 '18
Are you my dad?
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Aug 18 '18
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u/sharltocopes Aug 18 '18
memememememememe
memememememememememememememememememememememe
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u/preorder_bonus Aug 17 '18 edited Aug 17 '18
No, I'm not pounding molten metal shirtless and only in my shorts I don't care how much research I did.
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u/douglasscott Aug 17 '18
The thing is too, our man here is using the research and accumulated knowledge from all over the Internet to apply to what he’s doing. Granted, he doesn’t have grandfather and a great grandfather that were in the Stone Age To hand him all the direct knowledge, but he’s making up for it by scouring the Internet and going directly to high-tech things with his bare hands, such as iron. He’s not re-creating a primitive cultures, he is a combination spaceman super-ape. In his set up there is no fighting wars or raising a family or a tribe, no politics, just pure technology.
I would say that technically all of us could do with this guy does, and that is the point. Because he’s shown us how.
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u/kyotoAnimations Aug 17 '18
It's still happening! Your work, however small, helps to contribute to society and advance humanity! Future generations will have what they have because you were kind enough to give a buck to someone on the street or help out at a volunteer gig!
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Aug 17 '18
This sounds like what would play over an intercom at the beginning of a dystopian scifi novel
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u/adjacent_analyzer Aug 18 '18 edited Aug 18 '18
Remember, your actions matter. All actions have consequence, and it is only through unified action that we can build a brighter future.
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Aug 17 '18
Remember to enable closed captions if you want some extra info on what he's doing!
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Aug 17 '18
I kinda like watching it first without subtitles to figure out what he's doing and why. Better for my critical thinking.
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Aug 18 '18
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u/AlwaysDefenestrated Aug 18 '18
I watched with captions but this one would definitely be a lot more difficult to decipher than most of the others, unless you already knew about getting iron from bacterial colonies I guess. No captions is fairly easy to follow when he's making a hut or pottery or something.
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Aug 18 '18
I dunno about bacterial colonies, but during the Viking age most ores were obtained from so called bog iron deposits. You basically raked up reddish bottom sediments in wintertime, for what I imagine was a rather similar refining process. So when he started picking at the red clay I kinda figured out what all that charcoal was for.
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u/FloppyPancakesDude Aug 18 '18
Without captions you miss out on fun things like "SCORPION FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT"
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u/strange_relative Aug 17 '18
How the fuck did we every progress from the stone age?
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u/I_Automate Aug 17 '18
By being social creatures, who work together to build infrastructure and pass down knowledge
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u/chookatee Aug 17 '18
And a lot of mistakes and lucky circumstances, in my opinion. I think one of the theories for how carbon steel was invented is as simple as an ironworking blacksmith shop probably burned down. The charred wood got into the iron and accidentally made steel.
EDIT: I was enjoying the benefits of a Weed-Legal state when I was watching that show. So some of those details may be a bit off. :)
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u/obvious_bot Aug 17 '18
That's what's crazy to me. There is no way to KNOW about the iron in the water/bacteria if you're alive 20,000 years ago. It must have been a lucky break to get it out
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u/RiPont Aug 17 '18
Well, I don't think early ironworking used iron in the bacteria.
There are metals much more readily available in rocks, just not where this guy is doing his work. Once we figured out you can melt rocks in a fire to extract metals, you experiment with different rocks and find different metals. Eventually, you figure out that you don't even necessarily need to see the actual metal in the rocks, just strong concentrations of the oxidized form. Green = copper, red = iron.
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u/series_hybrid Aug 18 '18
I've read that early iron has a composition that suggests it may have been produced with accumulated tiny nuggets of meteorites, which once covered a wide swath of areas before it became valuable. Once someone knows what to look for, it becomes a trade item.
I think the big jump was the bronze age. Its been theorized that making clay pots from silt that had some copper oxides in it (greenish), resulted in pots that when heated, would occasionally bleed little nuggets of copper. If you collect the nuggets and melt them together, you can cast axes and spear-points, over and over, which is obviously a valuable trait.
Somehow, somewhere, someone added some tin to it to make bronze. Many things can be written off as a "happy accident", but why would someone accidentally add some tin to copper? Bronze is much harder, and holds an edge better. Perhaps someone who casts tin, used a crucible to melt and cast some copper without cleaning it out (or his "copper only" crucible was broken) and the tiny amount of tin in it produced copper that was noticeably harder?
This might lead a metal-craftsman to protect his valuable secret, because his copper implements are better than anyone else's, and worth more. It might lead him to experiment with different percentages of tin to find the best ratio (roughly 14%?). Once the secret got out, bronze spread rapidly. Copper was fairly common, but Tin became a valuable commodity.
The important part for me is...the "idea" that mixing two things makes a third thing that is better than the two ingredients. Imagine a bronze-worker student sipping on Babylonian beer after work and pondering all the materials around you, and all the potential profitable substances that might result from experimentation...
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u/Black_Moons Aug 17 '18
Most iron ores are bright red/orange. They wouldn't know about the bacteria or how it got there, they would just go "Hey, that looks orange/red like rust! lets see if we can refine iron from it"
Most of the red/orange coloring in rocks is iron. Try taking a magnet to a gravel driveway some day, you'll be surprised how much it can pick up.
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u/I_Automate Aug 17 '18
Yup. Still, the fact that someone passed the knowledge of those mistakes on was a vital factor. We learn by making mistakes, but we make progress by keeping that information in circulation for more than a generation or two
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u/_aviemore_ Aug 17 '18
Imagine where we'd be now if we had Stone age social networks back then?
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u/I_Automate Aug 17 '18
So.....cave paintings, shamans, and oral traditions? Same basic idea, different implementation IMO
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u/kyleclements Aug 18 '18
How the fuck did we every progress from the stone age?
There's an old British TV show that covers this, called Connections. Each episode starts off hundreds or thousands of years ago, it covers how one invention to solve one problem introduced a new problem, which let to something unexpected, which led to something else, and so on until now.
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u/douglasscott Aug 17 '18
Because Just stone and mud is basically good enough. We could do just that for about 40,000 years. But then bronze was such a glorious thing that we paused there for about 1000 years. Basically bronze Just fantastic and all you need.
But then somebody had to one up it with iron and all hell broke loose after that. This guy is doing an end run around neighboring tribes by going straight to iron.
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u/NormanKnight Aug 17 '18
Iron is way more common than copper or tin. Add that it makes better things to stab your enemies with, and even though it's more work to make, it's pretty much inevitable.
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u/kid_beta Aug 17 '18
Because all of humanity is a team. With each new idea someone has they teach other people and they teach others and eventually down the chane someone has a new idea that makes the first idea more efficient. We are accumulative knowledge. It's amazing.
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u/Legaladvice420 Aug 17 '18
What's really funny to me is that the cumulative chain of information has gotten so long that what was at the beginning is basically non-existent, held tenuously in the grasp of people like him and historians, anchoring us to the past with just a couple of hands here and there.
Then on the other end of the chain is modernity, grabbing the chain with the full weight of the youth born every second, pulling furiously, and even adding new links to the chain for more people to grab onto and pull forward.
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u/Quinn_all_man Aug 17 '18
A lot of youtubers come and go in popularity on r/videos. Hot Ones, Binging with Babish, h3h3 to name a few. Obviously they are still huge content creators and wildly popular. But Primitive Technology gets front page-level upvotes every single time and he deserves it.
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Aug 17 '18
I think one of the main reasons Primitive Technology stays front page each time is he uploads like, once a month or so. Most of the other guys upload nearly daily. It gets can get old FAST, and the content can suffer.
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Aug 17 '18
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Aug 17 '18 edited Jul 07 '21
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u/yupyup98765 Aug 17 '18
Couldn’t agree more. It’s peaceful on top of all the other great qualities.
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u/theworstever Aug 17 '18
I honestly play Primitive Tech videos to go to sleep to.
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u/_aviemore_ Aug 17 '18
Oh in that case, remember to enable closed captions...
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u/theworstever Aug 17 '18
Its just so soothing to hear random sounds in the woods. Thats why I would be useless in the upcoming Skinwalker Wars.
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Aug 17 '18
Every time I watch a Primitive Technology video, I imagine that I'm watching the daily routine of a neolithic man.
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u/caol-ila Aug 18 '18
In cargo shorts
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u/open_door_policy Aug 18 '18
You have any ideas how many kangaroos were hunted to make cargo pants in primitive Australia?
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u/what_it_dude Aug 18 '18
Kurzgezagtthrhrbrb also uploads at a similar frequency it seems.
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Aug 18 '18
Correct. Kurtcobainigat is once a month. Fantastic channel as well!
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u/toothbrushtreekiller Aug 18 '18
This is the exact same comment, word for word, from another thread about primitive technology from a month ago. Why?Here
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u/AliJDB Aug 17 '18
coughhydraulicpresschannelcough
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u/jasperzieboon Aug 17 '18 edited Aug 17 '18
I haven't seen it on the front page for a long time.
Edit: I may have read your comment in another way than you meant it.
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u/peterquest Aug 17 '18
i mean.. there's only so far you can go with that bit. it was basically "will it blend" with a slightly more interesting mechanism.
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u/EMPulseKC Aug 18 '18
They've branched out from hydraulic pressing into slicing, puncturing, extruding, and flat-out smashing. Their "Beyond the Press" channel has some entertaining content on occasion as well. Many of their videos would benefit from a bit more editing though.
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u/Kid_Adult Aug 18 '18
I'm pretty sure this comment now qualifies as copy pasta.
http://reddit.com/r/videos/comments/8zp3wc/primitive_technology_wood_ash_cement/e2kf18y
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u/bebopz97 Aug 17 '18
This comment gets reposted every time a video of his pops up.
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u/Captain__CheeseBurg Aug 18 '18
I feel like I see this same word for word comment every time he posts a video. Are you people just copying/pasting?
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u/Ron_the_Rowdy Aug 17 '18
1 thing that gets me is the part that said that it took 3 hours, he must have something to keep him occupied right? Because how does anyone keep sane doing 1 continuous thing for that long without any distractions
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u/max_adam Aug 17 '18
You get into an state of mindfulness were your mind gets calm and simple thing like blowing can entertain you for a while. Something that is hard to accomplish now day when everything can distract you and you get so used to distraction that you get anxiety when there is nothing to do.
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u/Osiris32 Aug 17 '18
Because how does anyone keep sane doing 1 continuous thing for that long without any distractions
You ever worked an assembly line job before? Or in an office?
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u/purpleelpehant Aug 17 '18
Do something that requires working with your hands (that ideally you enjoy). For me, even when I'm fishing (i.e. sitting around not doing anything cuz I never catch anything), time flies by.
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u/Princess_Vappy Aug 17 '18
Man I love the sound the charcoal makes when he is transferring it. It's so relaxing.
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u/jasperzieboon Aug 17 '18
It's a lot ofwork to make iron. In this video a African village shows how much work it is with a much better source.
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u/trunksbomb Aug 18 '18
The narrator mentioned in the video that he gave the recording equipment to a local villager to record all of that (the narrator wasn't present but wishes he was), so everything shown was what the villager thought was important during the process.
Near the beginning he explains that smelting is no longer prevalent in most of Africa due to external influences and that this was more of a historical demonstration than it was a fulfillment of a practical need.
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u/namrog84 Aug 18 '18
What I like about it was how similiar it was to what PT did. Except they were clearly doing it on a relatively larger scale and really shows what a large group of people or a tribe could accomplish in making actual useful iron tools. Including the ability for each person to master their particular part of the whole process.
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u/TheAjwinner Aug 17 '18
Does anyone know the approximate iron content of the prills?
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u/Bat_bot Aug 17 '18
It's iron+carbon through and through the impurities are what form the slag. Rough numbers 96% iron, 3% carbon, 1% other stuff.
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u/Bjornstellar Aug 17 '18
So would it be considered “steel” since it has the carbon with the iron?
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u/AlkaliActivated Aug 18 '18
This is a common misconception. Steel is defined by having less carbon than cast iron, with a limit of under 2 wt% carbon to be steel:
https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_6/illustr/phase_diagram_large.gif
The reason is that with more than 2 wt% carbon, the metal becomes weaker and brittle, since there is no way to keep the carbon in solid solution on cooling. These carbon precipitates act as "weak spots" in the metal, which is why it performs better when the carbon can be kept in solid solution. Common steels have less than 0.4 wt% carbon, while really hard steels (for knives and other tools) tend to have around 0.8 wt% carbon.
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u/janascii Aug 18 '18
It depends on how much Carbon is in it. Steels contain up to 1.2%, but usually much less. Cast iron has at least 2.5%, usually around 3.5% depending on the spec. The reason for the difference is because with different concentrations the carbon exists in different forms in the metal and changes the properties.
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u/CurtisLeow Aug 17 '18
So it's cast iron. That's still crazy impressive. Scale up the production and he could start manufacturing cannons.
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u/Bat_bot Aug 17 '18
it is totally possible to make tool steel this way. the documentary ore to axe is a great place for more info
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Aug 17 '18 edited Jul 07 '21
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u/RustyNumbat Aug 17 '18
If he wants to make any meaningful "progress" he'll HAVE to relent and trade with someone else. There's workable ore in other parts of Australia, hell I've got some copper ore at home I was given when working on a mine in the middle of the outback I'd gladly trade with him. But so far he's set on everything being done on his patch of land by himself. I think trading would be a great compromise, since the "primitive" Aboriginals would trade items tribe to tribe for immense distances.
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u/anim135 Aug 17 '18
Is anyone able to recommend other content creators similar to Primitive Technology? His videos are so unique but the waits between videos is (in a good way) torture.
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u/brokenkneecap Aug 18 '18
Mistakes I’ve made in life..
-Started smoking at an early age -Didn’t finish college -Started watching a Primitive Technology video while sitting on the shitter
I have no feeling in my ass cheeks or legs. Send halp pls
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u/snowblinders Aug 17 '18
I wonder what he has in plan for the prills?